PetRescue

Safe and Sound Pounds Directory

MAY - JULY 2022

This project saw the completion of an end-to-end UX design enhancement for PetRescue, through Harness Projects, towards the key deliverable of a web app prototype.

My Role in the Project

I worked within a team of UX interns to each create a high fidelity web app prototype.

  • I interviewed stakeholders as part of a team

  • I individually designed and conducted research

  • I individually iterated through low to high fidelity prototypes using figma

Skills Used

  • Stakeholder interviews, understanding of business goals amid ambiguity + a complex and emotive brief

  • Research planning and implementation, including one-on-one interviews

  • Creation of Personas and User Journeys

  • Synthesis of research + ideating towards a design solution

  • Iterative design, sketching, low fidelity prototyping

  • Pixel-perfect interactive high fidelity prototyping in figma

Outcomes:

Created a design that aligned with the stakeholders business objectives, whilst also closely listening to tried and tested user needs.

Main Project deliverables included:

  • Detailed user personas and journeys

  • An interactive prototype

  • Pitching the design to PetRescue’s executive + development team.

“I love that you introduced the opportunity and identified the search for lost pets.”

On combining pound profiles and reviews: “a really good opportunity to merge those two as people are going along that journey”

Patima Tantiprasutat - Managing Director at PetRescue

“This feedback validates your research and thinking and shows how you are aligning user needs with business needs”

Jason Crane - Principal at Tincrane, Harness Projects Mentor

Delving Deeper into the Design Process…

The Problem Space

Every year, 100,000 animals in Australia get put down in pounds.

This is not only really upsetting, but also such a complex problem to even approach solving.

PetRescue have been operating in this space for the last two decades, in that time becoming the most popular pet adoption website in the southern hemisphere, and rehoming over 738,000 pets.

Although all their work to date has been towards their goal of ensuring the safety of all animals, their newest initiative “safe and sound pounds” aims to directly address the safety of animals entering the pound system by:

  • Enabling visibility and transparency

  • Increasing the positive relationship with councils and pounds

  • Increasing accountability and benchmarking the current pound system, to measure future improvements.

One of the main barriers towards progress in this space is standardisation across the system - every state and individual council runs their pounds differently, with a huge variation in results and quality of care.

In order for PetRescue to campaign for changes to regulations, information must be able to be aggregated and benchmarked in one place.

Positive changes must also be encouraged using positive reinforcement - rather than penalising staff at pounds that are already overworked and under resourced.

it is therefore necessary to create a directory + database of the pounds in australia, allowing them to be viewed by the public, evaluated by PetRescue, and positive actions rewarded.

The “Safe and Sound Pound” badge will be awarded by PetRescue, to the pounds whose actions align with positive progress.

Research

Once identifying the business’s goals, it was necessary to test these against user needs.

Method

I created a screening survey to capture raw data, and recruit interview participants

I then conducted semi-structured interviews, creating questions to get to the bottom of:

  • Past interactions with pounds

  • What people value in pounds

  • What information they wish to find out

  • What their main worries are

I then analysed the results using affinity mapping.

Findings:

  • Most users value a connection to their local community.

  • People want to be able to find pets that suit their lifestyle, and this was the main deciding factor in choosing between adoption options.

  • In person + visual connections with animals are valued - this sparked an emotional connection!

  • Negative impressions of pounds mostly have to do with dog breeds + behaviour misconceptions, underfunding, and intimidating adoption processes.

  • There is a need for more information and public education, both to remove these biases, and educate on how the current system works + what to do in difficult situations

  • There are hardly any touchpoints on the lost pet journey

  • Positive and negative experiences related strongly to how each individual rescue / pound is operated

Personas & Journeys

Emily - Pet Adopter

The pound directory will need to be visually engaging, and leverage that emotional connection that she is searching for. Verified and trustworthy information must be prioritised.

Emily’s Adoption Journey

Collecting positive information could be a great opportunity to increase trust, collect data for safe & sound pounds classification, and increase confidence in users. Ease of finding information must be prioritised.

Kathy - Lost Pet Finder

Local/community networks form the first port of call for most missing pets, but beyond that there is little information available about the best course of action to take.

Kathy’s Journey

More touchpoints could be created to help find lost pets, including a knowledge base.

Design Direction from Persona’s:

  • Working with the existing web app interface to create an MVP, building on the existing rescue directory

  • Creating a lost pet search function within the bounds of the MVP

  • Creating a way of giving feedback + positive reviews to enforce progressive action

  • Ease of finding information will be prioritised

  • Prioritising the Safe & Sound Pounds initiative; to create higher standards, transparency, and accountability of pounds

Please view PDFs of Personas and Journeys if you have any accessibility requirements.

Ideation + Identifying themes

The Prototype:

Home page to menu

I implemented user testing and feedback to simplify the existing menu categories, and create more visual interaction.

The Pound Directory

This is the main feature that PetRescue had in mind in their brief, which they described as “the ubereats of pets!”

It has come to life after user research to include:

  • Map and list views of pounds within a SPA.

  • Popup view with visual icons and carousel of images, for emotive engagement with pets for adoption.

  • Search filters, refined from user testing.

  • Added functionality of sorting the list view.

  • Combining this with the existing directory of rescues and vets, so that users can browse from all organisations at once. This saves both development resources in the creation of a MVP, and creates a simpler user flow.

Directory map view and search filters

Directory list view and sorting options

Pound Profiles

The individual pound pages were redesigned to better display the information that users nominated as most important to them, as well as “Safe and Sound Pound” achievement badges.

User and heuristic testing sessions generated comments about reducing the length of the page, so if further iterations of this product were to take place, different display options would be explored.

This could be in the form of tabs allowing the user to switch between the three sections, or expandable sections to reduce scrolling.

The “success stories” section was added to this page, to link positive experiences with each individual pound, therefore driving the business goal of incentivising positive adoption experiences from pounds.

All success stories are also aggregated on a single page, accessed from the main menu.

The “Success Stories” submission process includes the option to choose from a public success story or private review for improvement.

This allows users to give positive or negative feedback, which Petrescue can use towards its own goals of classifying pounds as ‘safe and sound’ or otherwise.

Searching for lost pets

To aid in this user journey, an alternative set of filters was created for the pound directory, that allow users to narrow down on criteria most relevant to the search for lost pets, rather than browsing for adoption.

A web page has also been created, accessed via the main menu, to provide information on steps PetRescue recommends a user could take in this situation, as research showed a huge need for more guidance and expert information in this area.

This page also includes a link to the rescue directory, with the lost pet search filters applied.

But Why?

How does the Prototype fit the Research?

  • More images & icons

    Users were found to respond well to emotive images, and graphic based menus.

    This is imperative in driving traffic to pet adoption listings, with the aim of increasing engagement by including images of animals on pound listings.

  • Different filters for different journeys

    Two main user journeys were uncovered, in browsing for adoption, and searching for lost pets.

    I created two sets of search filters, prioritising the most important information in each of these journeys.

  • Success Stories

    This feature fits both PetRescue’s and the users objectives, in making pounds more accountable, and in providing information for users to compare rescues.

    The option to submit a public success story allows positive stories to be shared and rewards pounds’ positive achievements,

    Whereas private reviews allow feedback to be shared directly with PetRescue, to aid in classification of pounds from their end, and allow any issues to be brought up sensitively.

  • Adding touchpoints on the Lost & Found journey

    PetRescue’s site previously didn’t have a user flow focusing on those who have lost their pets - however this was identified as a common user journey during research.

    Touchpoints have therefore been added, to increase PetRescue’s authority in this area and to allow for greater sharing of resources and information.

  • Pound Page Redesign

    During interviews, users nominated certain information about rescues as being important to them:

    Namely the type of shelter, how strict or lenient their adoption policy is, and positive stories. These were prioritised in the page’s design.

    PetRescue’s existing “Happy Tales” reviews page is quite difficult to find within the current information architecture, so linking positive reviews with each individual pound was a great way of improving accessibility and adding to user trust at the moment they are seeking it out most.

  • Pounds & Rescues Combined

    In initial stakeholder meetings, PetRescue expressed their need for a pound directory, towards their goal of benchmarking pounds.

    As they already had a directory of pounds and rescues combined, with the need for an MVP to launch in mind, I focused upon enhancing this with a newly designed SPA.

    This also took into account user research, demonstrating no need for separating council pounds and other rescues into separate directory pages.

    Combining these features instead reduces stigma against pounds, as users will naturally come across pounds on the map near them, interspersed with other types of rescue organisations.

Key Takeaways:

“This was a really exciting project, surrounding such an emotive and complex issue. It was a great way to apply skills and learnings in the end to end UX process, with rewarding insights and feedback from the PetRescue team, working towards such a tangible goal.

It was definitely a challenge to approach the problem space, with a few pivots in the brief itself and a lot of ambiguity.

My main learnings were definitely in weighing up the balance between stakeholder goals and user needs, and working out the right path to go down - which was why multiple checkins with the PetRescue team and user testing were so crucial!

I loved working with such a talented team of colleagues from Harness Projects, and I took away so many insights from everyone else’s unique perspectives and experience.”