Apatas Adoption Site
research | definition | ideation & strategy | prototyping | iteration
Background
APATAS is a national association of animal shelters. They partner with shelters all over Lima to raise awareness and foster the discoverability of pets waiting for a home.
Challenge
Apatas goal is to reduce the number of street animals in Lima. They hope to raise awareness through their site, events, and activations. They offer adoption, their fees include all services (chip, vaccines, sterilization, etc) and there's also the option to sponsor an animal. Which provides food, medicines and showers, and the option to pick it up on weekends.
Approach
I applied a Design Thinking process to find possible problems and pain points. With enough research and analysis, I designed and iterated on a responsive website.
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Project Duration: 80 hours.
Role:
UX/UI Design
Research
Interaction Design
Branding
Prototyping
Usability Testing
Tools:
Adobe PSD, Illustrator
Optimal Workshop
Invision
Maze
Zeplin
1
EMPATHIZE
Methodologies: Primary & Secondary Research, Competitive Analysis, Survey, Interviews, Provisional Persona.
RESEARCH GOALS:
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Determine and define the positioning of APATAS within the local shelter services in Lima.
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Find the pain points of users when accessing these services.
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Learn from people that have adopted any positive aspects of the process that can be applied to the site.
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Determine the strengths/failures of the current adoption process in Lima and compare it to other countries.
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Understand and define how the local users engage with shelters and adoption centers.
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Understand the motivations, goals and
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS:
The research was done to compare the strengths and weaknesses of other pet adoption sites, shelters, and services which helps avoid some pain points and apply good practices. Also to help differentiate APATAS from the others.
INTERVIEWS:
Six participants in total were interviewed. Three of them in person, one at a Shelter close to home and lastly two via Skype. My analysis was focused on the users that had previously adopted and knew the process. Their experience was discussed, what motivated them to adopt and what frustrated their process of adoption. The information was extremely helpful to determine features and avoid failures.
FINDINGS:
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No participants adopted through an online shelter/provider.
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Most of the animals adopted were found on the street.
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All participants adopted baby animals they found cute.
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All participants knew there were online shelters, but lacked information.
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All participants saw the animal (picture, or present) before deciding.
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Specific information about the animal is important, size prominently.
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Facebook is the most used tool for researching animal adoption.
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Street dogs are inexistent in the rich districts and common in the poor.
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There are few online adoption centers/services.
ANALYSIS:
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In Lima the adoption rates are low, and that can be reflected on the quality and quantity of adoption sites. Currently, there's a handful of acceptable designed adoption centers. But they all focus on their local shelter and only for dogs or cats. The vast majority of online presence is in the form of blogs or facebook groups and fan pages. Most sites have a lack of main features, especially a filter. They all have well-written information and form applications. The main difference with North America is the vast majority of options to choose from, they follow the same trend of badly designed sites, except for a few brands.
INTERVIEWS:
Six participants in total were interviewed. Three of them in person, one at a Shelter close to home and lastly two via Skype. My analysis was focused on the users that had previously adopted and knew the process. Their experience was discussed, what motivated them to adopt and what frustrated their process of adoption. The information was extremely helpful to determine features and avoid failures.
FINDINGS:
-
No participants adopted through an online shelter/provider.
-
Most of the animals adopted were found on the street.
-
All participants adopted baby animals they found cute.
-
All participants knew there were online shelters, but lacked information.
-
All participants saw the animal (picture, or present) before deciding.
-
Specific information about the animal is important, size prominently.
-
Facebook is the most used tool for researching animal adoption.
-
Street dogs are inexistent in the rich districts and common in the poor.
-
There are few online adoption centers/services.
ANALYSIS:
​
In Lima the adoption rates are low, and that can be reflected on the quality and quantity of adoption sites. Currently, there's a handful of acceptable designed adoption centers. But they all focus on their local shelter and only for dogs or cats. The vast majority of online presence is in the form of blogs or facebook groups and fan pages. Most sites have a lack of main features, especially a filter. They all have well-written information and form applications. The main difference with North America is the vast majority of options to choose from, they follow the same trend of badly designed sites, except for a few brands.
PRIMARY PERSONA:
I developed a persona to synthesize and illustrate my findings in human terms. I compiled behavioral attributes most common to the interview participants, creating the following primary persona, Miguel Paredes a professional millennial wanting to share his spare time with a great companion.
2
IDEATE
Methodologies: Roadmap, Sitemap, Task flow & User flow.
SITEMAP:
After deciding the essential key features and elements from the roadmap a sitemap was created, using the information provided from the research to outline the section pages of the website. The complicated process of adoption was taking into account to layout a simple and easy to navigate site. The information architecture of almost all adoption sites is virtually the same, the process can be overwhelming but the navigation is standard.
TASK FLOW:
I empathized with my persona and imagined the flow he would take to accomplish his task. He wants a new companion since he moved to his new apartment. He will start investigating the process.
USER FLOW:
A single user flow was created to demonstrate the path our persona user, Miguel Paredes, would follow to complete the task in my page, in this case, the adoption of a pet, through the website. This path is showing a user that knows he wants to adopt a specific type of dog and follows a seamless flow to acomplish it.
3
DESIGN
Methodologies: Wireframes, Low & High Prototype, UI KIT, Branding.
Wireframes:
Mid-fidelity wireframes were sketched to quickly test the structure and layout among potential users and iterate if needed. These were created to layout the landing page, search page, pet page, and form application page.
BRANDING & UI KIT:
Started by creating a mood board and a Styleguide to have a better approach to keywords and visual creative ideas that represent APATAS. From there I worked on some sketches, chose three to work on and lastly focused on one that represented the most joy and love for a pet companionship for the brand.
HI-FI RESPONSIVE DESIGN:
Using the wireframes as a basis, I build the high fidelity design of the site using Photoshop and Illustrator. The responsive design was done using a 12 grid system. The design for the smart was done at the minimum, 375 pix.
4
PROTOTYPING & TESTING
Methodologies: Usability Testing, Affinity Map, Priority Revisions.
USABILITY TESTING:
Using the high fidelity designs I put up a prototype on Invision. Participants were asked to simply adopt a dog. They were warned beforehand that most elements were not incorporated. Filters where purposedly ignored, I focused only on the process of adoption. That helped me check how seamless the flow of the process was and find any possible pain points. The test was done in person and remotely using Skype and Maze.
Maze link: https://t.maze.design/1888692
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FINDINGS:
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All participants finished the task without error.
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All participants understood how the site worked and through the process of adoption was simple.
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All participants tried to access not working elements.
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Half of the participants mentioned the lack of a health tab.
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100% of the participants didn't scroll to read the shelter info.
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Half the participants wanted to read more about the background of the pet and where they found him.
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All participants wanted to see more dogs.
AFFINITY MAP:
The results from the usability testing were analyzed and organized into an Affinity Map to display the positive and negative feedback and suggestions for future iterations for improvements.
PRIORITY REVISIONS:
From the feedback, I made a list of priority changes to my site. I took only four hours to make the ones I could. In order of priority: Got rid of the second row of images, it was redundant, feedback recommended to add that into the main slider. Changed the form format and modernized the filter style, changed all the icons to suit the same style guide, changed some of the font size and thickness to make it more readable. Lastly changed the add to favorite icon color to match more the whole site.
REFLECTIONS & NEXT STEPS:
Street animals have been an issue in Peru always. According to a study from last year, about a million dogs roam the streets of Lima. They are unvaccinated, homeless and present a grave danger to health. In addition, shelters do not have the means to promote adoption and their services and the options they have are lacking. Most of their presence online is on facebook, a few have their own personal sites and those have a complicated adoption process.
The main finding from the research phase was how resigned people felt about the whole official adoption process, they would rather pick a stray dog from the streets, but that also carries its own risks and pain points. I would improve the site with a health bar and a background showing the story of how the animal was found and their health state. I'd also work on implementing missing features. There are a lot of opportunities to be implemented in the third reiteration from more testing.
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