The Pet Adoption Process — A UX Case Study

There are currently millions of animals awaiting adoption in shelters and foster homes. Sadly, a lack of space rescues half of the animal in shelters. While many people wish to adopt an animal, the adoption process can be complicated and may even lead to applicants being refused. The gap creates house-animal gaps that contribute to overwhelming refuge.

Target Audience

The psychographic target audience of the RSPCA app are teenagers or people who want to adopt animals but do not know what to do with them. They want an animal to look after and to play with. They are active, polite, caring and helpful . Owners are the prime psychographic target in order to train them in an adequate diet and exercise routine for animals. The psychographic audience of the RSPCA application consists of individuals who recently adopted a pet.

The Goal :

The aim is to build an experience that can easily connect and facilitate the process. It provides opportunity for barriers to be reduced, adopt rates to be higher, income to be increased, costs reduced and lives saved.

Provide wire frames to adapt adopters to their lifestyles and take into consideration racial, gender, age, temperament and health conditions. animals can be found.

Research

Understanding the Problem

Every year, animals are put up for adoption. The most common is dogs and cats. Although the general public is aware of this, they don’t think or act about it. They don’t. For a number of reasons. The objective is to build a system that can easily adapt a pet to suit its needs. This means creating a system that inspires, informs and informs consumers about the truth regarding shelter animals that the general public commonly misconceives.

However, The RSPCA is an animal welfare organization that saves more animals from suffering and danger each year than any other organization. This is done by our primary workers, who are RSPCA inspectors and officers who work to save the lives of animals (2021).

RSPCA have its own mobile app also through which people can be connected together to voice out for those animals who have been left wander or injured. If ever, someone is not going to adopt an animal , that person can easily fill the information on this app and get the pet a help from RSPCA from the nearby location.

After analysing the app, I discovered that the features are simple, uncluttered, and clean. The RSPCA provides a pleasant journey for the user because the main menu contains all of the elements required for directly accessing the page without switching pages or using the back button. The navigator below makes it simple for the user to navigate to the desired tab.

The font has a serif-like typeface with a range of widths and shapes that modernizes the app. The sans serif types are synonymous with new moods and feelings that are pleasant, direct, clean and modest. The current app uses primarily blue, blue, turquoise, and white colours. Hence, while designing the new app for Pet Adoption for RSPCA i have remained consistent on utilizing the colours which is suitable and represent RSPCA in a modern way.

Competitor analysis:

My research began with the exploration of some of the latest digital livestock adoption solutions like the Pet App, First Aid for Dogs and My Pet etc. They all take a different approach to bring together people and animals. I wanted to concentrate upon these ideas. By examining those solutions, I can evaluate the existing adoption methods, key features, potential pain points and areas for improvement.

Problem with Existing apps and Services

A quick look at current applications showed users what they wanted and where they had problems.

• The process of adoption was not straightforward, which was a problem in different applications and services.

• Automation or real-time data syncs were not available.

• The user interface and overall experience of the app were less than that, which makes manual work much harder and lowers service value and performance. The app had nothing to encourage the user to use it again.
The app does not address common misunderstandings about hut pets or raise awareness.

• There was no way of communicating with others online or performing a group search.

User Persona

Based on the demographics and customer reviews I gathered during my research, I developed user persona and 2 storyboards which have aid in identifying the various requirements that the final design must meet.

Scenario :

Nishtha wanted to adopt a dog and has different difficulties that may occur. For example, her parent loves her very much but the only issue is that they lack space in their house in order to pet a dog. So it may be difficult for her parents to accept the dog. And it could be pleasing to adopt a dog as they will gain the happiness they searched and felt when having one. Thinking about the different ways you have to adjust yourself to take care of it is another commitment. So many terms and behavioural needs have to be considered before adopting a dog. It will be a nice experiment and make the home environment more relaxing thus some adjustments need to be done.

Stoyboards

1st storyboard

2nd storyboard

Goals

After the study was completed, I understood what the framework needed and was applied to provide an enjoyable experience.
The goal of the app is:
• Find the best match for the consumer.
• Sensitizing these shelters and their animals.
Customers have access and the ability to schedule their appointment with the shelter they choose to visit.
• The app is designed to maintain a high level of user curiosity and motivation.

Solving the Problem

Easy but successful additions help you achieve the objectives outlined above.
An overall record of facts to raise awareness and correct common errors.
Include social media to ensure that the consumer shares the success.
For each breed form, have a ‘breed information page to provide users with answers.
After adoption programs and daily notifications/records of self-added pet events must be included to ensure the customer continues to enjoy momentums.

USER TESTING

Hence before designing my finals i had to do some user testing for the A/B split test where i had to different screens as shown below.

As per peer group feedbacks, most of them liked the (A) mobile interface as design layouts and the feedbacks I got is not to cover the face of the girl on the 4th screen instead I must decrease the square and there was no consistency of font size also compared to each screen and I need to put the right and main information of each pet also on the interface of availability of dogs so that clients can have an overview on the dog before going into details of the pet in the next screen.

However , the screen test of the app must done by 5 users.

After all the user testing of the mobile interface and the feedbacks I got is that they did love the A screen interfaces instead of B for the A/B split screens and that there is a lack of navigation bar and there were too many back buttons only to revert to the home page and that there should be a home button for the users to be able to go directly to the home page also. Most of my users did not like the gradient background color and that the app seems to be heavy also as the functions were not working properly and fast as they should be normally. The app was not responding in a good way. Some of my users did like the design layouts but some of them did not find consistency on the buttons provided as some of the fonts were small and big. Because of the slow response of the buttons function, some of the users were lost and confused about the flow of the app. Hence, these are the important feedbacks for me to be able to design the adoption app with a navigation bar, having a light solid color background with a good flow, good typography, font size, and design hierarchy.

Final Design

High Fidelity Mock-up

Sign up/Sign in, Profile Setup, Inquiring about a pet, Discovery,

The Login and sign in page helps the users to directly enter the app and if they do not have the an account, they just need to do a Profile set up where they need to sign up with their name, email address and password which will lead them to the Inquiring about a pet page and then Discovery page to be able to discover about the adoption of pets.

Pet profiles, Favorites, Adoption policy

If a user discovers a pet, he will be brought into the profile of the pet. Users can view the images of available animals on this page and an overview of the animal’s most important details. When the user selects a particular animal, the user will have the information on the animal and will get an insight into the personalities and behaviors of the animal. In addition, when selecting pets on this page, users may save the image by clicking the favorites icon if interested.

Favorites

This page allows users to view any pets or articles they have saved.

Eventually after selecting a pet , they will have to go through online adoption procedure which will make them fill up some details and select date and time available for the pick up of the pet at selected location .

Adoption procedure

Final Thoughts

It was a wonderful topic to design an application from scratch following research and brainstorming. I used Figma finally (I was hesitant before). I’m happy with the software and I could make a design that was as much in my mind as I would like and also refine my previous layouts for design.

After all the feedbacks I had finally able to design the adoption app with a navigation bar in blue color by having a home icon, vet icon the adoption icon, the gallery icon, and the profile icon in some of the interfaces, and I have also removed the gradient background color and selected a light solid color with a good flow, good typography, font size, and design hierarchy. I have selected this light color as the background, use some images, and also added up different screen transitions and hover effects and guides for the users to be able to connect themselves with the flow of the app in order not to feel lost and confused. I have used the Roboto typeface and the font size is 16px and the body text on the screens is 14px as per my research because Roboto has a warm and welcoming curve. This makes the rhythm of reading more obvious (Efe 2020). I have remained consistent in terms of color typography and color and design layouts for the final layouts by bearing in mind my feedbacks and difficulties y users had. This was a challenge for me to be able to do it in a minimalist way and also able to create an app with a direct flow of adoption interfaces by not letting the users feel bored by asking them too many questions through the app but instead the important ones to be able to follow up the process the adoption online.