Case Study — Building a Website to contact Paw Kedarnos
A website to connect pet owners, who need to leave their beloved ones with a trusted care taker for short term or long term stay — or just a nice treatment (glooming).
The Brand
Paw Kedarnos (con Karen) in Puerto Rico offers loving and safe short and long term boarding for dogs, cats and other animals in a cageless environment. The goal of the business is to create a space, where there is more freedom for pets and more safety and relaxation for their owners.
The Challenge
The business itself is already running and so far, it is Karen and her husband taking care of the pets, but there is no system for the booking at the moment. Therefore we had to face the following questions: How can we give customers the opportunity to see services and make booking requests — as well as: How can we help Karen to organize all bookings?
Methodologies
To approach the problem, we did a lot of research in the beginning, using different methods to collect and analyze data. Throughout the process we tested the concept, the usability and desirability with the users, to be always aware of opportunities and obstacles.
The result
It was a bit tricky to include all the information needed from the customers for the business and still make it a fun process to navigate through the website without being overwhelming. In the end of the project we came up with a website, which successfully matched the business goals and the customers expectations — where customers can make a booking request for their pet(s) and Paw Kedarnos being able to organize these bookings (while also setting up profiles and storing information the business needs to receive a booking).
The process
To set up a common understanding of expectations and to understand the business goals and needs, we began the project with a kickoff meeting, followed by an interview with the business owners. To prepare for that, we did some secondary research — we researched the competition and gathered some information about the industry. The main outcome of the conversation with the business was that they want to be perceived as a place for pets, where the owners can trust and animals have more freedom, as well as individual and safe care: They can provide pet boardings in a cageless environment and it is operated by a veterinary technician. These two factors make Paw Kedarnos services special compared to the average market offer.
After that we conducted a survey to find out about pet owners attitudes towards certain topics. User interviews also helped us to understand what really matters to pet owners in different terms. Some of the key findings of all this user research can be summed up like the following:
Top concerns which keep pet owners away from leaving the pet(s) in a short or long term boarding service:
- 75% are worried that the pet would stay in a cage for a long time
- 61% are worried that the pet would stay with un unexperienced worker
- Pet owners mostly leave their pets with family rather than other care takers due to trust issues
Affinity Diagram
Having all the data from the secondary research, user interviews and stakeholder interviews, we created the affinity diagram to convert all the data into several topics by finding similarities and patterns. By using the dot voting technique, we chose one design opportunity and focused on that in the future process. In a next step we created the user persona:
Now we were able to translate all this into a “How might We” statement and decided for this: How might we help pet owners to organize their pets stay at a cageless, trusted veterinary care taker?
Sitemap and User Flow
Working together with the responsible backend developer for this project, we discussed the information architecture for the required website. We decided on the structure of the content and the feasibility, with the sitemap as a result.
The main user flow can be described as a pet owner that hasn’t used Paw Kedarnos services yet, but would like to book a service for the first time via the website. This person will guide through the website, starting at the homepage and after getting an overview of the services, setting up the user profile as well as the pets profile, to finally send a service booking request.
Wireframing and Prototyping
After talking in detail about the contenct, we could start immediatley with the mid-fi prototype. We decided to put the focus on the reservation request process — but as the business needs a lot of information from the users, setting up the profiles (user and pet) also consumed a lot of time in the prototyping. By conducting usability tests with users, we made sure that the guidance through the screens is commonly well understood. Due to some feedback, we made a few adjustments and confirmed our decisions again.
Then we could move on and upgrade our prototype to a hi-fi prototype. We created a moodboard to decide on the colors, fonts and images. Again, we gathered some feedback in terms of desirability from users and made some changes. Here you can see the final product:
Outcomes and Takeaways
This project taught me a lot as a ux/ui designer. It was really exciting to work close with the client, as well as with the developer and the users of course. The kickoff meeting with the stakeholders gave all involved parties a nice vibe and confidence, because we made sure we are on the same page. The user interviews gave us really good insights and positive feedback on the process itself — although there were a lot of informations required from the users, we managed to create a user experience, which didn’t seem too overwhelming. In the future, I will focus more on readability and probably play more with colors and see, with the help of desirability testing, if there are other options which are more pleasant for the user’s eyes.
Many thanks to my beloved project partner Lucas Pereira, who was a super professional, fun and inspirational team mate.
