3DogEs
The 3DogEs mobile app gives dog owners all of the information and tech they need to help their best friend thrive.
Overview
My group and I created an interactive prototype based on user needs and research findings.
KEY DELIVERABLES
MY ROLE
UX Researcher | UX Designer
Competitive Audit | Stakeholder Interviews | | User Interviews | User Journey Mapping | Feature Concepts | Low-Fidelity Wireframes | IA Diagram | User Flows | Kano Analysis | A/B Testing | Usability Testing | High-Fidelity Wireframes | Annotated Wireframes | Interactive Prototype
METHODS
Figma | FigJam | Google Slides | Zoom | Google Docs | Slack
TOOLS
Walt Richard
Allie Leach
Laura Jopp
Amber Ostergaard
Problem Statement
Pet owners often have to look at many sources of information in order to help meet their dog’s needs. In today’s “information age,” this can be exhausting and overwhelming for them to meet their dog’s needs. Stress occurs when their dog gets sick or other problems arise, as pet parents want to see their best friend happy and thriving.
97% of pet owners consider pets as part of their family (Pew Research Center).
My family’s dog, Charlie, loves to run around and get outdoors but is less excited about dressing up as a lobster for Halloween.
A Holistic Approach
Our team met with entrepreneur and 3DogEs CEO, Air Gustafson, to better understand her vision for the app. She told us of how she struggled with her dog Morty getting sick and how important it is to have a holistic approach. The three Es that she stressed were—Eat, Excerise, and Environment. When dog owners take care of these three important areas, they will see their best friend thrive and live happily and healthy.
During our client meeting, Air told us of her vision and how she thinks there is an opportunity space.
She is also opening a dog-friendly brewery in Minneapolis in the near future.
User Interviews and Usability Testing
Our team conducted user interviews with a number of dog owners. What we found was that dog owners felt overwhelmed, especially when their dog was sick, and they had to Google search and look at multiple sources without necessarily knowing if they had stumbled upon the right information. With this in mind, I created a current state user journey map to identify thoughts, feeling states, pain points, and opportunity areas throughout the user’s journey.
From there, we designed low-fidelity wireframes and began our initial round of usability testing.
Defining a Narrative
After many user interviews and usability tests, it was important for us to define a narrative. We had a good understanding of user needs, but it was important to find out if what our team was proposing was something users actually wanted. I sent out a Kano survey and there were 16 participants. I then synthesized the data and my team and I felt quite confident that we were heading in the right direction and could make a meaningful and user-friendly app that users could count on time and time again.
Features like the AI image detection feature and medical records feature were rated as highly desirable by participants.
Prototyping a Solution
With the narrative defined and having a deep understanding of users needs, we moved onto finalizing our wireframes and making them higher fidelity and interactive. We did a last round of usability testing and got important feedback about how we could make tweaks to the app so that it would be more user-friendly and accessible. For example, a user suggested that the camera for the AI image feature should open immediately so that the user can quick snap a picture and accelerate the process of getting their results. Users also stated the visual hierarchy, especially on the homepage, could be improved and that there wasn’t enough contrast.
Tweaking Some Things
In these final stages we took into account the feedback we had gotten and made some small tweaks to deliver a more user-friendly and polished product. Our interactive prototype reflects the feedback we received from users and meets their needs.
Next Steps and Learnings
Our group felt that we made a lot of progress and were able to put together a good mobile app in a relatively short period of time. We were ambitious from the start, but unfortunately we could not get to everything. In the future, we would like to build out stretch features, such as heat map that would alert dog owners of canine diseases in the area to help reduce the spread. We would also like to do more research and test our ideas so that we can give the user a better experience and continue to improve our latest iteration.