CityPups Design Sprint
INTRODUCTION
The city is packed with life, people are everywhere, and it’s constantly moving. Having a dog in this environment can be a challenge. Not all dogs would make a perfect fit. That’s where CityPups comes in. This website is a third party system that helps people in a city find the perfect dog to fit their unique needs.
The Problem
Having an impactful site to help people find their perfect match in a dog was imperative to CityPups. In doing so, they can increase adoption rates, as well as help city people find a dog that fits their unique needs in a city. Before I was brought onto this project, all of the research was completed by another team. They had conducted secondary research, user interviews, and even created a persona. For this design sprint, I was only concerned with maps, sketching, storyboarding, creating a prototype, and testing.
DESIGN PROCESS OVERVIEW
Day 1 - Mapping
While going over the research, I realized that the user CItyPups wanted to design for was someone that wanted to find a dog that met their specific needs without falling in love with the wrong dog on their search. The persona they created really wanted a way to be able to find their perfect match. This made me begin to think about match-making quizzes. If the user could take a quiz to help them find their perfect dog, it would allow the website to do the hard work for them. That way the user could scroll through the search results and find “the one”, without worrying about falling in love with the wrong dog.
With this information in mind, I began to dive into mapping.
Day 2 - Sketch
It was now time to start on day 2. Before I began on my sketching, I had to start out with my lightning demo. However, since I was a team of one on this sprint, I wasn’t sharing my findings with anyone else. With this in mind, I began to scour the internet for examples. I came back with five websites: Petfinder, Humane Society, Adopt a Pet, the Iams dog breed quiz, and the Dogtime breed selector quiz. They all seemed to have a simple layout, which I liked.
I also found it interesting that Petfinder also had a pet matching quiz. However, their quiz appeared and disappeared throughout my journey on the website. If I wanted to do it again, it was a challenge to find. I really liked the information section Adopt a Pet had for each dog, which let the user know important information that most users look for, such as if a dog is spayed/neutered, good with children, housebroken, ect.
The Humane Society website also had a similar feature, which was set up a little differently. What they did was create an “attributes” section, which showed off some of the important stuff, as well as a little bit about the dog's personality, such as “couch potato”.
The breed quizzes from Iams and Dogtime allowed me to look at different layouts for a possible quiz. In Dogtime specifically, I like how it gave the user random facts about dogs concerning different questions, which allowed the user to make a more informed decision about their answer.
It was now time to move onto my crazy 8s sketches. I tried to grab insights and inspiration from all of my research to help me when working on these sketches.
With my crazy 8s sketches finished, it was time to create a solution sketch. I decided to base this sketch around my sketch of the quiz. I felt that the dog matching quiz would be very important for the user so they can narrow down their search for the perfect dog.
It was now time to start on day 2. Before I began on my sketching, I had to start out with my lightning demo. However, since I was a team of one on this sprint, I wasn’t sharing my findings with anyone else. With this in mind, I began to scour the internet for examples. I came back with five websites: Petfinder, Humane Society, Adopt a Pet, the Iams dog breed quiz, and the Dogtime breed selector quiz. They all seemed to have a simple layout, which I liked.
I also found it interesting that Petfinder also had a pet matching quiz. However, their quiz appeared and disappeared throughout my journey on the website. If I wanted to do it again, it was a challenge to find. I really liked the information section Adopt a Pet had for each dog, which let the user know important information that most users look for, such as if a dog is spayed/neutered, good with children, housebroken, ect.
The Humane Society website also had a similar feature, which was set up a little differently. What they did was create an “attributes” section, which showed off some of the important stuff, as well as a little bit about the dog's personality, such as “couch potato”.
The breed quizzes from Iams and Dogtime allowed me to look at different layouts for a possible quiz. In Dogtime specifically, I like how it gave the user random facts about dogs concerning different questions, which allowed the user to make a more informed decision about their answer.
It was now time to move onto my crazy 8s sketches. I tried to grab insights and inspiration from all of my research to help me when working on these sketches.
Day 3 - Decide
It was now time to create a storyboard. I went over everything I created in my sketch phase before I began my storyboarding. I even referenced back to some of my inspiration I found during my lightning demo.
Day 4 - Prototype
It was now time to design my prototype. I went into Marvel and began to set all of my pages up and stitch them together. I used a lot of my icons from within Marvel itself. Some of it I had to pull from other sources.
Day 5 - Testing
Today was the day. I gathered all five participants that I had picked up on day 1 to test my prototype. I had five participants, all in their 20s. I had a mix of males and females. All of my participants have owned a dog, and would like to get another in the future.
Overall, they liked the design and felt it was simple, yet effective. However, most agreed that the layout on the home page should change. Two users mentioned that the quiz button looked more like an ad than a feature of the website. One of them felt that the wording could be changed to make it more obvious that the quiz was a part of the website, and not an ad. Other than the home page needing some work, the usability testing revealed a lot of small tweaks from each user, and nothing else too critical.
CONCLUSION
Reflection
In the end, I created a low-res prototype for a website that could help users in a city find their perfect companion. The website has elements that are familiar from other websites, as well as including a quiz to help users narrow their search. I learned a great deal about working in such a short time span. Additionally, I learned a lot about working with designing a webpage.
What's Next?
Future versions of this prototype could include spending more time improving the UI, as well as further testing to ensure there are no other errors. A higher quality version of the prototype could be included as well.
Acknowledgements
Much thanks to the participants in this study for their help and generosity.