UI/UX
Mobile app
2022
Case Study
PetMe
The modern pet owner's mobile application.
Overview
Pet.me is an app for pet caregivers that allows you to equally share responsibilities, keep track of your pet's health by collecting and sharing information about them, and keep track of all important events such as vet visits, health measurements or test results in one place.
Challenge
The year 2020 was a successful year for the pet industry in Poland. Many Polish families, seeking to fight pandemic loneliness, decided to adopt or buy a pet. However, carers lacked a comprehensive tool that would make it easier for them to gain knowledge about their pet and share it with other caregivers. By designing our app, we wanted to improve the experience of organising pet care among carers, not only the new ones, but also those with longer experience. Our main aim was to make it easier to plan for your pet's care and to improve the transfer of knowledge between carers.
My role
Product Designer
User research & Analysis
Persona creation
Product strategy
MVP definition
Wireframes
Prototyping
Usability testing
UX Writing
UI Design
Team
Magdalena Paluchowska, Agnieszka Żur, Dominik Tyka,
Mateusz Wilk
Tools
Figma
Axure
Mural
Problem
Social changes, including technological advances and environmental concerns, are changing the way people view their impact on the planet and the welfare of animals. In Poland, pet owners increasingly view their pets as family members, with the majority treating their pets' health with the same care as their own.
Solution
The pet industry in Poland experienced growth in 2020 as families sought companionship during the pandemic. However, many caregivers lacked a comprehensive tool to organise and share pet care knowledge. Our solution is a user-friendly app that improves the pet care experience by facilitating knowledge sharing and making care planning easier for both new and experienced carers.
Design process
Research
Using publicly available data as part of our desk research, we found that pets are increasingly becoming real family members for Poles, rather than tools for chasing away strangers or catching mice. According to the survey, 40% of Poles have a dog or cat at home. 85% consider their pet a member of the family and 70% say that their pet's health is as important as their own. We decided to ask pet guardians and owners of temporary homes about their knowledge of pet care, the challenges they face, how they look after the health of their charges, how they organise the care of their pets and how they gather and share information about the animal. We chose individual in-depth interviews (IDIs) as the main research method, supported by the techniques of scale, visualisation, card sorting and imagination. Five carers and five sheltered housing owners took part in the study. We also carried out competitive analysis and benchmarking, focusing on health care, planning and the features that other apps encourage users to use.
Problems we recognized
- 1. Carers do not have a universal tool to support them in their care
- 2. They have gaps in their knowledge about the animal's care, especially if the animal is new to the home
- 3. They share care with others, which requires frequent communication of a lot of information
- 4. They have difficulty finding a good vet
- 5. They do not plan their budgets, so sudden expenses come as a financial surprise
Needs we have defined
- 1. Better organisation of animal care
- 2. Improving contact with vets
- 3. Managing your pet's treatment
- 4. Education for beginners
- 5. Exchange of knowledge between adopter and companion
Conclusions and recommendations
The survey showed that our two target groups - carers and owners of temporary homes - are very different. Caregivers are a much broader group, so we decided to focus on them, with a particular emphasis on help with care and information sharing, and on the health and availability of vets. We have discarded areas that are already heavily marketed or that require us to have specialist knowledge.
Strategy
Persona
Based on the data collected in the first phase, we created the persona of Karol - a husband, father and carer of a dog and two cats. Karol's needs are to remember vet appointments and vaccinations, and to monitor the health of the cats. He also wants to teach his children about responsible pet care. Karol is frustrated by the amount of information he has to provide, the forgetfulness of others so that he is the one who has to remember his responsibilities to the animals, and health problems with one of the cats that also occur on weekends and holidays.
Value proposition
Using the User Journey Map and Value Proposition canvas, we prepared solutions for problem areas.
Household care management
- Animals and carers within a shared family space
- Notifications of other carers' activities
- Shared calendar
Remembering responsibilities
- App reminders for group members
- Vet appointments notifications
- Notifications specific to administering medicines
Sharing responsibilities
- Presentation of tasks in list form
- Division of tasks among carers
- Categorisation of tasks
- Matching responsibilities to carers' day
Information collection and transmission
- Virtual pet's health record to share with a vet
- Health measurements graphs and tables
- Medical history and medications with attachments
- Tasks and events personal notes
Treatment assistance
- Detailed medication schedules
- Medication database
Minimum Viable Product
Based on the Value Proposition Canvas and using MoSCoW, we selected which solutions should be delivered to users first and which should be left for later.
Modeling
Based on the caregiver stories we heard during the research phase interviews, we created five user scenarios in which the user opens the app for the first time, assigns tasks to others, records data after a vet visit, monitors the dog's weight, and checks how their family members are doing with the assigned tasks. We created a user path for each scenario. We also defined the information architecture of the application.
Prototyping
Lo-Fi Wireframing
For each of the 5 scenarios, we made paper sketches of the user wireflow. During the workshops, using the Design Studio method, we worked out the best solutions for key elements of the application, such as the bottom menu, calendar view or sub-page navigation elements, and the content of the main user screen.
Hi-Fi Wireframing
We transferred our paper solutions into Axure PR to create all the basic screens. We then worked out the component base and the basic UI principles.
Testing
Using the finished prototype, we conducted usability tests of our app with 10 people. We mainly wanted to test users' first contact with the app, task creation and assignment, the concept of the pet health e-book, and activity measurement and summaries. The tests helped us to identify 2 critical bugs (preventing task completion), 4 major bugs (significantly hindering goal achievement) and 4 minor bugs (whose removal improved the user experience) in our prototype.
Critical errors and their solutions
The first critical bug was the behaviour of the drop-down list, which did not hide after scrolling, thus obscuring another checkbox. As a result, users would unknowingly skip entering this data. We corrected this by automatically collapsing the list when moving to the next field.
The second critical bug was the unclear marking of tasks as completed - users' success was based on searching rather than deliberate action. We solved this by describing the checkbox and including this functionality in the onboarding. As suggested by users, we also added the ability to undo task completion.
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Conclusion
During the testing phase the app has received a lot of positive feedback. Users were describing the app as clean and easy to learn. Each of them found their way through the app without stutters or doubts and they were finding proposed solutions and functionalities useful and interesting.
