Furiends
Pet adoption platform - NPO
Duration
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March.2022-present
My Role
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UX researcher
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UXUI designer
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UXUI team lead
Team:
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Designers, PM, and developers across different countries
Methods
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Survey
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User interviews
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User journey map
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Design Thinking
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Wireframe
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High-Fi Mockups
Introduction
Let's make pet adoption easier and more meaningful
Furiends is a pet adoption platform for official pet rescue organizations and adopters, which is established by a group of volunteers, including me.
Our platform has an efficient management system for rescue organizations to manage pet information and adopters. And build a bridge to rescue organizations and adopters, providing the platform for them to make pet adoption more straightforward and effortless.
“Girls Power” - We all are female
“Pets Lovers” - Contributing our time and energy to rescue abandoned pets
“Various Countries” - Our team members are living in China, the USA, Canada, and Germany
"Learn By Doing Community” - Learn from each other and grow with the project
Current Situation
Pet abandonment and trafficking are still very serious in China, and many spontaneous dog and cat rescue organizations have emerged across China, but finding new homes for abandoned pets is still a problem.
At present, adoption information is almost always disseminated among regular audiences and acquaintances through Weibo or Wechat, which is fragmented and limited.
At the same time, many people who are interested in adopting pets cannot find formal adoption channels.
Our Goal
What we want to do is to connect the supply and demand and provide a platform for the scattered information about homeless cats and dogs on the network.
Our platform is to aggregate pet adoption information, to help cats and dogs find their new homes more efficiently.
Our ultimate goal is to develop into the leading non-profit pet adoption platform in China.
Target Audience
We focus on both pet rescue organizations and adopters
Primary Audience (2B)
pets rescue organizations all over China:
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Official rescue organizations/association/center
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Voluntary rescue organizations/association/center
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Pet rescue station
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Social rescue group
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Social rescue platform
Secondary Audience (2C)
People who want to adopt a pet (Pet Adopter)
Survey
Even though we have defined the target audience, we are still not sure what problems they have in the pet adoption process. The survey is a time-consuming and easy way to collect quantitative data to understand the general behavior of our target audience.
Gourp interview
Why do pet rescuers feel difficult when using other pet-adopted platforms?
The main result of the survey shows that pet rescuers still encounter many problems for sending homeless pets through the platform. So I started to think "WHY", what happened when they sent homeless pets from other pet-adopted platforms?
The interview is an efficient qualified method to deep learn users' attitudes and behavior. Considering limited time and rescuers are busy for the whole day. I conducted a group meeting with a couple of pet rescuers to do the group interview with our team.
We fell into a big challenge during the research process…
Although there is no official adoption platform in the Chinese market that is very reliable and useful, there are still many small individual platforms. How can we be different from other platforms and attract official rescue organizations?
Of course, easy to use、 efficient, and time-consuming are basic requirements, but what more specific useful and unique features we can have to solve rescuers'problems are what I'm thinking about.
How we got useful and unique products requirements
Firstly of all, I used both qualified (Survey) and qualified data(group interview) to create a user journey map, which could be more straightforward to find where they encounter problems, and how these problems affect their emotions.
Based on the user journey map, we can also find opportunities and gaps to define solutions.
Further research process
Competitive analysis
After analyzing the survey and interview data, I decided our group to do the competitive analysis in the next step to explore more deeply and think about how to translate user needs into product needs.
Unlike traditional competitive analysis to analyze gaps and opportunities directly, this time we bring our users' pain points to find out the unique product features/solutions from competitors.
This can not only solve the user's pain points but also make our product unique among a bunch of similar products.
Product requirements
Based on the research we did, I transferred and incorporated our findings into the product requirements. According to the users' needs from primary research and valuable features found from competitors, our adoption platform should be both useful and unique.
Useful - solve users' problems and meet their goals
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Have a flexible way to change the status of adoption posts and sort all the posts
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Have an easy way to screen and manage qualified adopters efficiently i.e: check their application status/history
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Have a blacklist sharing to avoid unqualified adopters
Unique - be different from most similar products, but still useful
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Have a flexible way for rescue organizations to customize their adoption process
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Have an easy way for rescue organizations to communicate with adopters convenient and time-saving
Trade off with PM and Developers…
As a project from zero to one, it is certain to encounter some constraints. So I tried to think about how to achieve our product requirements one by one according to user needs and market demand with limited time and resources.
Understanding product scope from PM and tech constraints from developers is important for us to prioritize product requirements. After having many times of meeting with the PM and developer, we have prioritized product development in more detail：
The phase of Design and develop MVP 1
Design Solutions 1
Pre-screen questionnaire before starting to apply pets
User goal:
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The easy way to screen qualified adopters
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Before starting the adoption application, adopters need to complete a simple questionnaire, which could help the rescue organization understand the applicant's basic situation, and quickly select more qualified adopters
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One page for each question with a process bar to show the completion. The total score will show up after completing all the questions. Applicants can start to apply pet when passing, and vice versa
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If applicants failed the questionnaire, they can not apply. But they have opportunities to contact rescue organizations to appeal their case
Design Solutions 2
Customize the adoption process
User goal:
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The easy way to screen qualified adopters
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In the Chinese market, customizing the adoption process is rare, almost rescue organizations will contact applicants and tell them about the adoption process. During this process, some applicants stop pursuing adoption once they heard about the adoption process, and the organization wastes time contacting applicants as well
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Providing customize adoption process feature could let organization show their own adoption process at first to avoid some applicants give up after knowing that, which is time-consuming and can help organizations automatic removal of some unqualified applicants
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This feature is smart and flexible that users can maximum customization of their own adoption process, each step can be modified by themself
Design Solutions 3
Modify and manage adoption posts
User goal:
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Can easily manage pet adoption posts, like re-edit、renew, and search
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Can see the status of each pet adoption post in a straightforward way
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All posts in the platform will be tagged to make it simple and clear for the rescue organization to see the status of each post
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Have a filter to show all posts in the specific status: "want to view all the published posts?" " You can choose 'Published' filter, which would show all the published posts at one time"
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Posts in any status can be modified at any time in a straightforward and easy way
Design Solutions 4
Manage pet adoption applicants and adopters
User goal:
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Accessible manage applicants, like checking their application status/history
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Show all the applicants under each pet with a status tag, which could make rescue organizations see the status of each applicant
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Show the adoption application process clearly and straightforward, rescue organizations can do the approval directly
Reflection
Flexible use of research methods
According to market situation and user needs, the use of research methods can be various. For example, before I did this project, I always do user research and competitive analysis separately to find user pain points and opportunities. But I got some interesting findings that for some situations like many similar products have already existed in the market, we can do the primary research to find user's pain points at first. Then bring the results of primary research to do the competitive analysis to find more unique points, which can more effectively define the product requirements that not only solve user's problems but also have market value.
Undersatnd constraints and better cross-team collaboration
To be honest, this is my first real-world project, before this time, I did some academic projects in that I can think out of the box to come up with a lot of good designs to solve user needs. But for a real-world project, it's not just UXUI designers, we also work with other teams like PM、developers. So I learned that as a designer, I should know how to collaborate and communicate with other teams to understand project scope and development constraints. Based on the scope and constraints, we'd better prioritize the product requirements. The divided process into several sprints to make products from usable to desirable.
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