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Petter Half
Find your pet a trustworthy caretaker!
Timeline
Tools
February - March 2024 (2 months)
Figma, Adobe Illustrator
Role
Solo student project
PROBLEM
Working pet owners can't find trustworthy pet-sitters.
Busy schedules make it difficult for pet owners to give the attention their pets need all the time, yet it's hard to find someone reliable enough to take care of their pets. How can we make it easier for owners to find trustworthy pet caretakers?
SOLUTION
Details at a glance
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Search function to specify owner's needs
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Search results highlighting unique qualities and essential details of sitters
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Individual page with background and job specification to help owners understand the sitter's intentions
Communication made easy
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Communication between owner and sitter helps establish trust on both ends before hiring
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Built-in function to facilitate information exchange, chat and meet-ups
Constant updates
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Sitters are prompted to provide updates at a regular interval so that owners know the status of their pet
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Gallery of updates for owners to browse whenever they want to
APPROACH
01
Research
Competitor Analysis
User Interviews & Observations
02
Define
Affinity Diagram
Personas
User Journey Maps
Scenarios
03
Design
How Might We?
Crazy 8s
Wireframing
Hi-fi Prototype
04
Evaluate
Usability Test
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
Few pet-specific mobile app available in Singapore
Existing platforms did not facilitate communication between owner and sitter
There aren't many apps catered specifically to pet-sitting services in Singapore; existing ones do not facilitate virtual meet-ups and updates.
USER INTERVIEW
Interviewees find it easier to trust a pet-sitter if they can get to know them before a pet-sitting appointment
I interviewed two users to ask them about their use of pet-sitting platforms. Both of them are pet owners; one of them has also done pet-sitting gigs.
I asked them the following questions to learn about their current practices in looking for pet-sitters and to uncover any pain points they faced.
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How do you juggle between work and taking care of your pet?
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Have you tried looking for a pet-sitter before? Can you describe the process?
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What are some considerations you would have when choosing a pet-sitter?
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What are some platforms that you use as a/to look for a pet-sitter?
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Can you describe your ideal form of pet-sitting?
AFFINITY DIAGRAMMING
INSIGHTS
Existing apps provide few means of conversation between owner and sitter
Through organising the findings from user interviews in an affinity diagram, I drew the main insights that existing pet-sitting platforms only facilitate the exchange of text messages between owner and sitter; meet-ups are encouraged but have to be initiated by users.
Communication
Users believe they can ascertain whether a sitter is trustworthy by speaking to them
Users prefer to have multiple means available to them to speak with the sitter
Updates
Constant updates from the sitter would make the owner feel more assured of their pet's safety
Currently, updates are based on mutual agreement and may at times be forgotten
PERSONAS AND JOURNEY MAPS
Using the insights, I created two personas to capture the characteristics of the primary and secondary target user groups. I also created journey maps that illustrate the pain points experienced by each persona.
Primary Persona
Secondary Persona
Primary Persona
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CRAZY 8s
Guided by the personas' characteristics and use cases, I specified three tasks which the app has to help its users perform. I then used a few How Might We statements to generate quick, divergent ideas using the Crazy 8s method, where I sketched 8 design ideas for each task in 8 minutes.
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WIREFRAMES
I then created wireframes for each of the three tasks to quickly visualise how the final product may look and feel.
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IMPROVEMENTS
Using the wireframes, I approached two users to seek feedback and comments. The following are three key improvements made.
FINAL DESIGN
INTERACTIVE PROTOTYPE
STYLE GUIDE
REFLECTIONS
If I re-did this...
This was my first solo UI/UX project where I had to work through all the steps of designing a user interface by myself in a short timeframe of two months. This rigorous two-month project pushed me to really explore and learn the UI/UX design process, from research to interviews to design ideation to evaluation. A few key takeaways are:
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Engage with more users. Given the short timeframe of the project, I could only interview two users in the research phase. Though these interviews really helped, if given more time I would want to speak to at least 3-5 more pet owners and/or sitters to understand their perspective regarding pet-sitting platforms.
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Iterate and iterate! In this project, I evaluated my project only twice — after completing the lo-fi wireframes and the hi-fi interactive prototype. To improve the design, more rounds of evaluations and iterations could be done.
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Parallel iterations. If I had a few more team members, I would love to explore having different designs of the same feature and then evaluating these different designs in the same phase. This would make the evaluation sessions more efficient and help push the designs further.
CONCLUSION
Thanks for reading!
I had tons of fun working on Petter Half, and frankly I'm quite proud of the name that I've come up with :D That said, I still have lots to learn about UI/UX and I would love to explore the field through more projects!
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