Project Overview
While studying in the Multimedia Design and Development program at Humber, I was given the chance to do a self-directed project throughout the whole semester. I felt really excited about the project but started worrying about the certain direction that I want to go. After being lagged behind for 2–3 weeks, I felt really hopeless by having no clear project goal. I think that’s how designers would always feel whenever there is no idea popping out of our minds.
And there is always a but. The moment I was thinking about why I am studying design, my phone sent me a flashback memory of my volunteer experience at an animal shelter. Boom, Design an adoption app for those who got abandoned and save more lives. I have been always wanting to incorporate what I have learned to help in a social aspect. I think it’s time to design for a better world.
After a round of research on what has been there for adoption apps, I found most of them got basic functions and served the purpose of the app. However, there’s lacking smooth or pleasant UI/UX involved. So I was wondering if I could make the experience fun and happy. At last, I want to redesign the app “Petfinder”.
Project Goal
After I have decided what to do, I think my goal is to upgrade the UI for the app and enhance the UX by designing a “happy path” for the adoption process but focusing on the former part of the browsing and interactive part. I want users to have a “dating experience” with those lovely ones, and thus start the process with fun and happiness. In the end, Love should start with happiness, right?
Considering the time I need to complete the project, I only focus on a certain dog adoption happy path for the final deliverable.
Technology Used
Software: Figma/Adobe Illustrator/ Lottiefiles
Website: Unsplash/ Torontohumanesociety/ Behance/ Youtube
Creative Process
I started to research those competitive apps by having a general sense of the user interfaces and went for Behance to get inspired by other great case studies. I learned what is outdated and what is good in terms of visual aspects.
And then I started doing interviews with some who want to adopt dogs and could find out about their pain points and how they feel about the general experience. From the process of interviews, I could think of some of my app's unique features such as swiping interaction, some animations and the dating-like conversation chat after matching with users, where the experience could be elevated to the next level.
My Ideation includes the Empathy Map, User Persona, and User flow. They all helped me to navigate and understand the target user better and it contributed to the design of the app such as what is important and what’s not important throughout the whole process.
Combined with my design principle “less is more” and my previous research on the visuals, I think I would like to redesign the visual style of the app and put it in a more clean and minimal style. Then I came up with my style tile for the app, which is a lot different than the current app.
The next step is to have my first wireframes based on the features I want to include in my app.
After a few rounds of User tests and feedback from my professors, there are a few changes I made to my app such as deleting the search bar since I do want users to have immersed swiping interaction experience and putting the questionnaire page right after login since we want to know users’ preferences and it leads to a better matching result based on the algorithm. I even add another chat page after matching between the dog and users to achieve my “dating-like” experience. I also learned how to add your own branded little animation gif into the prototype.
Final deliverables
Here is the prototype video with some main pages shown down below.
Welcome to interact with the prototype here.
Reflection
Overall, I think I meet my project goal by designing a more interactive and fun adoption app. And I think I improved the UI for the app and reached my “happy path” goal as well.
The hardest part was definitely the animation and interaction part. Since it’s my first time doing the swipe interaction in which I still want it to be a smooth experience for users so it needs a lot of details and refining time. The animations I used are mainly from Lottifile but I branded them into this particular app so that they look consistent.
I could say I learned a lot. For example, having a design system would be a huge time-saver for the later design process so I have to make all those components that I am going to use in the first place. And I am so glad that I managed to do the animation in my app properly. But I realized there are a lot of areas left for me to learn, which I feel so excited about. For this certain topic, I did not realize how complicated the whole adoption process is in real life until I stepped my feet into research. And I know it’s not as easy as finding a gift. But having another family member and pouring the love into your life would definitely be worth the effort.
At this stage, I found design is not as easy as I thought before. It needs input a lot of patience, energy and most importantly love for the whole. I am pushing my patience limit to 300% now if I could say so. Thank all of those who have helped me or supported me along the way. I do appreciate it.
I look forward to the investor coming to me and buying this app so it could be out there soon to not only save lives but spreading the love around. Again, Design for a better world.
Thank you!
