This post is part of the capstone project for the Interaction Design Specialization program created by UCSD and Coursera. It is the culmination of eight courses covering user experience design.
Have you ever noticed how walking a dog changes how people interact? When they encounter someone else, the conversation is often exclusively about the dog: What’s its name? How old are they? Is that a goldendoodle? And if they both have dogs the discussion is all about how well they play together, unless they don’t, in which case the owners separate them — and don’t talk at all!
In researching this project I’ve heard from many dog-owners that they don’t view walking a dog, or visiting a dog park, as an opportunity to meet new people. They aren’t necessarily looking for new friends. What they want most from other dog-owners is that they have a dog who’s fun to play with.
For this capstone project, I wanted to create an app that does two simple things: 1) It allows you to quickly confirm whether a dog is friendly or not. And 2) it helps you to find those friendly dogs again.
Over time, the biggest change from the initial concept was to simplify Rufflo. I didn’t need to create a fully-realized social network. Everyone already has one of those, and perhaps more importantly, many find them overwhelming to keep up with.
I didn’t want to contribute to the flood of push notifications blowing up our phones. An early idea was that you would only get notifications when you set your status to ‘available.’ This would spare you from notifications when you were at work and no where near your dog, for instance.
Privacy has become a serious concern for many who are uncomfortable with how much their apps know about them. Another evolution of Rufflo was to strip out personal information. No owner names, and no Instagram link, either. This means users will either have to ask each other for their names, or maybe just refer to someone as, ‘That nice guy with the Labrador.’
While I’m happy with how straightforward Rufflo is, there are some features I’d like to experiment with in the future. Emojis would be a fun way to give additional details to a dog. An automated status system would let the app activate at predetermined times. And there should be a way to make a connection with someone who doesn’t yet have the app. Perhaps they could take a photo of a unique code on your profile page. When they later download the app, they could make you a ‘Yep’ right away. In the end, the evolution of Rufflo would be driven by the user base.
I’ve learned a tremendous amount from this course, and especially putting everything into practice with this capstone project. Thanks for reading a bit about my journey. Please find an introductory video for Rufflo here: https://youtu.be/A8f-2zDAqRE
