Case study: Improving the dog boarding experience

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Last year, I adopted Paçoca. (He’s named after a popular Brazilian peanut candy and I cannot count the number of times someone’s looked at him at said: “Oh, he does look like a paçoca!”.)

Since then, I went on three trips. For all of those, I used (or tried to, anyway) DogHero, an online Brazilian marketplace for people to buy and sell pet care services, such as pet boarding, daycare, dog walking, and even veterinary consultations. It seemed like a great alternative for many reasons and the main one is also why I don’t use other boarding services: Paçoca is terrified of other dogs.

(Obligatory Paçoca pic or, as they call it on Reddit, the pet tax.)

Because of my dog’s peculiarity, it’s a much more slow and complicated process finding someone available to take care of him. The “hero”, which is how DogHero refers to the people who offer their services on the platform, may already be hosting a puppy or they may be, themselves, a dog owner.

And there’s something else too: Paçoca lives (almost) peacefully with Menininha, a cat. He’s mostly afraid of dogs, so a hero with cats, for instance, wouldn’t be a problem to him.

To find out if a hero is available or not or has dogs/cats or not, the user has to click on each individual profile and scroll down until almost the end, since you can’t filter this information right at the beginning, as you can see below:

After providing it with information about their pet, the user can filter the heroes on 3 things:

• Whether they live in an apartment or house (There is no information about these places, like if it’s fenced or if the windows have screens).
• Can the hero give the pet oral medication?
• Can the hero give the pet injections?

Looking for an ideal place for Paçoca, my journey as a user went something like this:

1. Enter the app.
2. Insert the trip dates.
3. Select the filters.
4. Assess the results.
5. Select a profile, scroll down to the end to see, in What is the boarding like or Hero’s pets, if they own a dog.

• In case they did, go back to the profile list (step 4) and select the following one.

6. Scroll down some more to see, in Availability, if they were Vacant or Vacant with Guest.

• In case they were Vacant with Guest, go back to the profile list (step 4) and select the following one.

7. In case they were Vacant, send them a message and try to book them.

Since I went away at a time when many people travel, a lot of heroes were already booked and I saw myself starting the process over and over again. It was all very long and frustrating. So, my first idea was to add more information about the hero on the filters, speeding the search.

I’ve been studying UX for a while and I knew someone else might be having the same problems as me, so I tried coming up with ways to improve the user’s experience.

Benchmarking

I researched other companies who provide the same service to know what it’s like to use their product and compare them with the DogHero experience. For this case study, I used two companies, one from the U.S. and another one from Brazil.

Company R

On Company R, there are more filter options.

The user can select housing conditions (fenced yard, non-smoking home, dogs allowed on bed), pets in the home (doesn’t own a dog or cat, accepts only one client at a time), children in the home. This way, the search is more personalized, which improves the user’s experience.

With this company, I would’ve selected the checkbox for “Accepts only one client at a time” and “Doesn’t own a dog” (since my dog gets along with cats). Other dog owners might select these two filters and both “Doesn’t own a cat” and “Doesn’t own caged pets”, in case the pet is afraid of all kinds of animals.

Company P

Company P brings a little more options than the DogHero app.

Again, with them, my experience as a user whose dog is afraid of other dogs would’ve been a bit faster and easier: I’d select “Não tem cachorro” (Doesn’t own dogs). Ideally, it’d also provide an additional filter in case I wanted my dog to be the host’s only client, like in Company P.

Research

My main idea to improve user experience was increasing the number of filters available on the app (and the website), to prevent them from getting frustrated with the service and to help them find the right hero for their pets.

So, I looked up Nielsen’s 10 heuristics:

1. Visibility of system status
2. Match between system and the real world
3. User control and freedom
4. Consistency and standards
5. Error prevention
6. Recognition rather than recall
7. Flexibility and efficiency of use
8. Aesthetic and minimalist design
9. Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
10. Help and documentation

(In this article, I just mention them but you can learn all about it here!)

For this case study, I focused on:

• Flexibility and efficiency of use: These changes could provide a more personalized experience, with the functionalities chosen by each individual user. The flexibility allows for more combinations, suited for a larger number of use cases.
• Aesthetic and minimalist design: It follows the platform's guidelines, that focus on content design and the information needed.
• Help and documentation: It describes, with clarity, each functionality added to the interface, presenting in context at the moment the user needs it.

While examining the app, taking screenshots, and studying DogHero’s language, I found out, to my surprise, that the hero’s additional information (whether they have pets or kids, smoke or not, allow dogs on the couch, etc.) are already there.

They are not, however, available on the search filters.

You can see much more information now: “Seu pet pode subir no sofá” (Your pet is allowed on the couch), “Seu pet pode subir na cama” (Your pet is allowed on the bed), “Sem fumantes na casa” (No smoking in the house), “Não tem crianças” (No kids) and “Não tem animais” (Doesn’t own pets).

Result

The three filters added are highlighted in the image. They are: Animais do anfitrião (Host’s pet) e Disponibilidade (Availability) and Reserva exclusiva (Exclusive booking).

The button Animais do anfitrião is a multi-select button, as in you can click on more than one. The user can select, for instance, “Gato” (Cat) e “Não tem animais” (No pets) and the search will show the heroes that fulfill each requirement or both. The rounded button follows the established app design pattern for multi-select buttons.

On the other hand, the Disponibilidade button is a radio button. Selecting “Com hóspede” (With client) and then “Vago” (No clients) will undo the action of selecting the first one. Not selecting any one of the options will show every hero, regardless of having clients or not. The rectangular button follows the established app design pattern for radio buttons.

The third idea was for a brand new functionality: Exclusive booking. With it, the user can request that their pet is the hero’s only client during the selected period of time.

For this case, DogHero’s service could charge an exclusivity fee and block the hero’s calendar. The exclusivity fee works as an incentive for the heroes, since, in the designated time, they committed to receiving only one pet. After booking the pet boarding, the hero’s calendar can automatically indicate that they are Not Vacant, so they don’t show up on other people’s searches.

In the search filters, this could be indicated with a toggle button, like the Oral medication and Pet injection questions. It can be turned on and off accordingly. Selecting it indicates that the user would like for their pet to be the only client during the selected period of time, as can be seen in “Anfitrião receberá apenas seu pet através da DogHero” (The host will only board your pet). When turned on, the filter will search for heroes who, in their own profile, indicated that they would accept exclusive booking offers.

Conclusion

I love DogHero’s services and I know Paçoca thrives in a family environment, much more than in other boarding services with other dogs. This was precisely why I chose to do this case study: I want more people to know about it and use it without any obstacles or adversities.

The changes I recommended are small: some buttons are added, filters are inserted. One thing I learned studying content design is that major changes aren’t always paramount. A lot of the time, just making a small change, switching a word or increasing a button’s size can improve performance and increase client conversion.

Additional notes:

The images were edited on Figma.

The screenshots were taken on an iPhone 12.

The initial idea was to compare the three apps, but Company R’s app could not be downloaded (available only on the U.S. app store). Wanting to maintain the same overall aesthetic at least on the benchmarking section, both screenshots were taken on the desktop version.

I am not affiliated with DogHero and this case study was just a way I could put my UX studies to good use and solve some of the adversities I encountered as a user.

References:

• Kinneret Yifrah’s Microcopy
• Bruno Rodrigues’s Em busca de boas práticas de UX Writing
• Mergo, Aldeia, and UX Writing Hub courses
• https://brasil.uxdesign.cc/10-heurísticas-de-nielsen-para-o-design-de-interface-58d782821840
• https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/
• https://www.rover.com/
• https://petanjo.com/