How It Started.

Before

After

Research + Discovery

Problem Space

I chose to explore animal homelessness for my problem space. Animals and the well-being of animals is a topic I'm very close to. I've personally rescued multiple cats and dogs over the years and have adopted cats of my own.
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Researchers guesstimate there are 70+ million cats and dogs without a permanent home. Animal shelters, foster organizations, volunteer groups, and good samaritans work together to decrease this number but typically face multiple limitations. Shelters are limited in capacity, financial aid, staffing, and most animals brought to shelters undergo euthanasia if not adopted. A damned if you do and damned if you don't scenario tends to surface. Individuals who try to help stray cats may face roadblocks which may result in leaving strays behind or saving strays only to have them be put down at a later date. What do you do when the organizations designed to help you can't help you?

Secondary Research

Using the web, I researched different animal organizations, shelters, statistics, and studies surrounding animal homelessness. I could see the situation with my own eyes across the multiple cities I've lived in but wanted to rely on tangible information. I researched animal care, treatment, process, groups available and the difficulties faced by individuals on both a larger and personal scale. The numbers confirmed what I already knew, which was there is an overwhelming need for individuals to adopt cats or a need to collectively help cats in communities.

Above are a few statistics that had the biggest impact on my decision to pursue a design to help individuals and cats.

Hypothesis

I believe individuals who care for animals are willing to help stray cats whether they have pets of their own. However, there are multiple factors which can influence their ability to follow through with their desire to help. Such as a lack of awareness, available resources, reliable information, misinformation, or assistance of some kind. As much as people may want to help animals, their fear of a rescued animal having a worse fate when delivered to an organization creates a conflicting scenario. On the other hand, even if they are able to collect the cat there is no guarantee they could find a shelter or somewhere with the space to take the cats. If there was a space where individuals could rely on for information, assistance and feel confident there are people around who truly care for cats, more people would be inclined to help the animal homelessness crisis.

How Might We...?

My original how might we:
How might we (HMW) create a digital solution to benefit animal organizations and individuals in order to tackle cat homelessness?

This how might we question I later realized needed a lot more work. Not only was I hinting at my solution in the HMW question already but my scope was too broad to tackle. Narrowing my focus, which I will later explain, encourages the chances of a successful product.

Interviews

To test my assumptions, I took a decontextualized approach such as interviewing. , I conducted interviews with 5 individuals. I wanted to take a direct approach to gain insight into their pain-points, challengers, behaviors, and understand their motivations.

Participant Criteria

- Have pets or had pets OR
- Love cats or dogs
- Between the ages of 20 - 60
- Live on the West Coast
Helping animals can apply to almost anyone who has an interest in animal welfare. When creating the participant criteria, I thought about who would typically use this product. My age range could have been a little lower because the new generation is more inclined to technology, but to avoid technicalities of parental permission, I relied on a 20 - 60 age range. I also relied on West Coast individuals to narrow my focus but of course with more time and funding, I could explore opinions of those on the East Coast.

Interview Guide

I asked all 5 participants the same questions and took notes on their responses.

Synthesis

Interviewee Results

During the interview process, I discovered all 5 participants had either the same or similar opinion about shelters and the resources available to help animals. Most had encountered an issue personally with shelters when it came time to adopting their own pet or helping another a stray. All participants had a furry friend or more than one with a strong desire to help other animals. All participants currently partake in some form of animal assistance by helping local strays or donating money to organizations.

List of proven assumptions.

HMW

After conducting my interviews, reviewing all collected information and discussing with peers, I changed my HMW approach.
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How might we help individuals in local communities in order to provide care, shelter, or rescue for stray cats? 

Ideation

Persona

It is important to get into the mindset of the user when creating a design. To help with this, I created a persona Rebecca Cooper. She embodies similar characteristics of the individuals I interviewed for research and the target user group I hope to attract.

User Journey

In this story, Rebecca is walking her dog and comes across two friendly cats. She's able to call the cats over and keep their attention. While they're busy getting to know her dog, she logs onto the app Meow (later changed to Pawsibility), a place where she knows she can find cat enthusiasts to hopefully find someone who can help with her new predicament.

Sketches

Originally, I sketched screens that would make the app focus on 4 main functions:  Explore, Community Feed, Learn/discover and Adopt. To not overwhelm the user and include functions that are already successfully offered through yelp or google maps, I removed the Explore function. This now allows user to primarily focus on sharing and communicating with other individuals who care about cats where they can also learn and foster or adopt cats. These sketches below reflect the 3 main functions.

1st frame: Community Feed, 2nd frame: Create a post, 3rd frame: Community feed with users latest post.

1st frame: Learn homepage, 2nd frame: Selected article from learn screen, 3rd frame: Adoptable cats near user.

Task Flow

With the user journey of Rebecca in mind, I created a task flow. Rebecca opens the app once her dog is tied to a tree which directly opens up to the feed homepage where she step by step fills out the necessary text fields. She already took a picture of the cats she had seen and includes a picture of the cats in the post. Once photos and text fields are completed, she shares her post which will be on the community feed of posts.

Prototype

Moving through the first 3 stages of the design process: Research + Discovery, Synthesis, and Ideation; I was able to begin prototyping. I started with creating low-fidelity wireframes

Low-Fidelity Wireframes

Wireframes show initial feed screen, create post screen, filled out post screen, and Rebecca highlighting option to attach photos screen.

First wireframe shows camera roll screen with modal asking app to have access to photos, followed by the camera roll feed with allowed access and selected photo, post screen where Rebecca can see her completed fields before sharing her post which is now shown on the feed homepage.

First wireframe shows notification screen alerting Rebecca to possible likes/comments on her post; the following screen appears once Rebecca selects one of the notifications to review. The third screen Rebecca is excitedly responds to Anne with a private comment and the last screen is her original post with her response now included. Due to the privacy settings she selected, only Rebecca and Anne will see this response, not David.

Extra screens

My task flow and user journey mainly focus on Rebecca's ability to create a post so she can hopefully reach out to a community of cat friends. However, in attempts to show other functions of the app, I created a few wireframes for the Learn tab.

First wireframe shows initial information displayed when the Learn icon is pressed. If the Rebecca wants to see added content from other users, she would tap the added content which would display new information shown on the second wireframe. The 3rd & 4th wireframe is an example of how the articles would appear once selected.

Low Fidelity Prototype

Developing the UI

After I created my low-fidelity prototype, I knew I had to start thinking about colors, the brand, and the overall feel for the design. I wanted the user to feel joy, love and a sense of connection when using the app. I was inspired by the different blues I encountered and the collection of photos for the Moodboard helped narrow down my color selection.

Moodboard

Branding

When I selected brand colors, I took a monochromatic approach (single color variants) and Analogous (colors side by side) for inspiration. I relied on blue to be the main themed color throughout for branding and mood.

Typographic Inspiration

When I first thought of fonts, I wanted to refer to some cat "titles" which have stayed with me over the years. Classics such as the Aristocats, Garfield, and Tom & Jerry are just a few of the notable ones I looked for. I debated using fonts and colors similar to those popular titles to create a nostalgic association as a tactic to encourage use of the app. However, I chose to go a new route but I am not opposed to revisit this idea in the future. I decided I would be doing a combination of serif and sans-serif fonts in my app.

UI Inspiration

Sometimes the best inspiration comes from relying on applications and finding ways to incorporate your own ideas and touches into the inspiration. I used mostly 5 apps for reference. Mostly Nextdoor (similar to a neighborhood Facebook), Buddies (an app for pet owners through Blue Buffalo), Petfinder, Facebook and Instagram. I was most interested in their post, adopt and educational features.

Tyopgraphy

I used a serif font typeface, Literata

I used a sans-serif font typeface, Open Sans

App Colors

Most of the color included in the app will be focused around #195f7C with a visibility of a 100% and 40%. Functional and Neutral colors are used heavily through the app with only minimal need for the semantic/feedback colors.

High-Fidelity Wireframes

Wireframes show initial feed screen, create post screen, filled out post screen, and Rebecca highlighting option to attach photos screen.
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Main changes from first prototype: adjustment of font sizes, spacing and focus on relying on the 8px grid system for the frames.

First wireframe shows camera roll screen with modal asking app to have access to photos, followed by the camera roll feed with allowed access and selected photo, post screen where Rebecca can see her completed fields before sharing her post which is now shown on the feed homepage.
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Main changes from first prototype: adjustment of font sizes, spacing and focus on relying on the 8px grid system for the frames.

First wireframe shows notification screen alerting Rebecca to possible likes/comments on her post; the following screen appears once Rebecca selects one of the notifications to review. The third screen Rebecca is excitedly responds to Anne with a private comment and the last screen is her original post with her response now included. Due to the privacy settings she selected, only Rebecca and Anne will see this response, not David.
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Main changes from first prototype: continued use of adjusting font sizes, spacing and relying on 8px grid system. However, the reply sequence to Anne has a new format for Rebecca to follow. This revision allows for more white space and less clutter which will be better seen in the live high-fidelity prototype video.

Extra Screens

My task flow and user journey mainly focus on Rebecca's ability to create a post so she can hopefully reach out to a community of cat friends. However, in attempts to show other functions of the app, I created a few wireframes for the Learn tab.
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Main changes to the first prototype: continued use of adjusting font sizes, spacing and relying on 8px grid system. However, once the Rebecca scrolls down to the bottom of selected articles there is a link connecting her to the original article on the web.

High-Fidelity Prototype

Marketing Website

Marketing a design or getting people to be aware of your product is key. It's also important to let individuals know the purpose behind the app to encourage downloads even if it starts off with a curiosity. Given the current design stage of Pawsibility, I displayed screens and focused on 3 of the important takeaways of the design: Connection, Aid, & Togetherness. After all the expression, "It takes a village" stems from accomplishing an act through the help of others.

I used this opportunity to create a responsive design for the marketing website for both desktop and mobile.

Desktop Version

To view the full length version of the desktop marketing site, click the photo above.

Desktop Marketing Site

Mobile Version

To view the full length version of the mobile marketing site, click the photo above.

Mobile Marketing Website

Watch the video to see the full length design for Pawsibility's desktop marketing site.

Alternate Platform

Another function of the app, I hope to explore further is the Adopt/Foster tab. On mobile it is represented in the bottom navigation bar with a paw inside of a heart and the description "Adopt". Of course, I hope Pawsibility to be an app mostly used via mobile for easy access however, I believe users can get a different experience online for this feature. When searching for future pets or even pets to foster, it would provide the user with the ability to see all their options in one quick full view. This is makes it easier for the user to navigate the multiple pages, keep tabs open to view future prospects or just explore.

This is still in its early stages but provides a general idea for future additions to Pawsibility's future not just on mobile.

Pawsibility Recap

I started working on this case study with the intention of providing a human centered design for a problem at hand. Homeless animals and animals in shelters is a problem many of us are aware of or have seen with our own eyes. Over the years I've developed an attachment to cats and have seen how much they need our help.

I originally came up with the name "Meow" for this app before switching to "Pawsibility". Pawsibility better represents my intentions for the purpose of this app that anything is po(aw)ssible. I wanted to provide a space to increase the likelihood of having a network of individuals who could work together to help stray animals. Based on my research and own experiences, finding homes for pets happen through reaching out to your own networks or asking others to help expand the search. There is also conflicting information and outdated information that deters individuals from being able to fully know what to do in some scenarios. Pawsibility is here to help provide answers.

Future Steps

"Anything is Pawsible!" This is the mindset that is needed to create change and spark creative solutions. If pawsibility is put into production I believe there is room to expand its user base and connect more cats with humans who will give them the care they need.

This product could benefit shelters and other volunteer groups as well. Shelters could potentially directly post available cats onto Pawsibility and provide live updates on their adoption or foster status. This would help eliminate confusion when users want to adopt cats but are unaware of when the cat was posted for adoption especially when there is no response from the email provided. On the other hand, individuals who work at shelters or with volunteer groups could use the app to find people looking to adopt/foster or even help those looking to home a stray if they have the resources. It could be a direct line of information between larger groups and individuals.

When designing the app, I would provide options for the different types of users  to cater different features for those individuals like those who work in shelters. This could mean expanding outreach to different zones or a larger mile radius.

Until then I will continue to do my research, look for potential ways to help animal homelessness, and care for as many cats as I can.