Enhancing the Pet Adoption Process
User Research and Design Case Study
Project Role
Lead User Researcher, UX Designer
Timeline
Seven weeks (October 2023 - December 23)
Product
Innovative design solutions to boost successful long-term pet adoptions while reducing shelter staff and foster workload.
Discovery
The aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with rising pet care costs due to inflation, has led to a surge in pet relinquishments and abandonments, resulting in increased shelter overcrowding and high euthanization rates.
Approach
Three teammates and I sought to gain a thorough understanding of the issue and contribute to a resolution through a dedicated research and design project following the five stages of design thinking. Over seven weeks, we developed a package of innovative design solutions with the potential for future seamless implementation by local shelters.
Empathize
As lead User Researcher, I began researching online publications and shelter insights to identify our target audience and current technology gaps.
We identified three key populations: individuals who adopted a pet within the last two years, animal fosters, and shelter employees.
We decided to conduct semi-structured interviews to allow flexibility for follow up questions and gain a deeper understanding of the emotions of our participants. This would also provide us with a participant base we could return to to present our designs and prototypes to, understanding if these new solutions fit their discussed needs.
Interview Recruitment
We recruited via email to Drexel students and through social media posting. We required adopters to have adopted their pet within the last two years for a clearer recollection of the process and tools they used. The first five interviews were conducted with two pet fosters, two shelter employees and one individual who adopted a dog six months prior.
I estimated the interviews would take 20-30 minutes. However, I found quickly with these first participants that they were incredibly passionate about their pets and their work in the adoption process. Interviews extended to an average of 45 minutes.
Initial Findings
Adopting any animal is both a time commitment and a financial obligation. People often do not want to or are unable to put in the necessary care and attention to train a puppy. This information needs to be easily available to these adopters.
- Participant 4 (Local Philadelphia Shelter Board Member)
The five interviews revealed a central theme: participants were frustrated with the pet adoption process, citing a lack of information, misconceptions about adoption and care, and mismatched pets and owners as main causes. Despite their passion for community involvement, foster and employee participants felt overwhelmed and guilty for not doing more for hard-to-adopt animals.
My team members and I conducted 10 additional interviews with volunteers of the same demographics, all who emphasized a similar frustration with the adoption process and lack of resources provided to new pet owners.
Define
Our initial goal was to enhance the online pet adoption process by creating more user-centric features for pet adopters.
Our interviews allowed us to define a new problem statement: pet adopters needed reliable and current information throughout the adoption process as there is often a disparity between their expectations and the reality of adopting a pet, leading to fewer successful long-term adoptions.
Our goals were to address this space through innovative information gathering and sharing techniques, employee and foster support, and increasing the visibility of long-term shelter animals.
Competitive Analysis and Field Studies
I conducted a competitive analysis by analyzing two local shelter and two pet finder websites, while team members visited local rescues. My findings revealed a common gap: these platforms lacked the information our interviewees consistently searched for. My team members identified common employee stresses, including the inability to find ideal pet-adopter and pet matches and provide detailed, personalized information on best practices for adopters and their new pets.
User Personas
I coded and analyzed our interview transcript and recognized trends among each user group we interviewed.
I created two personas of one shelter employee and one potential dog adopter.
Though we aimed to create solutions for all three user groups, we believed pet adopters and shelter employees would gain the most long-term benefits from our design solutions.
Persona Example
Ideate
Over the course of 45 minutes, my teammates and I generated as many ideas as possible for our two user personas. This session gave us a total of 67 possible design solutions.
We narrowed this down to 25 ideas through affinity mapping.
To fail early and expedite improvements, we chose eight ideas to sketch and present to three potential users. We received feedback from one user per each user group.
I created sketches for three design ideas:
Embedded AI Chabot
A chatbot would answer questions from website visitors in real-time with the goal of reducing burden on shelter workers answering redundant questions. It would offer 24/7 customer service when the shelter is closed or when the employees are occupied with other duties.
Foster Nudge Notification System
Most shelters do not continuously update animal profiles. A push notification system allows fosters to remember to share new photos and notes, enhancing adopters' access to comprehensive information by automatically integrating updates into each pet's profile, reducing the need for staff web edits.
AI-Updated Homepage
An AI feature analyzing the shelter website metrics allows for regular timely updates to the homepage, highlighting animal profiles with lower engagement. This efficient strategy requires no extra staff effort aside from implementation and checkups, effectively promoting the adoption of less visible animals.
Prototype
Following sketch reviews, we developed prototypes for the AI chatbot, educational starter pack for pet owners, and suggested pet feature. These designs garnered significant feedback and met our main goals for quick implementation by shelters.
I built our conversational agent with Voiceflow. This platform was chosen as it allows for easy website integration by providing JS snippets to be added into the website’s source code. Training the AI is done through a personal knowledge base, ChatGBT, or input blocks, enabling shelters to customize visual and informational aspects of their chatbot.
Testing
Due to time constraints, we shared a chatbot wireframe with three users. They posed questions as if using the chatbot, and we provided pre-selected responses, including error messages, thank you notes, and a link to contact a shelter employee.
Users valued ease of use, quick responses, and options for typing or using topic buttons. Their main desire was to receive pet suggestions based on attributes they entered. One user noted that poorly phrased inputs led to error messages, which our team noted would affect users whose primary language is not English.
From this feedback, our team chose to create an interactive prototype for a suggested pet feature that allows potential adopters to “like” a pet’s profile and view similar animals, prioritizing those with longer shelter stays.
Conclusion
Though we were limited to one final prototype for our package, the engagement and excitement from our initial interviewees and testers was encouraging and inspiring. As we pursue interactive prototypes for our other features, we are confident these solutions could successfully begin to address the current issue of pet abandonment and help more animals find their forever homes by designing for all individuals involved in the adoption process.