Hi dribbble 👋

In the Summer of 2022, I joined Cohort 2 of Dribbble's 12 Week Product Design Course. For the first 7 weeks of the course, I worked to design a Dog Walking App to help busy pet owners find care for their pets while they were away. After initial research and wireframing, the app evolved from dog-walking only to pet-sitting to make it more accessible to a wider range of users. Below is the process I took, from discovery all the way to solution.

Role: Product Designer

Timeline: 7 weeks

Qualitative Research | User Interviews

User Interviews Conducted: 4

Medium: Google Meet

Time: 15 - 20 minutes

For my research, I was able to interview four people over Google Meet: three pet owners, and one pet caretaker. Each of them had used dog walking or pet sitting services in the past, and half planned to use them again in the future.

Personas

The biggest takeaway from the persona research was the need for trust. Pet owners want to know that their pets are being cared for by someone they can trust. Similarly caretakers want to know that the pet owners they're assisting are confident in their choice.

Trust is often built through interaction, however with many of the competitor apps your only interaction with the a dog walker or caretaker is through the pictures and bio on their profile, and the reviews others have left for them.

My hypothesis is that video profiles would be a quicker, more accurate way to understand if someone was the right fit for you and your pet and vice versa.

Market Research

The two most popular pet sitting apps in the US are Wag! and Rover. What's interesting about these apps is their visual similarities. They both use an almost identical color green in their branding.

Rover had less of a barrier to entry than Wag!, which asks you to first go through a lengthy sign-up process before you can even decide you want to use the app. Neither service allows you to upload video instructions, or videos of any kind, which was a pain point repeated across users during my interviews.

Wireframes

After the user flows were refined, I began to wireframe the basic screens for the application, and then expanded from there, adding functionality as I went.

Visual Design and Key Functionality

Branding

Users are known to gravitate towards apps that feel familiar, both in design and functionality. The Walkies! app went through many iterations and themes. The end result was the theme and flow that was favored most during my AB testing.

Blue is the primary color for Walkies! Blue can represent reliability, trustworthiness, safety, and innovation.  Given that pet owners are trusting us with their most cherished companions, we want our brand to fill our users with confidence that they are making a safe, secure choice. 

For accessibility, the most common types of colorblindness can see the color blue. 

Video Functionality

Both the pet profile and the caretaker's interface promote the use of video to share information. With this functionality, pet owners only need to create one video sharing instructions on how to care for their pets, which they can share every time they book a caretaker.

Similarly, caretakers can display an introductory video of themselves on their profile, promoting themselves and making it easier for the pet owner to decide who to book.

Design System

Below is a majority of the design system for Walkies!, made entirely in Figma. Each component takes advantage of the Auto Layout functionality, allowing for scalability and variations allowing for different colors, icons and labels. 

Results

The end result was an app that focused on reducing the barrier between finding and booking a caretaker, making communication and sharing information seamless and providing the ability to create and send video instructions and updates to caretakers.

Future

With more time, I would like to flesh out the scheduling component further, making it more accessible. I would also like to design an Apple Watch component that would allow caretakers to 'start' recording a walk from their wrist and would allow pet owners to follow along or receive alerts. I would also like to complete a desktop version of the service for a wider range of access.