PetterCare

Project type: Passion project

Timeline: May-June 2024

Team: Solo

My role: UX researcher, UX designer

THE PROBLEM

While an increasing number of healthcare providers have apps for patients to track their medical visits and schedule appointments, there is a lack of a digital market for veterinary clinics and pets health.

Pet owners, especially new ones, have insufficient knowledge on which vaccinations their pets need, how frequently they need to be re-administered, proper grooming care for their breed, and more.

“21% of dogs and 52% of cats [are] not obtaining any routine or preventative care”

- National Library of Medicine

MARKET RESEARCH

Finding apps that surround the topic of pet care is already difficult.

When searching up “pet care” in the app store, most apps that appear are networking platforms that connect owners with pet-sitters. For example, finding people to walk their dog or to temporarily find a place at which to pet-sit.

Apps focused on tracking pets’ health lack cohesion and multitasking

Upon delving through different pet-care apps, I’ve noticed there wasn’t really an app that was a “one-stop shop.”

  1. Disconnect between tracking health vs seeking help

    • Several apps enable users to track medication, steps, etc. But almost none of them enabled them resources on what to do if there was an issue with pets’ health (such as scheduling a vet appointment).

  2. Limited types of health tracking per app

    • As mentioned, although there are apps that track pets’ habits, certain apps would only offer specific abilities. For example, a medication app couldn’t necessarily track diet, weight, or physical activity.

  3. Lack of informative content

    • Competitors didn’t hold much informative value as to what pet owners should expect or maintain to maximize their pet’s health.

    • Raising a border collie is completely different from raising a bulldog. But not every owner magically knows what differences need to be heavily factored.

After several interviews focused on dog owners of different breeds and experience level, these were some of the main takeaways I gathered:

MAIN INSIGHTS

These user interviews led me to a fascinating discovery that different household dynamics meant there were different approaches to handling pet care. Rather than imagining a young college graduate handling their first pet, my user persona evolved more around a parent who was new to handling furry friends.

USER PERSONA

DESIGN PROCESS

Several of users referenced other apps (for themselves or their kids) that they’ve found useful for maintaining health. Trinity Health, a local healthcare provider for hospitals in Michigan, was one of them.

As a user of the app as well, I found several features that I thought could be carried over into PetterCare:

  1. Ability to schedule appointments without calling

  2. Logging medication & receiving timed reminders

  3. Messaging professionals

  4. Receiving test results via phone

  5. Tracking previous health visit summaries and records

Initial Designs

FINAL SCREENS

FINAL PRODUCT: DEMO

01

See progress charts

  • Users can track weight and growth charts for their pets throughout the years

  • PetterCare can provide comparative information and metrics according to the pet’s breed

KEY FEATURES

02

Track medication

  • Similar to how Flo can provide reminders for pills, date-tracking reminders are built into the app

  • Users can track multiple different medication for their pets, such as monthly heart-worm pills or temporarily subscribed medication

03

Schedule appointments

  • By connecting with their nearby vet clinics, users can skip phone calls and schedule appointments in-app

  • Users can specify the type of appointments and the specific vet they are seeking to streamline finding availabilities for their pets

NEXT STEPS

As this was my first project, there are several things I want to improve on and pursue for PetterCare:

  1. Making scrolling components for a full experience of the app

    • There are a lot of moving parts, from keeping track of medication, viewing reports, and learning, etc. that I want to show holistically

  2. Conduct UX research on several different owners

    • I want gather pet owners of different breeds, animals, and experience level to see how user-friendly the app is, and to see what user evidence can or cannot justify the features of PetterCare

  3. Create interactions with veterinary clinics and groomers

    • For interactions that can suffice with a message rather than picking up the phone, I want PetterCare to include communication channels internally for pet owners to interact with service providers such as vets and groomers

REFLECTIONS

After diving into my first ever UX work from research to design, I’ve learned several valuable lessons from the entire process.

  1. Keep track of all iterations, don’t design directly over mockups

    • I noticed this when I started compiling my case study. I had numerous mockups but realized I kept iterating them directly, without making copies of them to track my adjustments. This didn’t let me portray the full extent of redesigning that I had gone through.

  2. Go in with a hypothesis, and test it thoroughly

    • For future projects, I definitely want to sift through several hypothesis, rather than creating a project out of a singular assumption.

    • I want to spend more time interviewing various people and sitting in the discovery phase of finding out true pain points and users’ wants/goals.

  3. Make feedback an integral tool

    • This ties into no. 2, but I’d like to incorporate official processes of getting user feedback between iterations to justify each design choice.

  4. Aesthetics < functionality

    • I definitely spent a lot of time on colors with PetterCare, which is important but should not have been my priority (at least at the beginning). My goal moving forward is to think through each feature thoroughly and to always ask how is this benefitting the user?