Forever Friends
Facilitating pet adoption and retention through on-demand information & support
TIMELINE
NOV - DEC 2021
ROLE
Lead Product + Visual Designer
TEAM
Ryan Adibi, Yvonne Hou, Graana Khan
PROJECT OVERVIEW -
Our final semester project for IxD (Interaction Design Studio), we were tasked with creating a responsive website that leveraged different devices to support particular tasks. Our group chose to focus on creating a service to support pet adoption - a domain close to many of our hearts. Through rapid user research, we developed journey maps that allowed us to pin-point areas in which there was evident room for improvement, focusing our design efforts on targeting these opportunities.

MY ROLE -
As the lead visual and communication designer, I was in charge of the platform's overall visual style, ensuring consistency and legibility across devices. I was responsible for producing all visual artifacts related to research outputs and storytelling (customer journey maps, process reports, and final presentation deck).

I also created all of the high-fidelity mock-ups (in Figma), which included establishing a myriad of interactive components and their variants.
GOAL -
Facilitate pet adoption & retention through an integrated, digital-based service design focused on post-adoption care
More than 10% of animals are returned to shelters in the six months following adoption, according to the American Humane Society.

What can we do to improve this?
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Our project centered around not only promoting adoption rates by facilitating connection to local animals in need, but ensuring that those animals were retained in loving homes.

Ultimately, we wanted to make sure that those looking to adopt found their perfect companion - forever.
SOLUTION -
Fostering life-long friendship by humanizing the adoption processes and providing a system of information & support
Through our preliminary research, it became clear that there were three main stages were where participants’ journeys began to take a dip: the connection phase, the screening phase, and the settling phase. As such, we targeted our service's main features to better support these interactions.

Of particular interest to us was the settling phase - a time where the initial 'honeymoon' period begins to wane, and caregivers are confronted with the responsibilities of caring for an animal. Instead of allowing these feelings of confusion or exhaustion to hamper this connection, we wanted to ensure that users had continuous access to pet-related information and support.

Ultimately, support shouldn't end when you walk out of the animal shelter. We thought it was our ethical responsibility to not only facilitate connection, but maintain a consistent quality of support and care.
FIND YOUR FOREVER FRIEND -

Discovering your ideal companion, made easy

The importance of personal connection was underscored in almost every conversation we had with pet parents. While carousel-style images, informative videos, and live streaming showcase the personalities of available animals, we know that nothing beats an in-person meeting. When you see a furry friend you love, scheduling your 1:1 visit is made fast & easy.

We're here to support you -
anytime, anywhere

According to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), unexpected pet issues (including problematic behavior and health challenges) is the most common cause of pet rehoming (47% for dogs, 42% for cats). Promising services to aid in pet retention include affordable veterinary care and training/ behavioral assistance. (Weiss et al., 2015)

Forever friends was built for pets to truly find their forever homes. In addition to providing on-demand access to customized information and tips for your pet, our integrated messaging platform allows you to leverage community support to reach out to local vets, pet owners, and behavioral specialists.

Determined to make the screening process a breeze

Through primary interviews and desk research, it became clear that many prospective pet owners made decisions with incomplete information. In order to optimize the process of rehoming, we created a robust, standardized screening process that leverages your device’s native features to quickly scan and upload required documentation. 
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Our screening process is not just a formality - it’s an educational process to ensure that prospective owners make informed decisions before they commit to the caretaking of a new pet.

Timely reminders & support for your busy life

Forever Friends easily integrates into your smart watch's glances & notifications for timely reminders of pending tasks and upcoming appointments.
OUR PROCESS
Learn how our research shaped design

Research

Understanding motivations & pain-points of adopting

With limited time and resources, we engaged in rapid user research, reaching out to friends and family to learn about their experiences adopting animals. Through directed storytelling sessions with five interview participants, we sought to understand the primary motivations and pain-points of adoption.

JOURNEY MAPPING

Adoption process: predictably unpredictable

We identified six key stages of the adoption process, spanning from initial motivation to adopt to raising the chosen pet.

Due to the negative slope evidenced within the intermediary phases of the overall journey (connecting - screening - settling), we decided to focus our efforts in developing impactful solutions to target these particular points.

INSIGHT 01

People want to connect with pets in person to solidify their connection

Although many interviewees mentioned that they had initially seen their pet online, virtually every participant emphasized the need to solidify their connection in person.
I think you go there and you look and the animal actually chooses you

INSIGHT 02

The extent of the screening process varies significantly

The amount of required paperwork (background checks, references, screening questions) varied between experiences.

For those who rescued animals from shelters, the understanding that many pets had been re-surrendered to these shelters was alarming. Many participants postulated a correlation between a lack of awareness/responsibility and the ease of some adoption processes.

INSIGHT 03

Post-adoption support is critical, especially for first-time pet parents

Most of our interviewees felt that they were not given the information/
education necessary to care for their newly adopted pet’s specific needs. They similarly voiced that there were little to no check-ins with the shelter post-adoption. This lack of support was felt most by first-time pet parents, who had no personal experiences as reference points.
I didn’t realize how strong the two-way emotional attachment can get

PAPER PROTOTYPING

We prototyped three key scenarios: the discovery phase, the screening process, and potential future post-adoption support

Our biggest challenge during this process was thinking about the screening sequence. How could we create a process that was thorough enough to ensure the safety of animals - and decrease pet re-surrender rate - while not adding too great of a barrier to adoption?

CROSS-DEVICE UX

Designing for an ecosystem of devices, focusing on task completion

Although approaching the service through a mobile-first approach, Forever Friends supports an ecosystem of devices. A major aspect of our project was pin-pointing the features that should be supported on different devices, understanding when and why users needed portability in their workflows.

WIREFRAMING: DISCOVERY

How might we ease discovery of animals in need and humanize the connection process?

Filtering input and learned preferences ease the discovery process, with video streaming and in-person scheduling facilitating the personal connection.

I created our final wireframes to emphasize key features and provide a roadmap for interaction, paying particular attention to the microinteractions of our product.
FINAL DESIGN
See how we envisioned selected interactions

Connect with the experts when you need them most.

Seamless interaction within our chat support function was critical.

When developing this functionality, I paid particular attention to minimizing interaction cost. Relevant functions (scheduling appointments, ordering needed supplies) are intelligently integrated into the chat feature, ensuring that tasks can be completed within the existing screen.

Leveraging the benefits of a native mobile app to upload & organize your documents.

There is an established correlation between subjective ease and task completion rate. As such, highlighting native mobile capabilities for document uploads and verification was crucial for supporting a robust yet painless screening process.

Education before commitment helps us fulfill our promises.

Much of our support and screening process was geared at first-time adopters - those that did not have previous experience raising animals, and therefore had not yet developed caretaking skills.

When people lack experience in a particular domain, they are more susceptible to the bias of overconfidence.

In order to hedge against this, I included temporally adjacent feedback (reducing memory failure and dual-task interference) to questionnaire responses so that users could better understand the responsibilities of pet parenting.
LET'S GET IN TOUCH -
Copyright © 2021 Tamara Zilovic