Pet health mobile app
Client brief
62% of Australian households own a pet, but not everyone has adequate knowledge to provide their pets the best health and care they need. It is estimated 40% of dogs and 30% of cats are overweight in Australia. Also, many people find it difficult to look for the right veterinary care and other services (such as grooming and dog walkers) within their area. Hence, my task is to design a mobile app prototype for RSCPA Australia to solve the above problems. These include pet education on correct diet, exercise routines, and finding adequate pet services based on their residential location.
There are 3 design concepts will be used in this design solution: context, aesthetic, and accessibility variation.
Context: Designed for new owners who wish to adopt a rescue pet
Aesthetic: Using Photon design language to develop prototype, heavily focuses on illustration, iconography, and vibrant colours.
Accessibility: Designed for visually impaired users, specifically users with low vision.
7 Step Framework
Before I start working on my 3 design concepts, I have come out with a 7 steps framework as to understand what the basic ideas are when building a pet based app.
1. Why: What are the goals of coming out this design solution? Will users able to solve their problems by using the app?
2. Who: Who will be our target audiences? What motivates them to use this app?
3. When and where: When will be our target audience realize they need a pet care app? What triggers that events? Where are our target audience living physically?
4. What: What kind of design concepts can the company propose to meet customer needs?
5. Prioritize and choose an idea: Which ideas should be implemented first?
6. Solve: List the user flow and fulfill each step (customer’s need) to proceed to the next step
7. How: Determine the successful rate of this design solution through engagement, retention rate, user acquisition and more.
After completing the 7-step framework, I continued with the concept sketch, and then digitized it into a low-fidelity wireframe.
I have included some design note annotations to make my concepts clearer.
Context Variation
As this concept is designed for new owners who wish to adopt a rescue pets, I have included several features in the app, such as a guide section for new owners to read before adopting a new pet. This is extremely handy to people who do not have any experiences and wish to know everything about pet adoption process in one spot. I also came out with bullet points content with hyperlinked so that it is convenient to break down the adoption content easily.
Other than that, it is pretty much the basic concepts of pet adoption apps, but with more functional concepts such as users could directly message or call the pet owners for further information while viewing the pet’s profile, or both voice and video call option available.
Aesthetic variation
For this concept I have included more features which cover more of the goal of this design solution, such as pet related services on the homepage. Pets will be shown in illustration form, vibrant colours will be used for background but at the same time not over distracting the users. In addition, vibrant colours could also increase readability and gives users a sense of playfulness.
Accessibility variation
As to ensure users who have vision issue able to access the content in the app, I have included headings and icons so that user will feel comfortable while using the app, not struggling to identify the content on the interface. I also make sure that the font is not too small, and even include the option that user could manually adjust the size of font by clicking the three dots icon on the top right of the page (second wireframe).
Conclusion variation
In a nutshell, I prefer my first two variation as I feel my accessibility variation is the weakest — lack of useful design for visually impaired users. It did not really help much. However, I feel that I could work more to include more functional feature for the first two variations. Overall, it is a great experience working this assignment as I feel I’m one step closer to UX design!
