ELEVATOR PITCH

A website to help novice pet owners

SEPT 2021
What the heck is it?
A digital product designed to address these new and busy pet owners who have no prior experience in pet care.
Why?
I want busy pet owners to feel fully prepared, equipped, and confident to care for their new pet. 
My Role
Researcher
Designer
Deliverable
Low- Fidelity Wireframes

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DESIGN BRIEF

Come up with an elevator pitch for a solution to a problem for a subject you are passionate about.

So I was tasked with coming up with an elevator pitch for a solution to a problem I am passionate about, and this so happens to be the Pet Care Industry. Despite not having any pets, I just really love animals and would love to one day adopt one myself.

The elevator pitch should cover the customers your solution would impact, the problem the customers/market are having, the why, and how your concept solves those pains.

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What are some possible solutions?

Before figuring out how to help these novice and busy pet owners, I wanted to sit down and brainstorm what sort of solutions can be helpful to my target audience.

  1. Forum based platform that all pet owners can communicate with each other through
  2. Blog that provides pet caring guides on different species of pets
  3. Social media platform that connects pet owners
  4. Personalized pet care scheduling that optimizes your time
  5. Pet care to-do list

research

Market Problems

  • Pets come in different sizes and breeds; pet care varies
  • Consumers are unclear with what pet schedule fits their needs
  • New pet owner’s inability to provide proper care leads to: 
    - 240,000 households set free dogs and cats annually
    - Animals are rehomed due to pet problems the owner couldn’t handle

Assumptions

  • Users are inexperienced or novices to pet care, likely caring for one pet.
  • Users are between the ages of 25 to 32 years old.
  • Users needs consistency to properly allocate their time for pet care.
  • Pet ownership will continue to grow.

COMPETITOR ANALYSIS

Some question came into mind: What is out there? What is already in the market places that provides what I want my product to do?

Petguide

Pros
  • Information on specific pet breeds of different species.
  • Articles on general basic animal care
Cons
  • No way to personalize pet care to fit within schedule
  • Doesn’t have the option to look for nearby local pet care & services

Petsmart

Pros
  • Websites offers products to sell
  • Offers articles on general care of new pets
Cons
  • No way to personalize pet care to fit within owner’s schedule
  • Bias of selling their products

PetPlace

Pros
  • Has articles that provides general basic care for pets
  • Provides articles on Pet Behavior & Training
  • Has articles on Pet Expenses
Cons
  • Only has dog breed guides
  • No way to personalize pet care to fit within owner’s schedule

Chosen Solution

A web application to help novice pet owners allocate time with personalized scheduling that fit both the pet owner’s and pet’s needs. 

Framing the Design Problem

How might a web platform help allocate time for inexperienced pet owners to ensure the best care for their pet? 

User STory

As a novice pet owner, I want to be able to have a consistent schedule to stay on top of caring for my pet.

User Journey

Taking the user story, I mapped out this process, allowing me to visualize an individual’s relationship and emotion with my digital product.

USER FLOW: CREATING PET SCHEDULE

Low-Fi Wireframes

Pet Care Mockup
Home Page
Adding a Pet
Pet Schedule

Home Page

Users are met with the dashboard and there is a navigation menu where users can look at the schedule, pet care guides, and breeds lists where information can be found on all the different animals and ideally their difficulty of care.

Adding Pet

Adding General Pet Information

When adding a pet, the web application first starts off with asking for the species, breed, and pet name.

Of course, there is an option of uploading a picture of your pet and assigning a color to your pet.

Assigning a color is important so that your pet can be color-assigned on the calendar and be categorized correctly.

Filling Out Specific Pet Health

Confirming Information

Pet Schedule

After filling out the questions, the website will ask for a confirmation and once the user confirms their pet, users are met with a prompt that asks them to either go back to the home dashboard or to set up the schedule.

Work Around My Schedule Feature

Following the user flow, the user moves forward with the schedule page and is met with a notification on the right hand side that indicates whether they want a schedule for their pet to be recommended to them or if they want to input their schedule so that the product can work around the indicated times.

Homepage: Schedule Planned Out

Once that has been filled out and added to the schedule, the product adds a pet schedule that works around the work time. This will help the user visualize their daily life so that they can care for their pet.

Homepage With Pet

Back Up To Wireframes

Project Retrospective & Next Steps

So some final thoughts about this is that I had a lot of fun creating a solution to a design problem I am passionate about. I really love pets so much and despite not having an animal, I can see myself needing a product like this once I do adopt a pet because I like to visualize my schedule because there are often days I get busy. 

If I were to go back and do things differently, I would have liked to look into features that would help this product more like syncing it to your google calendar or apple calendar that way you have access to it on your phone or digital smartwatches. I would have also loved to explore the idea of sending this pet schedule to other people who might be petsitting your pets. 

I would conduct user testing to see if this digital product does increase time productivity for pet owners.

ALSO, I would LOVE to further develop this product by offering a feature for pet owners who have pets that have health conditions and assist in setting a reminder of when to take medicine or anything help the medical needs of the pets.