Empowering pet parents to travel freely
Keeper
Overview
Pet owners feel hesitant to travel, 60% of pet owners claim to avoid traveling and attending important events. Spearheaded as a solo project, Keeper addresses safety concerns in existing pet-sitting platforms by providing professionally trained and vetted sitters.
Interview Outcome
I chose to focus further on the issue of Trust and Reliability as that seemed to be a major concern holding pet owners back from being able to travel and would have a bigger impact if resolved.
Market Research Highlights
Existing platform faces criticism for allegedly deleting negative reviews from pet sitters' profiles, undermining credibility and trust among users.
Despite conducting background checks, the platform still features questionable pet sitters, raising concerns about user safety.
Instances of sitter negligence have resulted in harm to pets, damage to property, and incidents of theft.
Project Goal
The project aimed to empower pet owners to travel confidently without worrying about the well-being of their pets
My Approach
I started with learning more about the problem and interviewed 10 pet owners to understand the barriers leading them to avoid traveling and attending important events. The interview highlighted 2 major themes.
Solution
Task Flow
I made a task flow that shows how a pet owner would go about booking a pet sitter on this platform. This task flow is also the MVP of this product.
My Role: Product Designer
Responsibilities: UX Research, Usability Testing, Ui Design & Prototype
Tools: Figma
Themes from interview
Trust and reliability of pet sitters significantly influence whether pet owners travel or not.
Limited pet-friendly travel options frequently result in cancellations or changes to desired plans.
Market Research
Knowing that there are other existing products in the market providing pet-sitting services I looked into them to identify any shortcomings causing distress to pet owners.
The research highlighted the need for improved and enhanced protection measures. Providing a platform where pet owners feel safe to hire a pet sitter will result in empowering pet owners to travel confidently without worrying about the well-being of their pets.
User Persona
To guide me through this I developed a user persona that sums up my target audience and reflects their pain points.
Wireframes
After defining the task flow, I sketched several solutions for our user’s pet-sitter hiring process. After multiple iterations, I selected the screens that presented information clearly and aided our user in completing their task.
Testing with users
I conducted two rounds of usability tests, each with 5 users who were also pet owners. To ensure consistency, I crafted a script and task list for the users. Doing this helped to see how users were interacting with the app and if the flow I had designed made sense to the pet owners. It also highlighted elements that I had missed adding to the app & some usability issues.
With the feedback I received from user testing, these are some of the key changes I made.
Branding and UI Design
Brand identity and a design system was created to develop the interface and give the product a cohesive look.
To ensure a welcoming, trustworthy experience for users, I collected images reflecting Keeper's essence. I extracted the colors that stood out from the reference and chose the color #305C4F as it captured the essence of trust and reliability. Using a spider diagram I came up with the name Keeper and developed a logo and icons for the app.
Design System
A design library was made that holds all the design elements of Keeper. This library serves as a guide for any designer who needs to design any new element for the Keeper.
Accessibility
To ensure my product is accessible to everyone, I used Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) guidelines by testing text color contrast on colored backgrounds, meeting AAA standards for broader audience accessibility, regardless of the visual abilities of users.
Jump to Solution
Introducing Keeper
Helping pet owners find the perfect, safe, and reliable pet sitter.
Marketing
With a product to market, I created a marketing website for Keeper for desktop as well as mobile. The idea was to stick with brand colors to create brand awareness and recognition, as well as to bring more storytelling elements to this marketing website.
Final Thoughts
This was Keeper, it was a challenging project but I learned value of research and how it directly impacts the product. If I had more time I would have done more testing to identify any gaps in the product.
Nacho - Inspiration for Keeper
With that, the case study ends. Thanks for taking the time to go through it.
Connect on LinkedIn or email me at ranakrishna26@gmail.com