Friends Forever
Your go-to app for adopting a forever animal friend.
Mobile Application
Project Background
Stray animals are real issues in Jakarta, at least a report from 2018 says that city vets have to go out and catch stray cats 2-3 times a week.
At least in 2018, there are 100 reports in Jakarta complaining about the presence of stray dogs and cats, hence the government planned to massively catch them, yet, this solution is inappropriate and inhumane, so it was canceled.
As an animal lover, I agree that this solution is a really bad solution as it did not consider the fact that animals are living beings as well and have feelings, just like us.
However, let's not forget complaints that are reported and the not reported ones. I saw it myself how people treat stray animals and many of them are not good. So, even when the complaints go unreported, the stray animals get unfair treatment anyway.
My Role
As a UI/UX Designer, my main role is to design the experience and interface that solves the problem experienced by pet adopters and animal shelters.
Target Audience
My target audience for this app are divided into 2 groups:
-
The pet adopters (all genders, aged 25 to 40 years old who lives in the city)
-
The shelters (all genders, can be company and a person aged 30 to 40 years old who likes to take home a stray animals and post them for adoption)
The Problem
Stray animal populations are increasing and the current way of sharing though social media still doesn't work as good to spread the adoption information.
The Solution
A platform where everyone can connect in one place and do their part to help with they stray problem. They can post and adopt animals, therefore reducing the number of stray animals.
User Persona
Before jumping into any research, I started off with a quick analysis just so that I know what I should be covering in this project. This way, I don't miss out on any detail.
​
As always, I refer to this UX Checklist to get myself started.
I also have analysed the competitors or any existing similar app/platform out there.
To define user persona, I base this by observing people. I joined the Royal Canin Dog Run 2019 as well as Indonesia International Pet Expo 2019 to see how they mostly look like, gauge their habit from their activity in the event, and also talk to some of them.
The next day after I am done with the user persona, I decided to remove one user persona that I feel would be a less typical user and replace with one that I think would be much more typical user or mine.
Therefore, you won't be seeing the third user persona. (Just to feed your curiosity, the third one is a mother of a family, this assumption based on my observation that there are many mothers and fathers that are an animal lover and they fully participate the event with the kids as well)
In user persona, I usually define their character, their habit, and their daily life as detailed as possible. Back when I joined the 500 Startups Digital Marketing workshop, I learn that you have to be so detail, you might have to figure out what kind of car brand they like, or which apartment they live at. The point is, to be as detailed as possible.
User Interview Questions
In this interview, the questions are as seen on figure 1.
​
There is a reason why I Chose to ask this questions. And I believe, in order to get a good answer I have to ask good questions.
The question number and their reason :
1. To define the consideration people mostly have when it comes to pet adoption, this helps to build the search or sort or filter function in the app and to know what information is crucial to most people and what information is not really related.
2. To narrow down the pets people most likely to adopt so that my app can actually be relevant and not redundant.
3. This is to test the awareness and to know if I have to educate the potential users about the the fact that animals adopted are your life-long commitment.
4. This is to analyse the competitor that performs the best.
5. This is to know how many from the sample size are avid adopters or potential avid adopters.
6 and 7. This is to know the potential problem that may comes in the process of adopting
8 . This is to know their experience adopting manually.
9 and 10. This is to know their experience adopting manually.
11. This is to identify where most people get to know their adopted pet and learn what makes that successful.
The answers
The answers are shown on figure 2.
​
The conclusion from these answers are :
1. That dog, cat, and small animals are the most popular types of pet to adopt.
2. Breed, size, and the chemistry with the animal, as well as maintenance fee are the top considerations for pet adopters.
3. Information from friends/family are most common way people know a pet is up for adoption followed by the social media, which both are social way.
Analysis on Introduced by Friends/family in relation to pet adoption :
This is a very manual way and it relies deeply to the connection of each person. This could be a huge problem as some people who just don't care about animal yet have the information of strays need adopter might not pass this important information. Humans are also selective in presenting information. So they might know 10 animals need to be adopted but they might only tell you one.
The good thing about this solution is that friends/family are more trustworthy and easy to be accessed. Simply chat with them or talk to them will present you any information of pets for adoption. Talking/socialising is a basic activity of a human, so this is indeed the easiest part about this solution.
Analysis on Facebook/Social media in relation to pet adoption :
Facebook/other social media like Twitter and Instagram is something that people use daily and very often in their life. They share joy and see joy through them. In facebook, sharing information is as easy as one button. So when a friend shared an info about this dog that needs to be adopted, information accessed easily and fast.
What I adapt from this social media solution is the in-app messaging, whereby people can interact with each other through the app easily.
The down side of this solution is that because information shared so rapidly, it is difficult for the pet owner to update if the dog/cat is adopted and there is very little way to report any misused adoption activity.
​
User Flow
The ideal user flow would be as following :
Home, Browse, View, Chat, and meet up. As simple as that.
There are however, scenarios that enables to solve any future problem, such as potential animal abuse. User may report to Forever Friends Team if there is an indication of animal abuse or misusing the platform as a business purpose.
Sketches and Wireframe
The ideal user journey would be as following :
Home, Browse, View, Chat, and meet up. As simple as that
There are however, scenarios that enables to solve any future problem, such as potential animal abuse. User may report to Forever Friends Team if there is an indication of animal abuse or misusing the platform as a business purpose.
Project Revisited
This project was started in 2019. With the more experience and knowledge that I gained over the year, I had the drive to update the UI and make the UX smoother. 1 year later in 2020, I revisited this project and made some improvements.
Conclusions
Even though this project is just a design and not a real app, I had a really insightful process making this. From applying research method to actually get the result and use it to iterate my design, it has been great!
