Petminded

8 min readJun 25, 2020

Where pet owners can connect to like-minded people and share meaningful experiences.

When we first met our client Petminded, the company was in a transition of pivoting the business model and the brand. It was originally a travel planner for pet owners who want to have a safe and memorable experience with their pets. However, due to the impacts of Covid-19, their users requested more community-based experiences. Petminded decided to position themselves as a community for pet parents who want high-quality educational experiences with their pets.

For this project, we were to design the new website to add relationship-based community elements, invite the users to the members-only community, and have them sign up for a membership. Our mission was to design the introduction website, not the members-only page which connects to a mighty network site.

Personally, this was a very fun project for me because I love dogs and I was able to learn so much about the pet owners.

Team: 4 members including myself

Time Frame: 14 days

UX Process:

Phase 1: Understand
Phase 2: Diverge
Phase 3: Converge
Phase 4: Prototype
Phase 5: Delivery & Next Step

Phase 1: Understand

The most important part of the UX design process is to understand users. This is because without understanding the users, we cannot make a good product that reflects their needs and goals. In this first phase, to learn about the users we conducted the following steps:

Screener Survey
User Interviews

We interviewed 10 users. We spoke to 5 users who are actual users of Petminded and the other 5 users who we selected from our screener survey. We wanted to make sure to speak to a variety of users not only existing users but also users who could be potential users.

During the interviews, we asked questions to learn about the followings:

Pet Ownership
Pet Community (in-person & online)
Pet Education
Pet Resources
Devices Used

Currently, Petminded is focusing on dog owners. However, the company eventually would expand the community to cat and other pet owners’ as well. We spoke to dog owners as well as some cat owners; 8 of them were dog owners, 1 was a cat owner, and 1 was a cat and dog owner. This way we were able to hear some voices from a range of pet owners.

Phase 2: Diverge

Having completed user interviews, we moved onto our second phase of the process: Diverge. We took the following steps to identify user insights such as their goals, characteristics and problems.

Affinity Mapping
Research Insights
Persona
Problem Statement

Affinity Mapping

After conducting user interviews, we moved on to Affinity Mapping, a UX method, to organize the data to group thems to learn about ideas and insights.

Research Insights

From our Affinity Mapping, we were able to extract themes of insights including Research, Visuals, Devices, Owner Quality of Life, Pet Quality of Life, and Community. Below are some of the key insights we found important to create a Persona and Problem Statement.

Users particularly value pet communities where they can learn from each other
Users like to socialize with other pet owners
Users like to use social media to gather info on their pets, but they only trust accounts that are verified by a large follower base, or that have been recommended to them by trusted sources
Users find it hard to determine credible pet information online
Users use their phone to browse pet information but will move to a desktop for further research

Persona & Problem Statement

Having gathered research insights, we were able to craft a Persona and Problem Statement. Persona is a fictional character based on our user research insights. It represents the users' goals and characteristics.

Here are some of our Persona, Dahlia’s, main goals, Needs, Pain Points, and Behaviors.

Goals: Find online pet communities; Find a reliable source for her pet concerns

Needs: Keep her dog active and social; Well organized and designed pet info

Pain Points: Doesn’t know what info to trust about her dog online; Doesn’t like negativity in online communities

Behaviors: Loves to look at cute dogs online; Enjoys socializing and trading recommendations with other dog owners

Problem Statement is a UX tool for defining a problem that we were going to solve. This time, we realized that there are actually two problems that Dalia had. One is to find a community that she can meet with like-minded pet owners. The other is to find trusted resources on pets and pet parenting.

Phase 3: Converge

Having determined our Persona and Problem Statement, we now progress to the next phase: Converge. In this phase, we took the following steps to identify the main features to incorporate on the Petminded website and design website pages:

Feature Prioritization
Competitive/Comparative Analysis
Design Studio
Mid-fi Wireframes | Prototype | Usability Testing

Feature Prioritization

Based on our Persona Dahlia’s goals and needs, we identified the features to integrate on the Petminded website. We used a UX tool, the MoSCoW method, to classify each feature into a metrics with Impact and Effort axes. The features in “Must Have (high Impact & Low Effort)” would be the main priority we had to focus on.

Here are the final features we decided to apply on the new Petminded website:

Competitive/Comparative Analysis

After identifying features to cover, we were able to run a competitive/comparative analysis. This allows us to visualize what features Petminded’s competitors or comparators have or not, as well as how they utilize it on their website if they have.

Design Studio & Mid-fi Wire Frames

With those final features to add on the website, we invited a stakeholder, the founder of Petminded, to run the Design Studio workshop together. It allows us to quickly generate design ideas and converge into a single design within a short amount of time. This session was particularly important for us, because, by having her, we were able to learn and reflect her vision to the website. A series of Design Studio led us to finish the lo-fi (rough sketch) wireframes. Taking these lo-fi frames we created mid-fi wireframes and prototypes for some desktop and mobile pages for the responsive website.

Mid-fi Usability Testing

With the mid-fi prototype, we ran usability testings to see if users can complete given tasks like followings:

To find some upcoming classes on the mobile website
To sign up a class on the desktop website
To learn about the website how it works (desktop)
To sign-up for the sight(desktop)

From our user interviews, we learned that users tend to browse and search for things on their mobile phones first. Then, they move on to further research on their laptop/desktop, so they can read through and gather more information. It was important for us to test with both mobile and desktop sites.

Most tasks were completed successfully by the users and there weren’t any major changes required for high-fi wireframes. However, we wanted to make the following changes:

Changing the title “Event” to “Experience”
Adding the “Resource” page

This is because “Experience” reflects the better of the Petminded brand and the goals for this feature. Also, we concluded that it was important to add the “Resource” page. Initially, we are planning to have a “Resource” category within the “Blog” page. However, we realized that the website did not present as a trusted source enough without having “Resource” as its own page. Here are the original and the revised sitemap for the next hi-fi wireframes and a prototype.

Phase 4: Prototype

Having taken the mid-fi testing results and change proposals, we moved to the next Phase: Prototype. In this phase, we worked on the following:

Hi-fi Wireframes
Hi-fi Prototype
Hi-fi Usability Testing

Hi-fi Wireframes

Hi-fi Prototype links:

Mobile: https://www.figma.com/proto/PAQRwZ8rMvyxE2ahQzLIxZ/Petminded?node-id=478%3A2655&scaling=scale-down

Desktop: https://www.figma.com/proto/PAQRwZ8rMvyxE2ahQzLIxZ/Petminded?node-id=331%3A1617&scaling=contain

High-fi Usability Testing

Useually, we would give the same tasks from the mid-fi usability testing to users. This way, it is clear to see improvements on high-hi prototype. However, because we changed some areas such as the “Experience” and “Resource” page, we changed the tasks in high-fi usability tesitng. Modified tasks are below:

Find a site with dog health information on the mobile site (This question is related to the new “Resource” page)
Move to desktop and see what classed are upcoming on Petminded. (This question is the same as original question but now it is related to the new “Experience” page)
Find where the Experience recap would be (This question is also related to the “Experience” page)
Find out how this site works
Sign up for the site

At the end, usability testing went well. Users were able to find things and the website was intuitive. However, we summarized some recommendations as next steps in the next phase.

Phase 5: Delivery & Next Steps

The last phase is Deliverly & Next Steps. The last day of this project, we presented and delivered the product & the report to the client. Based on the high-fi usability testing results, here we would like to make some suggestions as next steps.

“Events” vs “Experience” — Conduct a card sort, a form of usability testing, to see which title in the navigation will be most intuitive for the users.
Personalized Experiences — Develop a quiz to help allow users personalize their experience with Petminded. Run a usability testing to see if user find it helpful for finding personalised classes.
Integrated Contents — Currently, Petminded is focused on dogs and dog parents. However, some cat owners we interviewed were also interested in connecting with other pet owners. We recommend to conduct user interfaces with other pert owners like cat to determine their goals, needs, painpoints and behaviors.
Membership — Currently the site is planning to take the users to the Mighty Network for sign-up and membership fee payment. However, some users may prefer to do so within the Petminded website. It will be helpful to conduct usability testing to see what makes sense the most for the users.