Let’s make something together.
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58% of Canadian households own a dog or a cat according to the Canadian Animal Health Institute, which means this problem affects a huge proportion of people.
Happy Tails is a mobile app that seeks to conveniently increase dog socialization opportunities through safe and enjoyable owner and pup experiences.
The most common user pain point is a lack of safety and privacy according to reviews on competitor’s products.
Users disliked when products asked for personal information before experiencing anything useful from the application.
Similarly, users questioned whether or not required fields during the onboarding process were necessary information for the product to have.
I conducted 7 contextual interviews with users on their usual walk route. I prepared a set of questions and allowed the conversation to naturally deviate according to each users thoughts and values. Conversations lasted for from 30-40 minutes.
I gathered and analyzed core sentiments from these interviews.
Other apps feel bloated trying to be too many things at once. Happy Tails only needs to do 1 thing really well.
It is a delicate balance of making the host and other attendees feeling comfortable with the level of personal information shared.
Including just enough about other users and their dogs was vital so that users could feel reassured about who their dog was meeting.
After conducting usability tests with users, I learned how this case study could improve and develop. Users liked how fast it was to preview the events happening around the city.
If we were to have more time, we’d love to link social media to dog owner’s stripped back profiles so owners can easily connect to each other for dog playdates, or even have tags around diet, or a field box on dog classes they have attended.
