"My dogs are a part of my family and deserve nothing but the best."
- Test participant
FurryByte is the personal food planner for your furry friend. My top priority while designing FurryByte was the dog's health and users' needs. In doing so I had to think about the current issues dog parent's face and offer a perfectly balanced meal plan with the least amount of planning.
My preliminary research showed that most websites online follow a traditional approach to selling dog food. In other words, typically, a dog parent or shopper:
The primary user group (i.e. dog parents) confirmed initial assumptions, but research also revealed that users not only have challenges purchasing dog food online but cannot always find what they are looking for. Additionally, dog parents prefer to buy food in bulk from a physical store to avail profits.
I conducted five interviews with people in my network to obtain in-depth qualitative responses regarding the challenges of ordering dog food online. In the recruitment, I included people of different age groups and preferences.
"I cook rice, boil some chicken and sneak in a few vegetables, it works most of the time but sometimes my dog (Tyson) is just too smart, and beats me to the punch."
To truly connect with my users, empathize with them, meet their needs or challenges and provide the best experience when using FurryByte, I developed two user personas.
The user journey map helped me step into my users' shoes and truly think and feel like them. It gave me valuable insight into how my personas would approach buying dog food online or at a physical store.
I chose Amazon, Supertails, Pawfectly Made, and Blinkit for my competitive analysis.
Analyzing the brands and products of competitors who offer similar products as FurryByte, gave me a well-rounded foundation of knowledge about the market. I carried that knowledge into my designs and created a helpful and unique prototype for users.
The main goal of FurryByte was to provide the best dog food recommendations without dog parents having to do any planning and prepping. I analyzed the user journey map, competitors' strength and weaknesses, and evaluated the gaps and opportunites and asked myself:
In order to visualize the steps that the user would take to buy dog food online and to keep them engaged in the product, I created the following user flow. My primary goal for my user was to use the FurryByte app to place a delivery order for dog food quickly and easily.
Now that I had the all the essentials pieces from my user research, competitive analysis and ideating initial design solutions, I needed to clearly organize and sort them so that my users could have the best solution possible. I created the information architecture of my product keeping three key elements in my mind, organization, hierarchy and sequence.
Creating the paper wireframes helped me quickly organize my ideas and add important elements that would address user pain points. It encouraged me to lay out a clear workflow and prioritize an easy way to build a meal or order recommended meals.
During the initial design phase, I focused on the main user pain points based on feedback and findings from user research. I created the low-fidelity prototype so that I could test it with my study participants in the usability study and make the necessary adjustments to meet my user's needs.
"I am not sure how the meal plan is recommended to me... is it because of the info provided about my pet or is it any general info."
"Sometimes I worry about feeding the wrong things to my dog, I would like that the app to let me know dos and don'ts."
"Woah, there is a lot going on here, some screens have high information density, it may be overwhelming for people who are using the product."
Dogs are our best friends and their cheerful nature fill our lives with love and happiness. Not long ago, I read Leatrice Eiseman's Color Harmony and was fascinated by the impact and emotions colors have in our lives . According to the author, the color yellow is thought of as friendly, forthcoming, energizing and enriching. Pink symbolizes, love, compassion, gentleness and playfulness. I wanted to carry these emotions into my app and with a lot of iterations, I created my style guide.
For this challenge, I created an end-to-end flow starting from the user login to ordering dog food. The high-fidelity design that I used for my usability testing addressed the essential user needs i.e.
Having the onboarding information and food recommendations on a single screen in the low fidelity prototype was confusing to test participants. Creating an onboarding step made more sense, hence I created a dedicated onboarding page for users to provide their pet details.
Food recommendations are made based on nutritional facts for the pet’s optimum health. The heart icon is a shortcut to past orders and would show user favorites.
Users wanted to take out the guesswork out of meal planning. I added a breakdown of the nutritional information for every product, so that customers can order with confidence.
Users needed better cues to add address on the checkout page. I reorganized the information and removed unnecessary details so that users are presented with bite-sized info at a time.
I created this project as a part of the Google UX Design Professional Certificate course and gave it my best. Throughout this experience, I have gained valuable knowledge and skills in user-centered design and research. If I had more time, I would have loved to add the translation feature to my application for non native English speakers.
I learned about the importance of accessible design, followed the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) such as text readability, alt-text and contrast to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. I avoided color combinations that are hard to distinguish and used high contrast, ensured hierarchy, legibility, and reasonable speed of animations.
During the early days of my UX design transition, I took everything as a solo challenge and spent countless hours on refining my designs and polishing my skills. While it did teach me a lot, it sometimes was time consuming and tedious. On networking with other design folks and mentors, I learnt that design need not happen alone and great designs and experiences are seldom the outcome of one single person. They recommended reaching out to friends, family, product managers and anyone who is willing to spare some time. I was amused to see that not only they were willing to help but also eager to provide great feedback.
I learned that with a design system, I can not only keep my designs organized but also save myself from countless hours of rework. Now, whenever I work on my designs, I first ask myself how to keep things consistent, organized, scalable, are my designs reusable and if a clear message is carried throughout my designs.
