Design Sprint Case Study
The Design Sprint is a five-day process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping and testing idias with customers. It works for rapidly solving big challenges, creating new products, or improving exesting ones.
My role :
UX/UI Designer
Tools:
Google Workspace, Figma, Photoshop
Main Goal:
1. Increase the adoption rate
2. Make dog owners happier
3. Provide better “forever” homes for dogs
Sprint design process:
Challenge:
People in a big city sometimes feel lonely. They spend a lot of time at work. A lot of city dwellers want to adopt a dog, but this is not as easy as you can think. So I will create site for people who live in a big city and want to adopt a dog.
Day 1. Map.
At the first day I studied users interview and other information that was provided with the challenge and got some insights:
Some participants want to see not only photos of dogs but the video also because it gives more information about dogs' temper and size.
The people in the big city live in not big apartments and have a social life. So the most important things that future adopters want to know about dog is:
Size
Age
Temper
How much indoor space does this dog need?
How often should this dog be walked?
How well does this dog socialize?
How will this dog behave with other dogs, animals, and people?
It is painful to fall in love with a dog that you cannot provide the necessary living conditions. It should be prevented. Call and visit shelters take a lot of time, so I think the City Pups website will be in demand among residents of big cities...
The result of my work on the first day was a map of possible user interaction with future product.
I also spent some time to finding a name for the project. It helped me better imagine the future site. For inspiration, I looked at a lot of dogs photos and videos and decided to name it Buddy, because people will visit the site to find a friend, in addition, this is one of the most popular name for a dog in 2021.
Day 2. Sketch.
The second day of my design sprint I dedicated to sketching. But first I spent time to looking at competitors products or related products for inspiration.
I found it interesting the idea that finding the right dog is like finding the right partner because the dog will be with the owner for a very long time (maybe for the rest of its life). Therefore, I decided to build a search on the site with dogs as a dating site, and also add a mandatory survey that would reveal the main features of the adopter and his requirements and wishes for a dog.
Then I completed a Crazy 8s Sketch exercise to try out different variations of most critical screen. On my opinion it is a screen with information about dog.
On day 2 I also created a solution sketch, a three-panel board of (1) the screen that comes before my critical screen, (2) the critical screen itself, and (3) the screen that comes after critical screen
Screen 1: Page with all matches dog's photos found after quiz had complete. Photos are shown one at a time in a stack. The top is the best match.
Screen 2: Information about the best matching dog.
Screen 3: Shown how you match and offers the choice: to adopt this dog or see other matches.
Day 3. Decide.
I assumed that a person interested in adopting a dog would go to Google search with request and from there go to my website.
On the home page user can start quiz with purpose to find right dog or view the site menu and sign up or log in to account. I created short quiz, remembered interviews with real users and based on it.
Day 4. Prototype
8 hours on day 4 I created prototype of my project in Figma, it was big and busy day.
Day 5. Test
The last day of the Design Sprint was dedicated to usability testing to evaluate my design decision and see if it would make it easier for users to find the right dog to adopt.
On this day I conduct 5 interviews with users. Two interviews were conducted in person and three interviews were conducted online. My preliminary interview plan included:
- short friendly conversation
- briefly introduction of the project
- completing the task of finding the dog for adoption on the site
" The site looks good! I like the idea that it looks a bit like a dating site"
Artyom, 30.
Here are the critical questions I wanted to get the answer:
Do users find it helpful to ask questions about their personal characteristics and the characteristics of their ideal dog?
How users react to the result of a search for dogs that meet their requirements.
Do they feel that using this site will make it easier for them to find a dog?
" I'd like to see all matching photo on one page"
Christina, 51
The overall design was well received, and everyone agreed that a preliminary interview about the requirements and characteristics of the future dog would facilitate the process of selection and further mutual adaptation after adoption.
All users positively evaluated the opportunity to go directly from the main page to testing without registration. Users also liked adding a video to the dog's profile, they believe that this will help them get a better feel for its character and understand how it suits them.
However, four users said they would like to see all photos of matching dogs at once, not just one dog.
One of the few shortcomings of the current design was that after opening the search result page, it was not very clear to users that they had to click on a photo of a dog to get to his profile.
Also, users would like to be able to save search results and return to them again.
" On the page with matches it is hard to understand what next. Button on dog photo or some text needed"
David, 58
" I'd like to have the option to find a dog near me, for now, I have no idea how far away it's from me"
Sasha, 18
What next
Should this project to go back into the prototyping phase, I would make the following changes based on the user feedback I received:
After completing the quiz I will make available all photos of matching dogs with an indication of the percentage of matching and button “Meet this dog” that will shows all information.
To ensure that dogs find their forever home, at last, adoptive parents must be ready to take on the responsibility and aware of what it entails. To do so, the quiz has to be well thought out, and the dog profile page has to provide all information possible clearly and concisely. If I were to pursue the project, I would reevaluate the quiz questions and their placement on the website again and run another round of usability tests.
