Woofy Venture

Take your ownership and walk your pooch to explore the world!

Product Designer & UX Research

Design for dog owners

Walks are a common topic brought up by owners in dog parks. Many consider their dogs as family members and are passionate to improve their dog’s well-being. However, they often have to struggle to balance their busy lives with love and care for their four-legged friends. When people are less motivated to walk their dog, they turn to treats, toys, and dog walkers to assuage their guilt.

Discover & Research

Picture dog owners

According to Rover.com’s research on American dog walking habits, the “majority of dog owners (79%) think their dog should be walked at least twice a day, but 57% say they skip dog walks every week. 38% of owners actually walk their dog once or less per day. The most common reasons for missing walks include too cold out (57%), feeling tired (or lazy) (33%).” Although a dog walking service is a good solution when dog owners are out of town, developing a good walking habit with ones’ dog should be a goal.

To better understand dog owners (our focus was those who were at least 25, work long hours, love using new technology, and carry their phones all the time) and discover opportunities where an app might help, potential users were recruited, interviews and online surveys conducted,and profiles were developed to learn more about dog walking habits.

Hypothesis and learnings

People are aware they do not walk their dogs as much as they think they should. The survey results aligned with my hypothesis:

96% of dog owners wish they could walk their dogs more often and/or longer;
86% skip dog walks frequently because they are “lazy” and “tired”.

People want a tool that helps them to develop and maintain a dog walking habit:

Third party dog walking services are costly and unsustainable;
The owners desire a fundamental change in their own (and perhaps the dogs’) behavior;
Desired features in an app include recording dog walks and networking with other owners.

These insights gave me a clear path of how to build the app.

Define & Synthesize

The ideation

I conducted a competitor analysis, listed their features for comparison and analysis, and learned the dog walking app market is still fairly new and a new one has the opportunity to gain share.

The focus turned to how to motivate dog owners to develop and maintain a good walking habit. A 45-minute brainstorming session was hosted to gather inspiration and creative ideas, grouped into the chart below:

Storyboarding

Gamify the walk experience

A large group of ideas points to gamifying the dog walking experience, as game mechanics introduce extrinsic motivation to urge users to develop a habit more quickly. Pokémon Go is a good example, as it’s pushing more people than ever to get outside, explore, and communicate as a team.

What were the actionable objectives the app could set to achieve this goal—and how to gamify them? After review and analysis, I developed a project scope with three major aspects:

Remind and encourage dog owners to walk their dogs

Use push notifications for walking reminders, and visualize a dog’s need for a walk by common game elements such as a health bar.
Transfer the dog walking experience to a game that allows dog owners to travel between the real world and the virtual universe, collecting rewards, gaining and redeeming walking energy, and upgrading and unlocking new maps (all while walking their dogs).

Suggest the right amount of exercise based on the dog’s profile

Suggest daily walking exercise based on each dog’s profile—including breed, age, and other health conditions.
To avoid overly tiring the dog, design the daily challenges based on the suggested walking exercise instead of “one size fits all.”

Make friends by walking dogs together

The real-time map allows owners to see neighbors walking their dogs nearby
Neighbors can interact in a variety of exciting ways: ask to join the on-going walks, accept requests from friends to walk dogs together, or a dog chat
Join a community to share pet-friendly resources like dog parks, dog-friendly restaurants, poop bags and potential hazards (bee stings, toxic plants)

I started prototyping with storyboards, which gives me a perspective to understand how my solutions would play out in real-life scenarios. With the Balsamiq mock-up tool, I was able to jump into low fidelity sketches to materialize my ideas and test the flow without getting stuck on details.

Prototyping

Testing the design on real users

After several rounds of heuristic evaluation, I built two digital prototypes for A/B testing. When compared with the first prototype, the second prototype hid the supporting functions while enlarging the visual presentation of the map. Most of the testers agreed the second prototype was an improvement, though neither design successfully created an immersive game-like environment.

Therefore, in the third prototype, I redesigned the map view by applying game elements and added progress indicators to remind what they need to do to achieve the next level. I then developed a rewards system to implement the three major objectives:

Remind and encourage dog owners to walk their dogs

Miles walked will be converted to food, or “bones” in the dog world.
Exploring new routes can collect “souvenirs” and those can be exchanged for “travel budget” to bypass certain spots.
A parallel map system was introduced to create overlays with the main map, to give users a breath of fresh air frequently and increase the retention rate as most of the dog owners walk their dog in a relatively similar physical area. Users can use a certain combination of “bones” and “travel budget” to level up and grant access to a new adventure.

Suggest the right amount of exercise based on the dog’s profile

Using the gifts in “goodie bags” collected during the adventure, users can create cool avatars for their dogs, which also increases the switching cost to competitors’ apps.
Although the app is designed for dog owners, the protagonist of the whole experience is actually the dog! As each breed has its own characteristics, making sure every dog gets the proper amount of mental and physical stimulation is also critical. A solution to avoid users walking their dogs too much or too little is set up a customized daily challenge based on the dog’s profile.

Make friends by walking dogs together

To encourage social interaction, users receive a “goodie bag” by interacting with each other, such as referring a friend, chatting with friends via the app, accepting walking invitations, or inviting neighbors to join the walk. The goodie bag contains a random exchangeable gifts essential for certain adventures. For instance, sunglasses and sneakers can lower the required “bones” and “travel budget” to unlock the Thailand map, a cigar will reduce the distance to Cuba by 200 miles, and so on.

Product Iteration

Make the product to life

The prototype and gallery below demonstrate the overall experience with the app.

Future design development

Perfect the current features

Since the product is still under development, future releases will require more adventure maps, “souvenirs” for the map system, more components for avatar customization, further review and refinements to the reward system, and so on.

Create revenue streams

As Woofy Venture is a game about exploring the real world, users visit different points of interest to collect “souvenirs” and make friends along the way, but they’ll also pass by businesses nearby. By offering users special “goodie bags” or “souvenirs”, the app can bring traffic to pet-friendly businesses. The users could also redeem their “bones” as in-store coupons to get a discount on any purchases.

What I have learned

User research and testing drives the design’s development

Throughout the whole design process, I found there’s something useful to be learned at every stage. Research keeps the product-development efforts in agreement with true user needs, and not imaginary ones.

Rapid prototyping accelerates decision-making

Being a product designer, I found myself untangling ideas and suggestions from many enthusiastic discussions. These discussions do not lead anywhere unless the ideas are translated into prototypes. By doing so, it allows me to quickly validate the concept and move forward.