Conclusions & Future Development
Time was our biggest challenge to overcome, due to the changing life circumstances of our team members.
In addition, my team had a fairly intense disagreement over whether the app should be open to all animals, or to dogs only. While we decided to focus on dogs, I still firmly believe that we should have allowed the users to choose species and included animals such as cats and horses.
I stand behind the decisions of my team, but I hope for this to become an area of future growth.
Challenges Encountered
Areas for Further Iteration and Improvement:
While our current time constraints did not allow for a full functioned messenger system or the building of a locations and events database, these are both areas of expansion needed prior to beginning development and shipping the end product. We also need to flesh out our design system and iterate an iOS and desktop version of our app in order to meet people where they are throughout their day.
Features to be included or expanded in the future:
Pack and Pride: Communities focused on specific groups or breeds, common training methods, etc.
Policies and Restrictions sections on the locations and events page
A healthcare forum for issues related to healthcare costs
Hiring a staff Vet and Trainer who could moderate healthcare and behavior modification forums
Future Development
The Problem
Pet owners have difficulty exercising and socializing their pets in public settings due to fear and anxiety of unhealthy environments and untrained animals.
The Solution
The Pet Connect app allows Pet Parents to collaborate with other pet owners, which will allow for a positive and safe setting for their pets to interact.
The Impact
This project was theoretical in nature, but we mastered Figma prototyping and simple animation. My knowledge of Material Design began with this project.
Project Context
Pet Parents Unite!
Proto-persona and User persona creation, combined with user interviews showed us that
Our users were impacted by Covid through a combination of isolation and fear.
Emotional connection to pets' needs were entwined with the human need for social connection.
Many pets are being taken into public more often than in the past due to a reliance on "emotional support animals," but training expectations are not present for these animals, resulting in inconsistent behavioral expectations
Locations of note included restaurants, hotels and accomodations, and public spaces such as parks.
User Impact Statements
Fears
The user needs to find pet friendly places with good pet policies because they have a fear of subjecting her pet to untrained/aggressive animals.
Resources
User needs to connect with local and online resources which provide information on community events and locations where pets can interact safely in a controlled environment
Policies
The user needs to discover and identify policies and procedures in local businesses regarding animal restrictions because it is very inconsistent and often unpublished online.
Planning
Ideation was Brief
Time Constraints: We encountered a huge challenge at this point in our process: One of our team members obtained a new position, which took her away from our project for a few days, and my other team member was distracted as well. Because we were short on time, we independently consulted our brainstorms and came together for 1 day, in which we built our user flows and discussed options together collaboratively.
The results of our collaboration is a flow diagram. The following figure is a detail from that flow.
Execution
Different Visions, One Result
Each of us produced our own paper wireframes, and the app that we ended up prototyping was a combination of the elements of all 3. Hannah created the splash screen, I built the welcome and home screens and Adrian contributed the gallery screens. In the end, much of the prototype was a conglomerate of all of them, but I took the responsibility for the Mid-Fidelity and High Fidelity Prototypes, which my team members were not able to contribute to due to their schedules.
