The Problem

As the owner of three guinea pigs, I would witness countless examples of animals who whose physical and sometimes mental health suffered because of their owners lacked in knowledge when it came to proper pet care. This project was born out of my passion to prevent these issues from occurring, by utilising technology.

There were a lot of assumptions and possible causes, so before jumping into finding a solution, I had a lot of research ahead of me to correctly frame and understand the core problem.

Exotic pet owners become enveloped with fear and anguish when their pet’s well-being suffers as a result of the widespread misunderstandings surrounding proper pet care for that species.

Responsibilities: 

• Problem framing and validation

• Qualitative user interviews

• Quantitative surveying

• Creation of 3 personas

• Ideation session to create 4 solutions

• Interviews to determine most viable solution

• Competitor analysis

• Journey mapping

• Feature prioritisation

• Definition and design of MVP

• Information architecture

• Wireframing

• Usability testing of prototype

• Branding and design
  

The Process

During the process of validating the problem, a vision map was created for the project which outlined the measures of success for the project. User interviews were also conducted to gain more qualitative information, ensuring that the questions asked could fill out an empathy map. From all of the research, three different personas arose. 

Journey maps were created after identifying the various touch points I could target my personas with. The next step was to create a solution hypothesis and identify any new assumptions that would need to be tested. 

Exploration

It was important to go large with my thinking when brainstorming solutions. I explored many different avenues, and narrowed it down to three core concepts:

1. Pocket vet app

2. Educational facility and rescue shelter

3. Hamper delivery service

Some other ideas that floated around included quizzing owners before they could obtain a mandatory pet ownership pass, in store on boarding services for new pet owners or looking into legislation for certified labelling on food and haberdashery supplies within the pet industry. After testing my concepts to 8 members of the general public, there were some pivots to my audience and the outcome.