PetCare helps pet owners take better care of their pets' health.
The platform offers a variety of doctors, booking appointments, and storing medical records in one place.
I created two workflows for this mobile-first website: finding a vet and leaving a review.
The first flow is part of PetCare's business core, while the latter is paramount to building a trustworthy community.
Finding the right vet is difficult; pet owners can’t always find one that checks all their boxes, so they often feel they must compromise.
Booking appointments depends on working hours and is usually done by phone.
Having multiple pets means that tracking their health can get tricky.
As the platform targets pet owners, it was essential to understand their pain points and frustrations in finding a good vet, their definition of a good vet, how they make appointments, and how they keep track of their pets’ health.
Analysing the pet ownership landscape in today’s US led me to realise that while the rising cost of living is inevitable, I can help pet owners navigate difficult times by offering easy access to high-quality medical care for their pets.
Online research can only get you so far.
Speaking to pet owners helped me understand how they approach pet health.
I talked to people whose pets have varying degrees of health - from life-long illnesses to temporary discomforts and total health - asking questions such as:
These questions helped me gain insights into diverse situations, ultimately shaping my understanding of their health management habits.
Once I completed all interviews, I used affinity mapping to group topics, themes or patterns and observe the most common ones. This step was crucial and informed my decision regarding the direction of the platform.
In this case finding vets based on individual needs was the most important aspect, followed by the ease of booking appointments and storing medical records.
The research phase was vital for understanding user behavior, habits, and tendencies. As a result, based on varying degrees of pet health, I created three personas, each with their needs and goals.
Making sure that I am looking at the right problem is a mandatory step in the design workflow. These were some of the questions that helped me focus my thought process:
The answer to all these questions was PetCare, a platform where people can easily find vets and book appointments.
Planning the overall business strategy and the features of this platform brought up some technical questions and potential scenarios that would put the platform's usefulness to test:
With all this in mind, I decided on the key features that would solve most of the issues:
I created the sitemap with an intuitive and structured approach that would offer the user easy navigation throughout the platform. Based on this, I defined the user flows, and the task flows.
Task flows show what happens from the business perspective when a user lands on the website. Building task flows helped me create wireframes for the 3 flows logically and without dead ends.
Once the key features and the website structure were established, I designed storyboards to illustrate the user experience in specific contexts.
I then went on to design low-fidelity wireframes.
The branding started with an inspirational mood board. This was the starting point which helped me determine the brand values and the upcoming decisions regarding user interface design.
I created a design system from scratch to include all the elements of the platform - buttons, cards, colour codes, fonts etc. This system helped me keep all elements in order and reduce any potential mistakes.
The next step was finding images that suited the website’s topic, values and overall vibe. I wanted the platform to be a friendly, joyful, and helpful place for pet owners, so it was important to find imagery that would reflect these feelings. I opted for colourful illustrations which brought the design to another level.
As mentioned prevously, I created high-fidelity wireframes for two flows: searching for a vet and leaving a review.
The second flow incorporated a separate subflow - signing up, as the user would be prompted to sign up for an account to be able to leave a review.
Below, you can try out the final version of this project's interactive prototype.
I ran usability tests to:
Reached the success screen
Task completion
Time to task complection
Ease of use (scale from 1-5)
Although there is still a lot of work left to do, it was vital for me to establish the basic flow of the website. Looking for a vet and signing up to leave a review are the main actions I wanted my designs to showcase at this point.
