2019/ GET AHEAD
Fighting a Sociological Issue through UX Research and Design.
About the Project:
My partner and I investigated a mutual concern of ours: Why are so many prized pets ending up in shelters?
Turns out, there's more to this than meets the eye.
Tools:
Primary and Secondary Research:
- Interviews
- Surveys
- Financial Diaries
- Usability Studies
Analysis:
- Thematic Analysis
- Exploratory Data Visualisation
Project Partner:
Ebony McCue-Shore
(Interface Designer, Graphic Designer)
Timeframe:
4 weeks
Where It All Began:
Over half of Australian pet owners openly consider their pets family members. Despite this, many loving pets are being euthanised in shelters for no fault of their own. So why exactly do they end up there, and how do we ensure that they never lose their loving home?
After reaching out to the community of pet owners, many distraught pet owners shared their stories of loss, financial difficulty and hitting rock bottom. We discovered that the reason that pets were displaced was to no fault of their own, but due to their owners being unprepared for the worst. So what's the missing link between stable pet owners and the victims of the above circumstances?
The process:
(click on each stage to jump to it)
01 / DISCOVERY STAGE:
What did my research probe uncover?
Between not realising the expenses that arise when a pet becomes sick, and being unaware of the likelihood of such an emergency happening to them, almost a quarter of pet owners do not have the savings to be able to cover a major vet bill.
A sudden injury or allergic reaction is all that it would take to put them on the verge of losing their pet to an illness or having to rehome them due to their inability to support their pet's special needs.
Further, one-half of all pet owners have no back-up living arrangements for their animals in the case of natural disasters or housing issues. This opens another significant opportunity in which a pet may need to be re-homed.
Perhaps it is the lack of transparency in pet stores or the unwillingness of pet owners to comprehensively research the husbandry requirements of an animal before purchasing it, but there seems to be a huge gap in knowledge and awareness that leads to these situations. These households are our greatest target in eliminating the threat before it becomes an issue.
What events create the problem area?
While analysing the stories of pet owners who dealt with major emergencies, a pattern emerged. These difficult situations are a uniform, cyclical process (illustrated below).
02 / IDEATION STAGE:
What can we do to help?
It all begins when pet owners first set foot into a pet store. In a combination of their own self-confidence and the romanticized view of pet ownership, they don’t consider the scale of the responsibility they are taking on. In just the first few days they are hit with the reality of how difficult and demanding owning a pet is. The temporal and financial responsibility becomes overwhelming, draining their funds through more and more unexpected costs. Soon the debt becomes too much to catch up to, they are left one vet bill away from losing their pets. This means that in an emergency, they are faced with the difficult choice between falling further into debt, or giving up their much-loved pet.
By combing through the hundreds of touching and powerful stories, we identified 4 key areas that need to be addressed to ensure this never happens again. From these areas, we created “Need statements” to help us empathise with the people we are trying to help.
In order to capture these needs in a solution, the team worked to re-frame the problem area. Visualising the problem scenario as an illness, we speculated that we could either treat the symptoms or prevent the tragedy from occurring in the first place.
Although the “preventative” approach can be achieved through changes in legislation, mandatory screenings and licencing, our team discarded these grandiose plans. What we need is a system that, if built standalone, will have an immediate impact on the problem scenario. With this in mind, we developed a financial management platform for pet owners, which we dubbed "Get Ahead".
What is the final concept?
Through "Get Ahead", your participating Vet can help you estimate the coming month's expenses and pay them off in smaller instalments, meaning that by the time the procedure is required (E.g. a vaccine), it is all paid off. Additionally, the Vet will offer to round up your payments, placing the excess money into an emergency fund they hold. This means that when an emergency does happen, the user will already have a small fund they can call upon. Leaving this money in the hands of the Vet not only protects it from being spent, but also means that if a friend or family member brings your pet in for treatment, they won't have to use their funds to pay for the appointment.
03 / TESTING STAGE:
What did we do to test the solution?
After pitching the early versions of the above concept to an audience of peers and critics, we received feedback outlining the potential downfalls and strong qualities. Each critic filled out a matrix with the format "I like...", "I wish...", "What if...". We considered this feedback, and re-worked the concept according to the suggestions. Supported by the feedback and recommendations from our peers, we created a stronger, more viable solution.
After sketching out a draft of the application structure we began developing an interface roadmap. In order to make sure that users can efficiently navigate around the platform, and quickly reach the key information, we selected a few common abstract tasks that they may need to complete. We then performed persona-based walkthroughs, where we imagined how our demographic would use the app.
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Before we jumped straight into app development, we conducted a think-aloud sprint with our team. By creating a set of user goals derived from our needs, we brainstormed the kinds of actions, tasks and inquiries the user will be able to perform through the platform.
From this structure, we were able to create a rough sketch of the information architecture, and then a simple paper prototype of our application.
04 / GOING DIGITAL:
After several rounds of usability studies, we jumped into Adobe XD to digitise our prototype, replicating the paper prototype’s drawn features. We added clickable hotspots and visual elements in place of wireframe placeholders, replicating a functioning interface, as it gave the user a continuous experience rather than a disjointed shuffling of paper drawings.
To test the usability of our mid-fidelity prototypes, we used heuristic evaluation - a method developed by Jakob Nielsen to assess the overall usability and correctness of an interface design.
We conducted one final round of mid-fidelity prototyping before moving on to the development of our high fidelity prototype. This last round of testing was vital in ensuring we had a solid information structure and an easy-to-use interface. We aimed to eliminate all remaining structural issues through this round, only leaving potential for minor tweaks and cosmetic changes. Following the previous round’s methodology, we finished our last round of mid-fidelity prototype testing heuristic evaluation.
With the high fidelity prototype ready, we ran one last set of testing. In order to get the most out of our testing session, we used both the think-aloud protocol and heuristic evaluation to assess the interface. Luckily, besides small cosmetic changes, the app behaved perfectly in the hands of both users.
05 / FUTURE WORK:
What are the next steps??
In the future we see our solution expanding as a new standard by which vet bills are paid. In order to make a holistic, unified solution, this app would benefit from partnering with a custom-created vet-managed platform. This will make the payments seamless and unify the process into a smoother, more cohesive experience. Additionally, it will allow universal access to the emergency fund in all vet practises. To further ensure that no pet loses a home due to financial instability, pet owners would benefit from being able to access their emergency fund in pet-oriented retailers.
As suggested by one of our users, integration with existing on-demand pet food services and timed reminders would add utility and encourage regular use of the app. The next proposed feature is the ability to add food, toys and other pet-related expenses into the app, allowing the pet owner to manage all expenses related to pet ownership.