Client
Venture
Sector
E-Commerce
Pet Supplies
Role
UX Research
UX/UI Design
Product Designer
Â
Duration
From June 2020
Challenge
To create and sell pet-related supplies with the purpose of substantially enriching the emotional and social engagement of pet owner communities through an e-commerce platform.
Research
To understand the type of product that could fulfil market needs, I arranged face-to-face meetings with some pet owners while walking their dogs at surrounding parks.
A competition analysis was then performed to complement the qualitative research stage and to identify additional issues and opportunities that might not have been acknowledged by the respondents.
* The sample only reached 20 participants as data saturation was reached at this point
Information synthesis activities, such as empathy maps, pain points, and personas, were constructed to organize the data and write actionable problem statements.
Findings
- Typical pet supply websites do not always offer new products, and if they do, they might not necessarily be appealing for purchase.Â
- Purchasing from some of those websites can sometimes be unreliable, and delivery times can be longer than stated.
- Not many websites offer subscriptions or options to save recurrent products for later repurchase
Design Stage
The design phase began by creating user flows, information architecture, and a site map to ensure that all pages were displayed as intuitively as possible and consistent with typical e-commerce platforms.
Paper prototypes and lo-fi wireframes were designed to represent the results from previous activities and more accurately define how users would accomplish the required tasks.
Testing
A heuristic evaluation was performed to measure usability and propose improvements. This evaluation identified several problems, particularly with visibility of status, error prevention, and flexibility of use.
Design Iteration
Iterations on the initial design were applied based on the results from the heuristic evaluation.
The e-commerce platform and the product itself were launched into the market and lasted over a year.
Design System
The design system used for this project is as follows:
Conclusions
The process of creating this venture taught me that designing products and services is not always easy and that designers should take an informed and careful approach to create great experiences.
People who have high levels of love for their pets enjoy playing with the toys or products as much as when their pets play with them on their own.
Not all users see the benefit of having toys and snacks mixed together therefore options for only toys or snacks where further pursued.