Labels

Major Project 1/PetNav: Pet Care Service Finder Platform, User Research, Ideation & Proposal

3/2/2025 - 23/3/2025 / Week 1 - Week 7
Janice Marie Eng Chia Hui /0361521
Major Project 1/Bachelor of Design in Creative Media / Taylor's University 
Major Project 1/ User Research, Ideation & Proposal

Table of Contents:

  1. Instructions
  2. Task
  3. Feedback
  4. Reflection

Instructions


Task

Timeline Breakdown:

  1. Discovery (Week 1 -3):
    • What is PetNav 
    • Problem Statement
    • Project Aim & Objectives 
    • Target Audiences
    • User Research 
  2. Define (Week 4 -5):
    • User Persona
    • User Journey Map 
    • Proposed Solutions
  3. Ideate (Week 6 -7)
    • Information Architecture 
    • User Flow
    • Brand Guidelines 
    • Visual References 
    • Sketches
    • Concept presentation

Week 1

This week we formed groups of 4. My group consisted of:
  1. Janice Marie Eng Chia Hui (Me)
  2. Alyssa Aisyah Binti’Arief Nasran
  3. Chooi Cheng Yue 
  4. Chong Hui Yi
After forming the group, I created a WhatsApp group and added all my group members. Following that, we tried to generate a list of potential ideas. At this stage, we were just putting anything down regardless or not if the idea was feasible. 

Following that, I asked the group to research topics that were of interest to their interest. I decided to research 'Farmers having too much animal manure'. We set a deadline to have the research done by Friday.

Additionally, Cheryl created a Google Meet link with her Google account as she has a pro account. 

Figure 1.1 Potential Ideas Listed down by the group (23/3/25)

For my research topic, 'Farmers having too much manure', I investigated why they have too much manure and potential solutions for them. This is what I concluded from my research:
  • Excessive manure because: Rise of human population leads to an increase of livestock, which then increases the manure produced.
  • There are 2 types of fertiliser, organic and chemical. Chemical fertiliser leads to pollution while organic fertilizer is more sustainable.
  • There is also an increase in food waste due to the rising population.
  • The idea: connecting farmers with excessive manure or populations with excessive food waste to organic fertiliser companies.
Figure 1.2 Dip Stick research of manure and fertiliser industry (23/3/25)

Surprisingly, my other 3 members all researched about pet-related topics. And in the end, we decided to do a pet care-related topic. Following that, I asked the members to do some market research on the pet industry.

Figure 1.3 Everyone's research (23/3/25)

Week 2

For the market research, I was looking into 'What is Pet Care'. A quick summary of what I found out is there there is different types of pet care which include:
  • Lifestyle-related pet care
  • Pet care when you are travelling 
  • Pet care for saying goodbye to your pet
  • Medical pet care
Figure 1.4 My Pet Care Market Research (23/3/25)

Figure 1.5 Everyone's research (23/3/25)

Following that, we were confused about what to actually focus on because the topic of pet care was very large and broad. So to help guide us a bit, we decided to send out a short survey to pet owners to identify what they actually wanted. It was a short 5-question survey and the questions asked are listed below.

After a short analysis of the survey, we managed to identify what pet owners wanted:
  • Pet care service tracker
  • Pet care guide
  • Accessible vets/vets consultation
Some challenges that they face are:
  • Too busy to play with their pets
  • Health issues
  • Concerns about the increased pet care services and items
From there, we decided to focus the project on a pet care service finder platform. With that decided, we generated our interview questions and started the interviews. We assigned each person to interview different people which were:
  • Hui Yi: 3 pet owners
  • Alyssa: 2 pet owners & 1 vet
  • Cheng Yue: 2 pet owners & 1 pet hotel
  • Janice (me): 2 pet owners & 1 pet groomer 
Survey Questions by Janice Eng

Figure 1.6 Survey analysis (23/3/25)

Week 3

For my interviews, I actually interviewed 4 individuals. I started my analysis by transcribing my interviews. From there I summarised it some more in the miro board before coming up with my affinity diagrams. 

You can find my interview audios here: Link.

 
  Interview Transcription by Janice Eng

A summary of my individual analysis is:
  • Challenges faced: Concerns about pets' health, busy schedule and cannot care for pets, concerns about price, confusing price list, long waiting times
  • How they arrange for appointments: Bookings & Walk-ins
  • What they need: Online consultations/Follow ups, Friendly caretakers
  • How they find pet care services: Reviews, Google, Social Media, Word-of-mouth
After we finished our individual analysis, we compiled all the data together to see our overall insights. Here is what we managed to conclude from the overall analysis:

Figure 1.7 Overall insights (23/3/25)

Figure 1.8 Individual Affinity Diagram (left) VS overall Insights Affinity Diagram (right) (23/3/35)

Additionally, we polished up the slides for submission this week. We actually prepped for a presentation with our supervisor, however, he said to just keep it casual, so we did. 

Figure 1.9 Final Slides from Week 1 to 3 (23/3/25)

Week 4

During week 4, we met up to come up with our user personas. We decided to come up with 3 personas which were:
  • Pet owner who wants to bring their pet to their groomers
  • Pet owner who wants to bring their pet to the vet
  • A vet. 
Figure 1.10 Generate User Personas (23/3/25)

After the user personas were generated, I split the group members into 3 groups to generate one journey map for each of our personas.  We managed to generate some user personas. However, it seems that we all had different ideas on how the journey map should be. While I focused on how the user would find our platform, the other focused on how the app would work. 

After discussing it with the group, I went over the journey map again. This time I did it like this:
  • 3 user journey maps of our 3 users persona without our solutions 
  • 2 journey maps (1 for pet owner + 1 for vet) of their experience with our solutions
Figure 1.11 Vanessa's (pet owner bringing pets to groomers/boarding) experience without solutions (23/3/25)

Figure 1.12 Lily's (pet owner bringing pets to vets) experience without solutions (23/3/25)

Figure 1.13 Ahmad's (vet) experience without solutions (23/3/35)

Figure 1.14 User journey maps (pet owner + pet care service provider) after solutions (23/3/25)

Week 5

During week 5 we were still working on our user journey map. This time we were grouping our ideas into categories to see our main themes. In the end, our key themes are:
  • Convenience 
  • Community 
  • Pet-ivities (Pet activities)
Additionally, we compile our progress into slides for a progress check.

Figure 1.15 Key themes (24/3/25)

Figure 1.16 Week 1 - 5 Progress (24/3/25)

Week 6

This week we focused on making the user flow chart and performing card sorting. For the flow chart, we listed all the screens and functions of each of our features first so that we could properly put together the flow chart.

Additionally, the flow chart was done separately first before combining all of it together to make it easier for us. 

Following that, the card sorting was initially done on a website called UXberry. But unfortunately, they had a limit to how many people could answer the card sorting. In the end, we decided to manually sort our cards in Figma. 

Figure 1.16 Screens and functions of each feature we had (24/3/25)

Figure 1.17 Individual User flow (left) VS Combines user flow (right) (24/3/25)

Figure 1.18 Card sorting done in Figma (24/3/25)


Figure 1.19 Card sorting Matrix (left) VS Card sorting results (right) (24/3/25)

After getting down all the logistics of our app flow, we moved onto the design stage. For this week, we decided to sketch out some lofi of the app's interface. Initially, we all did the sketches for the homepage, but we decided to switch to each person sketching for a different flow in the end. Below are the flows each of the members did:
  • Huiyi: Booking a pet care service user flow + coming up with some ideas for the design guidelines
  • Chery: Setting up an account for a pet care service business
  • Alyssa: Calling for a pet taxi
  • Janice (me): Planing a personalised pet date with our randomiser 

Week 7

This week was focused entirely on the design direction/guidelines, sketches and presentation. As mentioned, my sketches were supposed to be on the personalised pet date flow. I referenced personalised quizzes like the MBTI quiz to see how they generated the flow. 

Additionally, I also sketched the 'booking a pet care service' flow as we initially had planned to only sketch that flow. 

Figure 1.20 Plan a personalised pet date with our randomiser flow var 1 (left) VS var 2 (right) (24/3/25)

Figure 1.21 Scrapped Booking a pet care service user flow (24/3/25)

Moving onto the design guidelines, we had a hard time deciding the font and colour choice. We knew that we wanted to use blue and yellow as our colour choice (because dogs and cats can see these colours) and have a san serif, rounded font, but we didn't know which to pick.

So we did some exploration of the colours and font in Miro and then brought it over to Figma before deciding what colour and font choice was the best. 

Figure 1.22 Colour exploration in Miro (left) VS Figma (left) (24/3/25)

In the end, we managed to decide on our design guidelines. You can view our full design guidelines here: link.

After deciding everything, we compiled it all into slides for our presentation on Wednesday. We rehearsed beforehand to make sure we fit into the 12-minute time limit (which was useless, as we were asked to skip most of our slides). 

After the presentation, we came home and amended our competitor's analysis based on the feedback given. 

Figure 1.23 Design Guidelines (summary) (24/3/25)

Figure 1.24 Presentation day (left) and team dinner after presentation (right) (24/3/25)

Figure 1.25 Updated competitors analysis (24/3/25)

Final Submissions

Google Drive Link (Task 1 + 2 Slides + Interview recordings): 

Final Project Presentation Slides:
Group 8_PetNav_Leslie Cheung by ALYSSA

Miro Board Link:

Feedback

Week 1:
From Dr Wong:
  • Since you have already shown that there are problems within those areas (pet travel, pet disease, etc.) you can leave them
  • So it seems that right now you have a total of 2 ideas (after combining the pet ideas). You can decided if you want to pick one from the 2 or explore more options.
  • However, please reach out to your supervisor and confirm with him first.
Week 2
From Nedu:
  • Pet service, and vet can be included to pet service (combine these two)
  • Add in description in the project development
Week 3
From Mr Razif:
  • You want to have the reflection on what are the possible answers like why would they use it or why wouldn't they use it
  • Questions for interviews or surveys should not have a yes or no answer
  • The question has to be in phases or section
  • Affinity diagram is to match concerns
  • How might we is a driving question to help get ideas, its a structure way in a broad sense
  • What makes your app special
  • If you want to propose or get people to come, state what is special about the selling (Ex: My restaurant sells nasi lemak with chicken all day)
Week 4
From Nedu:

  • Not innovative enough. AI navigation? Based on current traffic and live location.
  • Pet Tinder: A fun idea, good for pitching.

Week 5
The lecturer missed the consultation time

Week 6
From Nedu:
  • Don't say GPS, research APIS (google map search API) that can find shops around u
  • Minimal homepage
Week 7
From Dr Wong:
  • You can try exploring overseas platforms that have the same functions as yours. You can add it to your competitor's analysis.
  • You can consider working with actual pet stores
  • The outcome has to be 4 different end product
From Mr Shamsul:
  • Make sure the user reviews are valid
  • Have some indicators that the pet centre is very good/verified
  • Editing the problem statement to say user reviews are unreliable
  • Only 1 or 2 features in the key feature section
  • Or you could customise the key feature sections like touch and go
  • Or use an algorithm to edit the key features based on your search history like Netflix
  • The card sorting feature should be understandable we can redo it to find out our key features section
  • Simplify the 'planning a date with your pet' term
  • Feature in your home screen should not be too much
  • Find out the key features of card sorting

Reflection

What I learnt:
  • I learnt how to manage a team this semester
  • I learnt how to measure the success of our project 
  • I learnt some firsthand experience on how an internship would be (little supervision cause supervisors are busy, ask for help or die type of situation)
What I observe:
  • You must have thick skin and a lot of balls. We can't be afraid to ask our friends or other lecturers for help. Design is a very subjective thing, and it is important to get opinions from multiple sources to see if there is a trend.
  • Observing, yet again, that everyone had different design directions. It is so very important to make sure we discuss thoroughly within the group to make sure we are all on the same page. 
I think overall this module really taught me what they mean when they say 'In university, they won't spoonfeed you'. It really showed me how to generate my own goals to measure the success of the project work. I think this is a good skill to have overall. However, I am still paying a tuition fee, so, unfortunately, I felt like I didn't get the most of my tuition fee this semester. 

Visual representation of me and my team trying to figure out if we are headed in the right direction or if we are completely off course

Comments

Post a Comment