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Overview

INTRODUCTION
Project Overview
Adopt a Rescued Friend, a Houston-based animal shelter that helps abandoned animals find forever homes, needs to modernize its website with a clean aesthetic and user-friendly interface to facilitate the adoption process easier for future pet owners.
MY ROLE
Collaborate with 3 UX/UI team members with a contribution to
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User research
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Definition-ideation
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Prototyping
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User testing
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Visual design
TOOLS
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Figma
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Photoshop
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Slack
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Google Suite
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Canva
TIMELINE
3 Weeks (Part-time)
The solution
​Introducing a new design that streamlines the administrative process and assists both potential pet owners and stakeholders find a perfect match quickly
Design process

EMPATHIZE
Understand the problem
Identifying the problem spaces and analyzing UI and heuristic evaluation regards to its effectiveness, relevance, and usability of the contents
Empathize

City Problem
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Many homeless pets in the city of Houston
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Covid-19

Organization Problem
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Adoption process is too long
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Negative experiences when adopting

User Problem
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Wants to help the homeless pets but has limited time
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Don’t know where to start when want to adopt one

Current Website
Research key takeaways
Takeaway 1
User gets lost while browsing the website
Takeaway 4
User cannot filter results to find a specific pet
Takeaway 2
The three navigation and search bars are difficult to use
Takeaway 5
The options to adopt are not clear
Takeaway 3
​User cannot easily find more pictures of the pets
Takeaway 6
The pet images are too small
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Discover user insights
Gathering insight information from stakeholders and performed five zoom interviews and Instagram surveys, receiving over 280 responses from people ranging in age from 18 to 45
Stakeholders interview findings
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Trying to get as many animals adopted as possible
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Process takes way longer than expected because the adoption form is difficult to follow
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They get a lot of questions from people about how to fill out the form
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Don’t have the time or skillset to make the website look better

I'd like to find homes for our dogs as soon as possible, however our adoption form and animal search are both terrible! The adoption search has no filters and is impossible to see the different types of animals easily
Interview and survey takeaways
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The majority of users are considering about adoption but don’t know where to begin
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Users prefer to see a pet in person because they want to see how it interact with people
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Users look for size, breed, and personality
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Users expect to see pictures, descriptions, stories about animals when they search online

DEFINITION
Our approach
To enhance the content structure and aesthetic, we took 3R approaches: redesign, reorganize, and reduce
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Redesign website to improve site’s appearance
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Reorganize site map and contents
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Reduce the lengthy process of adopting a pet
Definition
User persona

Problem Statement
Samantha Smith, a single and energetic female needs information on an animal's personality and traits on AARF so that she can wisely choose an animal that suits her life
IDEATION
​Building a new structure and visual design
Conducting 8 card sorts to create a new sitemap then plotting out a functional user flow. The design concept is straightforward and easy to apply for adoption as well as presenting the pet personality through videos and photographs to future pet owners in order for them to experience a stronger connection
Ideation
Sitemap

Userflow
Getting Pre-approved to Adopt Phase

Storyboard

Low-fi Wireframe
Wireframe

User Testing
PROTOTYPE
Prototyping and User Testing
​The low-fidelity wireframe emphasized on structural elements that would make the redesign accessible and functional. Then we developed it into a mid-fidelity wireframe and set usability testing by giving the users three tasks to complete
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Can the user use search filters?
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Can the user set an appointment to meet a pet?
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Can the user fill out the pre-approved adoption form and meet Milloh?
Mid-fi Wireframe and Test Results

Style Guide

High-fidelity Wireframe

CONCLUSION
Reflection and Future Opportunities
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Our first time using pictures with no backgrounds and using GIF’s to represent videos
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Learned a lot about using advance components and variants for prototyping
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This project challenged us from a visual design perspective, and it made us realize how much we love this process
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Learned a lot from each other in the design process and how we executed tasks
Next Step
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Further research to create cat profile pages
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Set up online meeting feature
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Create a design for tablet sizing
Prototype
Conclusion
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