Stepaw
Android mobile UX/UI design
Stepaw is an android native mobile app with a wearable beacon device for dog owners to monitor their dogs' health by detecting dogs' steps, tracking steps records, and managing walk schedules.
Role
- Lead designer(UX/UI)
- • User research
- • Wireframes
- • Mockups
- • Prototype
- • Usability test
- • Design library
Team
- Academic project
- 3 developers
- 2 designers
Timeline
- 12 weeks
Tools
- Figma
- Adobe Illustrator
- Photoshop
- After Effects
- Premiere Pro
- Trello
1. Problem
Dogs utterly rely on dog owners’ observations and care to keep them in good health. However, it’s difficult for dog owners to track their dog’s health 24/7.
Research shows that the equivalent of over 63.4 million American households own dogs. They need a solution to get a clear idea of their dogs’ well-being as well as set realistic goals by regularly walking their dog to keep them healthy.
2. Solution
3. Design Process
3-1. Discover
In order to understand the “why” behind the problem, collecting data from multiple resources and research methods is a must-do step.
I conducted synthesized research, survey and a focus group interview. These quantitative and qualitative research insights helped me conclude what features I needed to include for Stepaw.
Focus group interview
To listen to genuine users' pain points, 50 minutes of the focus group interview with 2 dog owners and 2 veterinarians were conducted. Although Stepaw’s target users are dog owners, learning what dogs need the most from experts’ perspectives would be valuable to empathize with dog owners.
Both parties agreed that keeping dogs healthy requires huge efforts and responsibilities when raising a dog. They suggested that monitoring the dog's exercise amount would be helpful to check the dog's health status.
Survey
The reason for the survey was to gain quantitative data to grasp general dog owners’ pain points and the trends. With 11 survey questions, I received 10 responses.
I found dog owners expect dog walking records and schedule reminders from a dog walking app, and busy work hinders them to walk a dog.
Persona
Based on the early research, I developed three personas to ensure my design process was driven by the target user’s goals and behaviours. Setting Sue as the primary persona helped me to follow users’ end-to-end experience and prioritize potential features of my solutions.
Competitive Analysis
I analyze three competitors including Fitbark, Whistle and Pitpat based on their pros, cons and features. Most solutions in the market are more concentrated on tracking dogs’ locations. So in this analysis step, I focused on their IoT connection flow with a wearable device.
Key Findings from User Research
- Having regular dog walks is directly related to a dog’s health.
- It’s hard for dog owners to recognize dog’s health problems immediately.
- Sharing dog parenting responsibilities with other family members would be more efficient when raising a dog.
- Dog owners need visual indicators to follow their dog’s exercise amount to check the dog’s health status.
- Dogs are creatures of habits, regular routines will enable dogs to keep mentally and physically healthier.
- Dog owners have difficulties managing their time for walking a dog.
3-2. Define
Based on the research key findings and hypotethical personas,
I built the point of view and refined the design challenge to the following opportunity statements.
How might we design technology for dog owners to measure their dog’s health and help to plan regular exercise?
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If I build a dog steps tracker, the app can collect dog steps data from the device automatically.
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If I show dogs’ walking steps with visual charts, users will have a clear idea of measuring dogs’ exercise and their health.
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If I remind dog owners of a customizable dog scheduler, they will be encouraged to walk a dog more often.
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If the app can support several trackers, users who have multiple dogs can manage each dog’s exercise effectively.
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If users co-parent a dog together, they can share dog owners’ responsibilities and take care of the dog efficiently.
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If I notify dog-related information to users daily, they will gain useful knowledge to raise a dog.
Solutions
1
Tracker
Connect to Bluetooth IoT beacons with Stepaw app to detect dog steps and bring the data
2
Monitor
Provide visual graphs for dog’s steps to let users to monitor dog’s exercise amount and health
3
Reminder
Customize personalised dog walking schedules with reminder settings
3-3. Ideate
Information Architecture
I conducted card sorting and created the information architecture to see how the app would be organized and labelled for the overall flow.
Lo/Mid-Fi Wrieframes & Usability Test
After I created the mid-fi wireframe, I prototyped it and conducted usability tests to validate and improve the design.
Through the 5 usability tests, I could learn target users’ behaviour, preferences
and uncover opportunities to enhance the solution.
Discoveries from Usability Tests
- Users were confused with the process of paring the paw tracker to the app.
- Users prefer to see clear indicators from each chart.
- Some of the UI elements, such as the battery, share, and dog edit are not clear.
- Users would like to have more features to interact with the app.
3-4. Mockups
Pairing the wearable device
to receive data
After users are signed in or signed up, they are asked to add a dog to explore the app more. Without a wearable device, users are still able to tour the app unlike the competitors. However, to utilize the app ideally, users are required to pair the dog step tracker to receive data automatically.
Easy to measure
dogs’ walking tendency
To get a clear idea of the dog’s exercise amount, users can monitor each dog’s daily, weekly, monthly visual records. Also, the Stepaw supports managing multiple dogs with simple user flow.
Personalize dog walking schedule
& Get daily dog news
To help dogs and dog owners to have strong bonds, the Stepaw enables users to set customized regular dog exercise plans. Also, users can check Stepaw’s daily dog news to raise the dog with enough knowledge.
Through the sharing feature,
dog owners are encourage
to co-parent
Users can share each dog’s information with their family or friends to raise the dogs efficiently.
3-5. Test
Although after lo-fi/mid-fi wireframes I conducted usability tests at the early stage to improve design solutions, I still tested with the System Usability Scale (SUS) with 6 participants after mockups. The SUS result came out with about 97. The average SUS score is 68, the result show that Stepaw’s usability performance has effective overall ease of use.
4. Reflection
This project started from my observation of my family who owns dogs. I was proactively able to empathize with potential users in creating meaningful solutions for my loved ones. This chance motivated me a lot as a Product Designer to resolve existing pain points everywhere.
Especially, It was my first project working with a wearable device. I was able to consider the interaction design between the device with the mobile app from the users’ stance. Also, on the process of transmitting the collected data to visualization, I could understand how signaficantly data design influence on communication of design.
In addition, as the lead product designer, I was handling organizing, planning the design milestone timeline with the project manager. From this role, I have learned that I enjoyed proactively communicating with other stakeholders to expand the idea further and gained a lot of holistic view of a mobile application in terms of end-to-end experience and product strategies.
