My Goal

As the only designer in the design sprint, my goal was to simply trust the process and see how it can help me come up with a solution. Since it was my first time executing a design sprint, I was excited to see what I could produce under the strict time constraints. My learning points are highlighted using the lightbulb icon.

The Problem

People living in cities struggle to find the right dog to adopt due to issues related to:

• Living spaces
• Work schedule 
• Transportation
• Other city distractions

Which leads to the question:

The Solution

A website that lets you find the perfect dog using filters and attributes.

Advance attributes include: Social, Behavior and Energy Level to find dogs that are good for city living.

There is an in depth profile of the dog, with videos and multiple pictures to help the user establish an emotional connection.

Understand

Day 1 was all about understanding the problem. While reading the design challenge brief, I made note of what CityPups’ goals and their solution constraints were.

Understanding the goals gave me a good idea on what results to expect and the constraints helped me envision the what the UI will look like visually. 

Next, it was time to move on to user research synthesis. I really wanted to employ the technique of making high-impact design decisions, so it was critical for me to key in on what users really needed.  

Research Synthesis

When synthesizing user interviews, I discovered two themes.

Solution Mapping

Keeping these themes in mind, I came up with three solution maps. The maps focus on making sure users can find a dog that fits their lifestyle and once they did, it should be easy to move forward with adoption.

• The first mapping personalizes the experience of finding a dog using a questionnaire that asks users about their lifestyle and preferred dog attributes.  Personalization can be important in making users feel heard.
• The second mapping uses a quick filter by location. Users then have additional features to further find the right dog. Giving users search autonomy can help them feel more in control of the process.
• The third mapping is similar to the second but without the quick search by location. This one seemed the least likely to be considered.

Sketch

Lightning Demos

For the lightning demo, I picked two major pet adoption sites and one pet shelter site to capture good ideas from. 

Why I picked it

It’s a well known website for adopting pets and has a more modern UI. I assumed it would have decent features for filtering. 

What I liked

• Quick filter by pet type and location
• Numerous filtering options
• Adoption process for shelter shown
• Seeing the dog's distance from my location

Why I picked it

Another well known website for adopting pets and looks like it has a huge database of pets.

What I liked

• Videos of dogs
• Link directly to adoption forms
• Seeing the dog's age listed on thumbnails 

Why I picked it

A specific pet shelter might know more about their dogs' personalities

What I liked

• Very long list of dog attributes
• Sorting feature
• Searching by name or Id

The lightning demos really helped me pick out features from competitors that I wanted to incorporate into my own solution when doing the Crazy 8s exercise. 

Crazy 8s Sketch

I took every feature I liked from the lightning demos and started brainstorming solutions using the crazy 8s method.

Doing the crazy 8 sketch was fun and not having to focus on each solution being the best pushed me to generate and build on existing ideas.

Storyboard

From the Crazy 8s solutions, I felt screen 8 captured everything I wanted. It allowed users to find dogs using basic requirements like size, age and breed, while also having advanced filtering with attributes. It also seemed like it had the highest impact for finding the right dog.

Once I decided on the solution screen, I created a storyboard of the user journey from start to finish.

Storyboarding helped me envision what screens would come next due to the iterative nature of the process. It also allowed me to focus on just the necessary functionalities of the site and served as a great template to validate against when testing the user flow. 

Test

User Testing

Finally, it was time to validate the solution. I recruited 5 people who have considered adopting a dog before to run usability testing on, and see if I could answer the following questions:

• Was it easy to find the right dog living in a city?
• Do they feel confident that the dog is a good match? 
  
• Was the adoption process straightforward?

Testing Results

Conclusion and Takeaways

Given the speedy nature of the design sprint, I was surprised to see how much I could accomplish in the span of a week. While the solution didn't handle the adoption process as smoothly, I was still able to validate that it helped users find the right dog. Looking back on this whole process, these were the three major takeaways I got from it.

• Creativity over perfection. Since all the exercises were performed under strict time constraints, it forced me to think on the spot and not over analyze my designs. What resulted was unrestricted creative freedom that produced a variety of solutions.
• Go big or go home. While sketching, I was emboldened to try designs that had high impact and are over the top. I didn't worry about how it might look and the result was being able to validate a great potential solution that actually solved the problem.
• Iterating is learning. It's difficult to create the perfect product that captures every user problem. I learned that it takes iterating more than a few times to refine a product. And each iteration is an opportunity to learn more about your users.