Foster Love: Animal Foster Care App

Animal foster care is a community based program in shelters that are an aid to support animal welfare. These programs help animals who are in need of a home and need someone to be taken care of temporarily once they go to forever homes. How might we enhance the adoption process of these animals that are considerate of their behavior, age, gender, and personal health?

Role
UX Researcher

Tools
Figma
Photoshop
ChatGPT
Otter AI

High Level Problem

According to ASPCA, approximately 6.5 million animals enter the animal shelter system in the United States. How might we help the pet care community in adopting these animals at a much faster and secure rate?

Discovery Stage

How research changed the project direction

This started off as a class project where we are required to research a social issue that impacts the community. I chose a topic about abandoned pets from previous pet owners. With the lack of knowledge of not being in the field, I was unable to successfully deliver the design output from desk research. From there, I decided to focus on communicating with experienced individuals who understand what could benefit the industry with my solutions.

Contextual Inquiry

Learning more about the animal welfare industry

Lack of veterinary care, especially after the pandemic

I first interviewed 4 individuals at a local adoption center called Lollipop Farms. I’ve taken down notes as they explained the lack of available vet care, high amount of veterinary costs with spay/neuter, and non-existing emergency centers around Rochester.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS:

• What is your role at Lollipop Farms?
• What are some of the common challenges people face in the animal welfare community?
• Could you tell me more about vet shortages and how did it affect the community after COVID?
• What are issues you hope to change with the use of technology?

No organizational system in foster care

I had the opportunity to interview Jim Tedford about animal welfare. Jim is an expert in the field and has presented at national and regional conferences on various animal welfare issues, organizational development, and not-for-profit management.

He mentioned shelters not having a tracking system in foster care programs. This conversation sparked my interest to find a solution from a product designer's standpoint.

CAWA, President and CEO, The Association for Animal Welfare Advancement

According to ChatGPT

"As of my last knowledge update in January 2022, I'm not aware of specific apps dedicated exclusively to animal foster care systems. However, it's possible that new apps or platforms have been developed since then to facilitate animal foster care."

Stakeholder Map

After the interview, I wanted to understand the roles for each individual in the animal welfare community.
 

New Project Scope

How can we keep track of foster volunteers and pets to 
improve the adoption process in the foster care community?

Foster Care Interviews

Interviewing individuals in the foster care community

I have scheduled interviews with two adopters, two foster volunteers, foster coordinators, and a filmmaker who was a part of the show called "Amanda to the Rescue". This gives an opportunity to use Otter AI; an AI meeting assistant that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to develop speech-to-text transcription applications.

Adopters

I interviewed specifically with adopters that got their current pet from foster volunteers. I focused on understanding their pain points in the adoption process.

Foster Volunteers

Are people who dedicate their personal time to take care of foster animals temporarily until they are adopted. We talked about how these lovely animals behave at home and whether or not the process to get into foster homes is safe for the pet.

Foster Coordinators

Individuals who are in charge of keeping track of foster volunteers and pets. I ask them questions related to communication channels and whether they have a tracking system. They said they don't, but used to, called Maddie's Pet Assistant.

Interpretation

Writing down my interview observations

I compiled all my observations into an affinity diagram, analyzing the challenges, needs, and potential opportunities for implementation through an app.

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Define Stage

User Personas

I combined all the information I got from interviews and created detailed personas that covers their background, activities, motivations, challenges, and lifestyles.

Journey Map

A guide to help me understand the adoption process from an adopter.

Competitive Evaluation 

I start exploring similar apps that solve my current UX problems and have solutions to them

Maddie's Pet Assistant

Maddie's® Pet Assistant (MPA) is a free app developed by Maddie's Fund® to provide with support after you bring a dog or cat home. Whether the user is a seasoned foster caregiver, or just adopted a first pet. The app is currently not active.

Inspirations

• Vaccination Reminders
• Onboarding process
• Tracking Pet’s Weight
• Educational resource section
• Behavioral Survey
• Profile Section

Needs improvement on

• Daily survey takes too much time to answer
• UI needs improvement
• Survey results looks complicated

ShelterLuv

A software that tracks every aspect of the rehoming process, from intakes to adoptions to community programs. Most adoption centers have been using ShelterLuv to keep track of everyone’s records. Only use in desktop.

Inspirations

• Automatic To-Do List
• Foster Management System
• Mobile Checkout
• Advanced Medical Features
• 3rd-party adoption apps

Opportunities

• Communication section: between adopters, foster volunteers and organization leaders.
• Up-to-date profile: summary of the animal to give to the adopter and foster parent
• Advanced Medical Features: Automatically update the animal’s record with vaccines, treatments, and physical exams to forward information with foster and adopters.

Now focusing on UI Challenges ✨

Ideation

Brainstorming Potential UI Solutions

Why an app?

Flexibility

Mobile apps provide greater accessibility as users can access the application anytime, anywhere, fostering a more dynamic and flexible experience.

Response Rate

This allows foster volunteers to receive instant notifications about new foster opportunities, updates on the animals in their care, or important announcements from the fostering organization.

User Engagement

Mobile apps higher user engagement rates compared to desktop platforms. This would make adopters fill out the adotoption application faster.

Analoguous Research Method

I wanted to find inspiration in the ways others have tackled similar challenges with fresh eyes.

Key Insights for Design

Pet Training App: Onboarding

This app has a good onboarding process and UI layout for pet profile.

Google Drive: File Organization

A nice organizational app where you can store documents in different folders

Communication Channels

 A messaging platform for individuals and groups to discuss and plan things together

Idea Refinement

UX Sketching

1. Log Feature

This feature serves as a reminder for check-ups and the overall well-being of pets.

Allow scheduling pet vaccinations by specifying dates and times for pet owners and foster volunteers, track the weight of pets, record and monitor veterinary visits, and keep a log of medications administered.

2. Foster Management

Allow Foster Coordinators keep track of foster volunteers and foster pets information. This will allow a better foundation to organize each indvidiuals experience, emergency contact, and pet's behavioral traits in record.

3. Personal Profile

Manage individual profiles for pet owners, foster volunteers, and foster coordinators.

Pet Owners – Profile that shows where you’re from and housing conditions
Foster Volunteers – Profile that shows availability to foster (date and time), where you’re from, and housing conditions
Foster Coordinators – Display your affiliation with the organization in your profile.

Note: Each profile includes a dedicated section for pet profiles.

4. Communication Section

Facilitate communication with people involved in the adoption process. Include a messenger-style feature with messaging and video call capabilities, along with the ability to create groups for those involved in the adoption process.

Foster Network System: Enable communication in groups to facilitate interaction among fosters.

5. Adoption Progress Bar

Display the status of the adoption process and easily communicate between the organization and foster volunteer

Schedule Appointment: Allow users to schedule appointments.
Visit the Shelter: Provide information about visiting the shelter.
Foster Meet-and-Greet: Schedule and manage foster meet-and-greet sessions.
Application: Manage the adoption application process.
Adoption Fee: Pay adoption fee last.

6. Educational Section

Provide information on settling in a new pet at home and address any questions or concerns.

Chatbot AI: similar to ChatGPT, ask any questions or concerns and get immediate response.
Training: A game map that shows a step-by-step process for training pets with new skills.
Question Survey: Similar to the Maddie’s pet assistant app, users can fill out a survey assessing the well-being of your pet, with a list of answers provided afterward.

Idea Refinement

Gathering Feedback

I presented my ideas to six potential users. They ranked several aspects of the ideas and helped discuss improvements upon each feature.

1. Do you see yourself using this feature?
2. Is it easy to understand?
3. Would you enjoy this feature?
4. Any improvement or feedback on this idea? (add icons)

Idea Refinement

Top 3 Solutions

These three solutions would best provide usability for the app based on user feedback.