The first step a person often takes is to do research about shelters and their available pets, e.g. via Google or their personal network. Afterwards, there will be a first contact with the shelter, either by calling them, going there directly or even reaching out via e-mail. During this first contact, the shelter workers try to get as much information on the hopes and expectations of the potential adopter as possible, either via questionnaires or interviews.

If there, the potential adopter then goes to the shelter to meet one or several of the animals he is interested in. The first contact between human and animal is essential. As the shelter workers often know their animals quite well, they can see whether there might be a good match, especially when it comes to dogs and their body language.

Additional steps after the initial meeting mainly depend on the type of animal and shelter. While in some circumstances, e.g. for rabbits or birds, the new owner can take the pet home directly, this is not as easy when it comes to dogs. Optional steps include a background check, e.g. making sure there are no known cases of animal abuse, or a home visit to make sure the new owner actually has the right environment and is equipped to take care of the dog. Most shelters also require the potential adopter to go for a walk with a dog one or multiple times and sometimes even have a mandatory cooling-off period to make sure that the new pets are not just an “impulse purchase”.

If everything goes well, the animal will then be given a final medical check, the new owner has to pay an adoption fee (from 5$ up to 500$, depending on type of animal, breed, age and shelter), sign the papers and then can finally take his new companion home.

Personas

As previously stated, both the potential adopter and the shelter worker have to be taken into account in order to guarantee the success of the new product. If certain aspects of an idea don’t align with the goals of the shelters, this might lead to them rejecting the new platform. For this reason I chose to create two personas.

When it comes to Personas, I intentionally avoid demographic details, as these don’t help me to understand or predict their behavior, but can lead to unwanted assumptions instead.

Andy (potential adopter)

“Growing up, I always had animals around me. I still remember the day I adopted Snowball, my first dwarf rabbit. And while we had fish, a turtle and two canaries, we never adopted a dog, because my mum was afraid of them. Since I never had the chance to interact with them, I also developed a fear of dogs and didn’t really know how to behave around them.

That all changed when I met Melissa. Her parents had a cute Havanese, Spotty, who was the most peaceful and relaxed dog on earth. As we lived close by, we often kidnapped him for a few days and I had the chance to learn how to give commands, go for walks and started to interact with dogs of various sizes.

So when Melissa and I moved to a new city for work a couple of weeks ago, we felt like there was something missing in our lives. As a software developer, I can work from home a lot of the time and Melissa only works part-time in a hospital. So we thought it would make sense to open our home for a dog of our own. With Spotty, I was always looking forward to our runs or walks, since it gave me a reason to get away from my laptop.

One of our first decisions was not to go to a breeder, as we were not set on a specific breed and rather wanted to save an animals life than support a system where people try to make money off of animals. Neither Melissa nor I have ever been to a shelter and we had no idea how things work there. The main thing I’m concerned about is how a dog from a shelter would react to Spotty, as he might be our overnight guest a couple of weekends per year while Melissa’s parents are traveling.

We‘ve already looked at websites for several of the shelters in our area, but we don’t even yet know what kind of dog would fit to us. Checking out different profiles and then discussing whether a dog that is only 9kg is better suited for us than one weighing 12kg feels superficial and more like shopping for new furniture, than finding a new companion. It doesn’t feel right.

I’m also getting the impression that the information on the websites is not updated regularly. And even if it were, most of the descriptions about a certain dog leave us with more questions than we had before. What does it tell me that the dog was given up by its owners? Why did they give it up? I know that I’m not getting a puppy with a blank slate, so I’d prefer to hear the real story, there’s no need to sugar-coat it. As someone who is completely new to owning a dog himself, I often feel like the descriptions of the dogs include certain terms or codewords that I have no clue about and only experienced dog owners can decipher.”

Sarah (Shelter worker)

“Oftentimes, the people who come to our shelter to look at dogs only already have their own ideas and hopes for their new pet. I wish they would just open their minds and spend more time here to actually get to know all the different personalities, instead of just finding the cutest-looking dog. What they also don’t understand, is that for shelter dogs, who are often already adults and may have a more complex history, the breed doesn’t say too much about an animal’s behavior.

That’s why I try to learn as much as possible about the people who are interested in adopting a dog beforehand, so I can lead them to the best match and what they are actually looking for. There are also certain aspects of a person’s personality and current situation, e.g. whether they have children or there are other animals in the family, which would exclude them from being a potential match for a certain dog.

It is very important to me to always be present when a potential adopter meets a dog for the first time. The way both the person and dog behave in that situation tells me so much about whether they would be a good fit. Even when visitors are just walking around our site on their own and check out all the different animals, I always have one eye on them to see how the animals are reacting to them. What these people often don’t know: the dogs are in a situation of incredible stress and behave differently inside the shelter, than they would on a walk with a potential owner or inside of a home. See that dog over there, barking at every visitor who strolls along his cage? He can be a real sweetheart and the most relaxed dog when he is with a new owner and not in a cage.”

Vision

With these insights in mind, I determined the high level goals of the new app. All subsequent steps will be based on the following ideas:

The main goal is to find the right match between potential adopter and pet . The app is supposed to imitate the role of the shelter worker by figuring out their current situation, hopes and wishes and then presenting them with a choice of matching pets

. The app is supposed to imitate the role of the shelter worker by figuring out their current situation, hopes and wishes and then presenting them with a choice of matching pets In order to convince potential adopters to choose animal shelters over breeders or to strength this existing preference, it’s key to educate about the shelters and their advantages .

. The third goal is to make it as easy and comfortable as possible for the potential adopters to actually go to a shelter and visit the dogs.

One aspect that may not be forgotten, is that I was supposed to interpret and design the app as a Google product. For this reason, I decided to not only follow the Material Design guidelines, but that I made sure my ideas are consistent with the general vision, design and branding of other Google apps.

User flow & Navigation

In order figure out how viable my solution would be, I developed a rough story in my mind on how Andy would use the app to find a new pet. As part of this exercise, I mapped out what kind of screens he would see.