WalkADog
Creating dog owners community
Background
WalkADog was created as my final project (together with Guy Godron) in the mobile interaction techniques seminar, as part of my MA in HCI. If you’re a dog owner, you probably know the situation when you are not available to walk your dog, and you can’t find someone you trust to do so. WalkAdog allows nearby dog owners to collaborate and solve this challenge together.
Goals
-
Allowing dog owners to help each other
-
Providing last-minute dog walk solutions or planning ahead
-
Creating dog owners' community
Concepts
Availability
Trust
Community
Project Overview
1
Interviews
Thematic coding
Personas
2
Competitor analysis
3
Use cases
Wireframes
Prototyping
4
Moderated
user testing
Usability testing
5
Unmoderated
user testing
Usability testing
Data analysis
6
High-fidelity
prototypes
7
Unmoderated
Quantitative
Qualitative
User Research:
Interviews
In order to better understand the problem and user needs, we conduct interviews with 5 dog owners between the ages of 20-40. We asked them about their dog walk habits, challenges, and motivations.
Habits
Frustrations
Trust
Interview Findings:
Dog owners aim to walk their dogs 3 times a day, but they are frustrated about not walking their dogs enough and feel guilty about it. In order for dog owners to trust someone else to walk their dog, it has to be someone who ones a dog or at least someone who is a “dog person”, and they would like them to know their dog. Dog owners who walk another person’s dog would like to hear from the owner about the dog’s behavior before they take them.
Personas:
.png)
.png)
Existing User Story
Suggested User Story
Market Research:
In our market research, we created a perceptual map (X diagram), in order to identify where our competitors are positioned in relation to our product’s position. We examined 5 dog-related products (dog walking, petsitting, dog community, etc.) and located them on the X diagram according to the selected two attributes: proficiency and cost.
PetBacker
.png){kind=small}
Pawshake
Dogiz
Dog hero
Paway
Initial Design:
For this phase, we described 3 main use cases for the product, and created low-fidelity prototypes with our features and user flows ideas for each of the use cases, in order to perform early usability testing.
-
Find a walker for now
-
Walk someone else's dog
-
Plan a scheduled walk
Use Cases:
Find a walker
Chat
Live walk
Schedule
Qualitative Research:
After formulated our solution based on the initial research, at this phase we wanted to understand how it is perceived by our target audience. We conducted moderated usability testing with 5 dog owners, using “think aloud” technique. The participants were walk us through as they complete the following tasks:
-
Find someone to walk your dog immediately
-
Find a dog you can walk together with your own
-
Find someone to walk your dog next Wednesday
Find a walker
The participants didn’t interact with the map along the whole flow
Tried to find a walker using only the walkers list at the bottom
Profile
The profile page opens too many times along the process
Participants didn’t understand whose profile is it
Quantitative Research:
In addition to the qualitative research that allowed us to gain insights about what users think, the quantitative research allowed us to gain insights into what users actually did, and examine the product from this perspective as well. We conducted unmoderated usability testing using “Maze” platform. We performed 3 iterations with total of ~30 participants who had to perform 3 tasks similar to the qualitative research.
Participants spent a lot of time trying to find the "Close the deal" button (approx. 8 sec.)
Chat
No explanation about what is expected from the users to do - they were led from screen to screen without a “way out”
Live map
Map scale is too big, prevents sense of community and trust
Participants tried to interact with the map on the first screen when it wasn't clickable. As a result, they didn't click on the map on the following screens
Design Iterations
Based on the insights from both qualitative and quantitative user research and testing, we created high fidelity prototype of the product.
Live map
Minimized map scale "neighborhood view"
Full map interaction, clickable walkers' icon design
Differentiation between unfamiliar walkers and previously interacted walkers
Walk request
"Walk Request" screen where users can choose which actions they want to perform
Combination of icons with clear text: "approve walk" instead of "close the deal"
Lower navigation bar - reassuring, allowing users to always go back
Press to play video
.png)
A/B Testing
We focused our A/B testing on the concept of trust, and examine which type of feedback increases the trust of dog owners to allow people to walk their dogs; verbal feedback or numerical feedback (rating). We conducted the A/B testing immoderately using “Maze” platform with ~50 participants divided into 3 groups, ~15 each. The participants were shown a user profile according to their group.
Version A
Tasks:
Answer
What made you trust/distrust the dog walker you viewed?
Rate
On a scale of 1 - 5, how would you rate the level of trust you feel towards the walker you just viewed?
Decide
Check out the following walker profile and decide if you would allow them to take your dog for a walk.
Control
Version B
Rating
Version C
Reviews
A/B Testing
Findings:
The A/B testing’s results showed that the verbal review group received the highest score, both of the acceptance of the walker (87.5%) and the trust score (3.9 out of 5). This findings indicated that seeing other users' written reviews was the strongest factor to increase trust, although it takes more effort from the users to read. From the aspect of implementation in the product, the next step would be to add a survey at the end of walk and to present the reviews in each user’s profile page.
Next Steps
App
Currencies
Community
Page
Design Improvements
How should users pay/be rewarded for this service - monetary reward that is paying real money in a concept of shared economy, or emotional reward in the form of In-app virtual currency? Each has its pros and cons and needs to be user tested.
A feature that would easily show users other users they have previously interacted with, forming a visual living community that should increase the users’ ease to use the app and the trust they feel towards it and other users.
This project has been an ongoing process with many iterations in each phase, thus there is great significance in keeping on improving the product based on further research and user testing. We tested the main concept, feature ideas, and designs, but there is a need to keep testing mainly design ideas that have yet to be tested, such as friends symbols and map design.