Gina
Lai
An AI-powered solution for Dog Owners @NYU
milestones
14
10
interviews
1
high-fidelity prototype
Pawster
Background
Designing for Dog Owners
As a team of five in the UX course at NYU, our objective was to develop a product that enhances the daily lives of our target group—Dog Owners. This endeavor presented challenges, particularly as novices in UX, requiring us to commence the project from scratch. Notably, I played a pivotal role in brainstorming sessions, facilitating the generation of ideas that later shaped our product features.
First stage: User Research
We found that 87% of dog owners reference the interest for dog-care advice, and 53% struggle to navigate conflicting information. It is noteworthy that 60% of survey respondents and interviewees were sole-caregivers, without any prior pet-care. We concluded that dog owners need a cost and time effective way to access credible pet-care insights for their personalized needs.
Applied Methods, Tools: Online Survey, f2f Interview, 5 WHYS, How Might We, Affinity map, User need statement (POV), Personas
Second stage: Prototyping
We decided to create an AI search engine tailored for dog owners, providing reliable information and solutions for their dog care needs. The platform also allows users to easily consult and communicate with other owners, as well as receive personalized progress reports.
Applied Methods, Tools: Figma, UX writing, Usability Test, Prototyping, 10 Usability Heuristics (Don Norman), 11 Visual Design Principles
Comments
From UX Course Classmates @NYU, 2023 Fall
Reflection
Don’t Start with a Preset Solution
In Milestone 1 when we first encountered this topic, I went straightly into the problem and potential solutions, such as AI-powered pet food recommendation app, GPS-enabled app to report lost pets… However, as we kicked off our interviews, I realized that it’s important to let our users speak for themselves and that preset solutions may cause us to ask leading questions, which leads to biased information.
Use Empathy to Design Questions
On our first version of survey questions, our instructor pointed out that our sentences were too long and wordy, the selection options weren't defined clearly, and we should have put the easy questions at the end to reduce people's cognitive load and avoid confusion. The only solution was to put ourselves in people's shoes, which is exactly what we did to correct the mistakes.
