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Why BarkBox?
With the rise of new parent pet ownership, it’s time for an innovative and new way to teach you pet.
Role: UX Designer
Scope of Work: User Research, Usability Testing, User Interviews, User Interfacing, Sketching, and Wire framing
Duration: 80 hours
Challenge
Helping dog owners understand the importance of training and how it can be used to communicate with their pet.
Solution
A user focused app that uses an upbeat and modern AI to be able to train, communicate, and understand your pet. This interface uses videos, related articles, and innovative AI to help bridge the communication gap between humans and dogs.
The Process
A little background
Like many others during the pandemic, I got dog! She is one of the sweetest dogs and such an amazing friend to get through these crazy times with. When I got her, she was about 4-5 months old and I missed so many of her foundational milestones that impacted her when it came to training, socialization, and health.
Understanding the Pet Market
In order to understand how I would be able to competitively position my BarkBox feature, I decided it would be important to look at the current market trends.
Market Trends
While retail stores have seen a slow increase in buying, the online pet market has nearly quadrupled since 2013
— Meyers, H. (2021, September 29). Current trends in pet spending 2021-2022. American Kennel Club. Retrieved March 17, 2022
Millennials make up the demographic containing the most dog owners, although as Gen Z members come of age more of them are acquiring dogs.
— Meyers, H. (2021, September 29). Current trends in pet spending 2021-2022. American Kennel Club. Retrieved March 17, 2022
The number of U.S. households that have at least one dog increased to 54% in 2020 from 50% in 2018.
— Meyers, H. (2021, September 29). Current trends in pet spending 2021-2022. American Kennel Club. Retrieved March 17, 2022
Pet supplies are a leading industry category in the United States, with sales of approximately 4.54 billion U.S. dollars and positive sales growth of 2.7%.
— Pet industry trends, Growth & Statistics in 2022 and Beyond: Unleashing your ecommerce pet marketing strategies. Common Thread Collective. (n.d.). Retrieved March 17, 2022
After researching current market treads, I decided to conduct my competitive analysis and analyze the usability and UI of existing pet apps through this new lense. During this, I found:
There was tendency to only focus on in person training options.
In these apps, there was a focus on providing enrichment for your dog.
Usability ranged from rudimentary to highly complexed.
Real World Test
I wanted to better understand what in-person training looked like verse online training. I decided to conduct field research with my own dog, Whiskey, to truly understand what makes the two different. Going into this, I wanted to know:
How do people train their pet in real life?
How can pet training incorporate AI?
What problems were other pet parents facing while training their dog?
![Screen Shot 2022-04-16 at 5.20.26 PM.png](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/620355791929117f1f66f57e/3c4688ae-f059-46e0-865a-df67af54c308/Screen+Shot+2022-04-16+at+5.20.26+PM.png)
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User Interviews
After reviewing my insights and research, I created a guided conversation for me to understand my users perspectives, needs, and pain points. I conducted 5 remote interviews to understand how people decided to use their free time to focus on their pets and training them.
My Findings
Across every generation, “pet parenting” looked a little different. During my interviews, one of the things I noticed was the joy and happiness that came from my user when speaking about their pets. People look at their pets as an additional part of their family but more importantly as an extension of themselves. By being able to train their pet users would be able to then in turn be able to bond with their pet.
Persona
After I finished conducting my research and interviews, I shifted my focus to create a persona that encapsulated my findings. With this persona, I’m able to stay focused on my target user and find creative solutions to dog training.
Game changing moment
Rather than having an app that only focuses on training your pet, users want an app that teaches them how to effectively communicate and understand their pet.
Addressing frustrations by providing solutions
To help guide my work, I revisited my users frustrations to create needed solutions by:
Creating a feature that is easy to use for both old and new pet parents.
Understanding what would be the best way to make training easy to understand for the user and the dog.
Redefining what/how pet training will look like for the everyday pet parent.
What will the user do?
During my interviews, participants stated that they wanted to be able to set their own goals for their pup. In this user flow, I wanted users to be able to have a easy onboarding and end goal in mind.
Bringing it to life
When I was sketching my designs, I made a priority to highlight features that users felt would bring the most value to this app. I also made it a point to correct design patterns that needed to be tweaked during my competitive analysis.
Feedback: The Unspoken Hero
My work and solutions only make sense if the user finds value in them. In this stage, I create mid-fidelity wireframes to conduct a usability test with participants from my user interviews. During my testing I noticed:
Users enjoyed how the task flow worked to create a simple solution to a daunting idea
Functionality and ease of use for the app was noted from all users
Small changes to the “command screens” were needed to help users understand the original flow more
BarkBox Mid-Fidelity Wireframes
Going from idea to reality
I became interested in creating this app because there were so many animals being returned to the shelter once the pandemic started to slow down. I felt that creating an app that allowing pet owners the ability to better train their pet would help reduce this.
I wanted to ensure this feature worked along side the existing UI kit while keeping the fun, playful, and upbeat vibe the BarkBox app has created.
Understanding my target audience
For this round of feedback and usability testing, I decided to bring together 4 new dog owners with varied experience in dog training and dog ownership. During the testing, I provided each participant with my high fidelity prototype and prompt in hopes of creating a real world experience for my users and to gather feedback on what they liked or disliked. During the usability testing, participants shared:
They enjoyed being able to pick and choose how they wanted to be able to guide the training of their dog
Users loved how fun, playful and interactive the feature felt for them.
There was a little confusion on what parts of the app users should focus on. Screens could be combined in order to create an easier point A to B for users.
Learning Lesson
During my usability testing, I learned that dogs and how each owner wants to train their dogs can be a very complicated process. This feedback provided me with a greater opportunity to customize each user experience and created the opportunity for me to learn more about dog training and its best practices.
Using feedback to create iterations
Using the feedback provided to me during the usability testing, the following were the priority revisions I made for my app feature.
Problem
When getting directions on how to train your pet, users assumed that there would only be one screen verse being prompted to read a step by step guide.
Solution
Combine both screens so the user has one place to access all of the best practices and step by step guide.
Problem
Users said the AI screen felt clunky and were unsure if they would be able to know when their dog was in the right position for the command.
Solution
Change the layout of the screen to feel more modern and fresh while allowing the phone to speak to the user using vibrations and color to signal a job well done.
High- Fidelity Solutions
Getting to know my user goals.
No two dogs are the same, neither are pet parents. In order to best understand what goals each user has for their pet, I developed a short and easy user onboarding to help users set their own goals and wants for their pet.
Allowing users to choose their own path
Dog training is not linear experience. What may be easy for your dog to pick up, may not be easy for the user to understand. For my main home screen, I wanted to provide the user the opportunity to be able to decide where they want to start their dog’s training. This screen also worked to provide a comprehensive list of tricks, games, articles, etc to help support pet parents on their training journey.
Creating a how to
Learning looks different for everyone, including dogs. During my user interviews, I noticed that all my users, dog owners or not, wanted to have the ability to understand how to train. I created a step-by-step guide and best practices videos to help the process.
A dog trainer with you
Users want to know if they are training their dogs correctly but that’s hard to say when there is no one around. This AI screen was developed out of the feedback I received during my usability testing and my in the field research.
Final Design
What did I create?
A simple app that helps novice and experienced pet owners train and communicate with their pups using positive and loving training techniques and practices.
Reflections
For this project, I found myself struggling to let go of my previous ideas of how pet ownership and training should look. I noticed that the more I listened to my user and individual needs, the more I was able to build a better feature the user was able to customize.
If I had more time, I would like to have another round of user testing and test this feature with more non experienced pet owners. So I could understand more of what they would need to feel comfortable training.