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Petfinder

Case Study

I conducted a research to see how both user's and shelter's experiences could be improved when using Petfinder.

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DISCLAIMER: ​This is a graduate student work project, the design and copy is in no way connected to, produced by, or endorsed by Petfinder.

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What is Petfinder?

Petfinder is a website and mobile app for shelters to upload the animals that need a home. Users canthen search for these animals andfilter their results by breed, age,location and more to find their perfect match.

With this in mind... 

I got to work. I created a user research plan to outline how I wanted to complete the project and identify key components I needed to touch on.

These include my objectives:

  • Understand how users currently gather more information about the pets

  • Look into any pain points users experience while searching for pets

  • Research any competitors

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My two user types:

  • Adopters are the users who are using Petfinder to look for and adopt an animal.

  • Shelters are the users who are using Petfinder to upload all of the animals that are available for adoption.

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And possible methodologies to use throughout my research:

  • Conduct Individual User Interviews - At least 3 from each user type type (3 adopters and 3 shelters)

  • Competitive Analysis - What are they doing successfully? Unsuccessfully?

  • Observation - How does the user navigate through the website? Do they have questions, problems, or “I wish” statements?

and then came up with my problem statement: 

How might we help users get as much information about the pets as possible and make their profiles look more irresistible?

I then began to research my competitors. 

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Adopt-A-Pet.com​

Website to help homeless animals find a forever home

Direct Competitor

  • Easy to use

  • A lot of information on the homepage

  • Pet profiles are very clear and give a lot of information

  • More centered around dogs and cats than anything else (design and wording)

  • Partnership with Chewy

  • Need an account to"save" pets

Direct Competitor

  • Easy to use

  • Donating is their main call to action

  • Pet profiles are very clear and well organized

  • Very well known organization

  • Partnerships with Subaru and ASPCA Pet Health Insurance

ASPCA

Website to help homeless animals find a forever home

​Pet insurance mobile app

Petco

Website and mobile app to supply pet owners with the things they need for their animals

Indirect Competitor

  • Easy to use

  • Best sellers, most popular, and deals on home page

  • Available for purchase animal pages have very corporate feel

  • Most consumers seem to be happy with Petco

  • Many had comments on the glitches and problems with the website; learn from those

Indirect Competitor

  • Easy to use

  • Deals, brands, best sellers and services on homepage

  • Available for purchase pet pages have very corporate feel

  • Adoption tool (PetSmartCharities) powered by Adopt-a-Pet

  • Customer service and the website need improvements

PetSmart

Website and mobile app to supply pet owners with the things they need for their animals

Best Puppies for Sale

Website to breed puppies and find them a home

Secondary Competitor

  • Very confusing

  • Links don't go where expected

  • Puppies on different website (but same company)

  • Home page is basic HTML

  • Pet profiles feel corporate

  • Home page layout is odd:why are colleges linked in the footer?

  • Puppy page layout issuccessful

Secondary Competitor

  • Easy to use

  • Puppies page is confusing(pictures in vertical line with one name seemingly randomly placed) news(?)on the right side

  • Outdated design

  • Hard to read font for paragraphs of text

  • Puppies and photo gallery page have a confusing layout

Luvly Acres Cavaliers

Website to breed puppies and find them a home

View full competitive analysis here.

After understanding who I was up against, 

I began the recruiting process for the interview phase. I targeted my usertypes and sent them each a set of screener questions. This consisted of a few yes or no questions followed by their contact information and, if they qualified, we scheduled an interview. Adopters had two questions: Have you ever used Petfinder? and Did you adopt using Petfinder? If someone were to answer "no" to the first question, they would not be able to proceed to the interview round.

Shelters had three questions: Does your shelter use
Petfinder? Do you upload your available pets to Petfinder?
and Do your available pets get adopted off of Petfinder?
If someone were to answer "no" to any of these questions,
they would not be able to proceed to the interview round.

I received 100% "yes" answers and was able to interview
each person that answered the screener.

Shelter Screener Questions

Adopter Screener Questions

6 interviews were conducted,

3 Adopters:

Natalie

Nat

Sammi

3 Shelters:

Town of Oyster Bay Animal Shelter - Marta

Town of Hempstead Animal Shelter - Mike

Pawsitive Possibilities Rescue, Inc. - Deborah

Both sets of users were asked a set of user interview questions to get a better understanding of their experience using Petfinder. We scheduled a google meet or phone call interview and got to work. I took notes and audio recorded, with their permission, each session and later compared each user type's answers to get a better understanding of the common successes and pain points they were experiencing.

After gathering all of the needed information, 

I was able to start my affinity map. Each user had their own "sticky note" color to be able to go back and reference my notes in more detail, if needed, at a later time. Once all of the interviews were completed, I was able to start grouping the similar stickies together.I did have a few outliers left at the end. Through the affinitization process, I had ≈60 data points. Here are the key points I found:

Adopters:

  • Looking for more consistency throughout the pet profiles they come across

  • The information they find crucial to add to a pet profile is not necessarily already listed

  • They would like to see more information about the shelters listing the animals and the adoption process

  • Filters are the most helpful feature

  • Pictures and stories/bios are the main selling points

Shelters:

  • Petfinder helps to bring in more adopters

  • They are given a template to fill out the information on the animal

  • They would like the ability to add a video of the animal playing and their previous known history

  • Overall positive experience

  • Have the same crucial profile information ideas as the adopters

  • Depends on the shelter size for how in-depth they go to find out information about the animal

Once the key points were found, 

I started a prioritization matrix from the wishlist of the adopters and shelters as well as a few of my own ideas through the pain points expressed, and discovered, through affinitization. Each person was assigned the same color, as in the affinity map, with gray representing me, providing their ideas during the interview process.

Once all of the ideas were listed, I began to sort them into the User Value vs Effort Chart, most of them falling into the High User Value, Low Effort quadrant. Even though a few of them fall into other categories, I would still like to do more research and ask users if these features would be helpful to them to determine whether or not they should be implemented.

Meet

The Situation: 

Sarah has decided it is finally time to adopt a pet.

Meet

The Situation: 

Mark has received a new animal at the shelter.

So, what do they want? 

Sarah's Epic

As an adopter,

I want to browse the animals,

so that I am able to adopt one.

 

Sarah's User Story

As an adopter,

I want to use the filters,

so that I am shown only shown ones that fit what I am capable of taking care of.

Mark's Epic

As a shelter,

I want to upload an animal,

so that the potential adopters can see and adopt the animals.

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Mark's User Story

As a shelter,

I want to upload a lot of photos and videos of the animals,

so that the potential adopters have a good understanding of the animal's personality and character.

Where do we go from here? We sprint!

Sprint 1

  • Team A continues to research the features discussed in the prioritization matrix- Low User Value, High Effort

  • Team B begins prototyping- High User Value, Low Effort

  • Team C begins prototyping- High User Value, High Effort

 

Sprint 2

  • Team A begins to prototype

  • Team B begins design and development

  • Team C begins design and development

 

Sprint 3

  • Team A begins design and development

  • Team B begins testing

  • Team C begins testing

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