Figma
Google Suite
Airtable
Adobe CC
6 Weeks
Prototyping
UI Design (All)
Our founder lives in a New York apartment that doesn't allow animals. With 2 small children, he would love to get a pet for them, but, unfortunately, is limited to his lease. His children's experience with animals are with other animal owners, so he wanted us to create a product where an animal owner could share their real animals with the world, give personalized experiences to animal lovers, and monetize the product.
Our team of 3 set out to define a product for sharing animals. How can we create personalized experiences using other people's animals? How do we monetize this? Would animal owners sign up for something like this?
Note: this project was a journey and a lot of fun so, buckle up for a story. Click here for the TL;DR.
I joined this team midway through the project. The founder of the company contacted me, after over half of the original team left, to help complete the product. The surveys, interviews, and first iteration had been completed by the time that I arrived and the founder was not feeling confident in where the project was going. When I joined the group, I took charge of the project as there was little organization or direction. Because so many people had left, the remaining 2 members were left floundering and both had User Research backgrounds, but were not so experienced in the UI department.
In the original pitch, the founder had framed the project more along the lines of a "virtual pet renting service," which just threw the whole last group for a loop. He wanted to be able to "give" someone else's animal to his kid so he could say "look I got you a dog!" Then he mentioned putting a collar on a llama and I don't know, but my big takeaway was that he wanted a personalized experience with someone else's pet ... and money.
The interviews and surveys had all been sent out and completed by the other members of my team and looking through them, unfortunately, I didn't get much insights into what this group had learned before I got there. There was a survey answered by 16 people, but it had only 3 quantitative questions on it and was not helpful. There were interviews, but I saw no transcripts. So, there were few insights that I could work with.
The first iteration had also been completed and, frankly, I just had no idea where these other designers planned to go with the product. They had a Tamagotchi and Neopets style animal interaction game designed, but we weren't working with game developers ... so a pivot was needed.
Like an Uno game we needed to reverse and reevaluate. It was a hard decision, but the truth was that the developers, who were also part of this project, were not game developers. They didn't know how to create what the previous designers had designed and we were on a time crunch. So, I performed some of my own casual research based on all the new questions I had.
I threw together a couple interviews with some pet owners and interviewed the other members of my team about what they had learned from their previous research.
Because my team had worked so hard on the now failed first iteration, it came to me to pivot the project. Once you get so involved in a process and an idea, it's hard to think outside that box so my outside perspective really helped. We had some big questions that we needed new ideas to solve.
I began by looking at different social media platforms. The sharing and community aspects of these types of platforms felt like they would be in line with sharing real animals with other people. The two platforms that really jumped out at me were Cameo and OnlyFans.
I've seen Cameo around for a couple years and loved their idea of putting regular people in touch with their favorite celebrities virtually. It is obvious from all the reviews that personalized videos are much loved and a great way to connect a celebrity with their fans. Because the cameos are all pre-recorded and based off of a request sent by the user, the celebrity can rest assured that their privacy is respected and users get a direct message tailored to them.
Say what you want about their content, but OnlyFans makes TONS of money for a reason. Their billing system is comprehensive and easy to use, they offer full customization for monetizing content, and users feel like they are getting a personalized experience with the influencers.
I couldn't even find a SFW profile to use a screenshot, so, here is a reaction gif of how I felt while doing this research.
With all these successful platforms in mind, what kind of product could we make to help our founder? Clearly we were moving towards a monetized social media, but would pet owners be into that? Let's take a look.
A quick jaunt through Insta showed just how much more:
#Dog
#Cat
#babies
Note: #baby was used for everything from human babies to animal babies to someone's S.O. so no good data could come from that hashtag
The APPA reported that US pet owners spent $103.6 billion on their pets in 2020.
Statistica reported that the US baby care market was worth $67.35 billion in 2020.
In a 2016, Mars Petcare US surveyed over 2,000 pet owners about their experience with their pets and social media.
People love animals on social media. I mean, what's not to love? Look at this puppy!
👷🏻♀️
Under construction.
Click through the final product below.
