🗒️ Context

Traveling among pet owners is very limited because they have difficulty finding reliable pet sitters. I spent 6 weeks exploring different possibilities and developing a viable solution to this problem.

Over 60% of pet owners claim to avoid making travel plans and attending important events as they can not find reliable pet sitters.

Source: Press telegram

📝 Problem Statement

🔍 Research

Due to time and resource constraints, I started with qualitative research by preparing a questionnaire and sending it to 20 pet owners to understand their expectations of their pet sitters. Using an affinity map, I analyzed the interview findings that highlight 2 major pain points making it hard for pet owners to find reliable sitters.

1. Questionable reliability and accountability

2. Ensuring the pets are looked after properly

Pet owners have come across multiple stories of pets being mistreated, property damage, and theft, which makes pet owners feel hesitant.

Pet owners expect sitters to maintain their pet’s routines.

After discoving the major pain points I formed a question to guide my solution.

How do we make pet owners feel confident in pet sitters?

🤏Defining

☝️ Solution Proposal

For the project, most of my initial solutions were out-of-scope, but after reviewing the existing pet-sitting platform, I realized it was possible to create a superior digital solution. I then explored potential features and compiled this initial proposal based on my research.

History, Stats, and Photos

Allowing pet owners to see the history of their pet sitter along with stats and photos from previous jobs would help resolve this.

Mandatory Training

Before they join the platform, mandatory training for pet sitters would reassure pet owners and boost their confidence in booking sitters.

Instructions for sitter

A message box for pet owners to provide specific instructions, such as their pet's schedule, would be helpful for pet sitters.

These features are based on initial interviews with pet owners. They revealed that seeing a sitter's history would increase trust, as would knowing the sitter has professional pet-handling training. Pet owners also expressed a desire to write instructions for the sitter.

🤘 The Solution

Keeper: A platform for pet owners to find reliable, secure, trustworthy sitters.

💭 Brainstorming Possible Solutions

I explored various solutions to this problem and here are some ideas I came up with for the solution

Local Partnerships

Collaborate with vets and trainers to offer a more reliable and trustworthy experience to pet owners.

Working with goverment

Have a government database of vetted, verified pet sitters that pet owners have access to.

Digital platform

A platform that covers the existing market gap and provides only verified trained pet sitters.

Referrals

Relying on referrals to make pet owners feel safer by providing trusted recommendations from friends, family, or other pet owners.

✍ Visualizing proposed solution

Questionable reliability and accountability

Solutions: Stats, Badges and Photos

  1. Times Hired: Shows how many times the sitter has been hired before.

  2. Satisfaction Rate: Based on the rating the pet sitter gets from previous sittings.

  3. Badges: Helps pet owners to see sitter’s credibility

  4. Tagged Photos: Shows photos uploaded by pet owners from previous sitting jobs giving insight into how the pet was handled.

Ensuring the pets are looked after properly

Solution: Message box

  1. Adding a message feature to write custom instructions for a pet’s schedule or other necessary things pet owners might wanna let sitters know about before making the booking.

🧾 Task Flow

Next, I made the key task flow of the product showing the steps the user would go through to book a pet sitter.

We sketched out the rest of the screens showing how a user would go from the initial screen of the app to successfully booking a pet sitter of their choosing.

🖵 Rest of the screens

👨‍🔬 Validating the Solution

To see how users would interact with the screens we designed, I prototyped the flow and ran 2 rounds of usability tests, each with 5 users. Users were asked to complete the process of booking a pet sitter.

This highlighted some usability issues, things I had not considered, and things that could be improved for a better user experience.

Though users completed the task successfully they did experience some usability issues mentioned below. Additionally, I also made changes to the copy and design for clarity and better usability as some users were confused about it.

🧪 About Testing

1. Before: Users were confused about the “show verified sitters only” filter since the platform only allows verified and trained sitters to be on this platform.

After: “Show verified pet sitters” was removed as it did not prove to be necessary and created confusion among users. 

2.Before: Applied filters bar confused the users.
After: Applied filters were split into cards.

3. Before: Users found the verified badge to be redundant.
After: Verified badge was removed as it did not prove to be necessary.

4. Before: Users wanted to see the total amount for booking rather than the “Hourly Rate”.
After: “Hourly Rate” was changed to “Total Cost” also helping them see which sitter fits their budget.

5. Before: Missing “Total cost” on the review booking page.

After: “Total Cost” added.

⚙️ Design System

Since this was a new product we put together from scratch, we made a design library that holds all the design elements of Keeper. The library serves as a guide for any designer who needs to design a new element for Keeper.

👀 Accessibility

To ensure my product is accessible to everyone, I used Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) guidelines by testing text color contrast on colored backgrounds, meeting AA standards for broader audience accessibility, regardless of the visual abilities of users.

The final product was tested with pet owners and pet sitters and received positive feedback. Pet owners expressed interest in using a product like this. as a method to solve their issues around booking pet sitters eventually allowing them to travel with peace of mind.

📏 Measuring Impact

Initially, I believed existing market solutions were effective for this issue. However, through research and conversations with pet owners, I discovered their flaws and gained insight into why trust is lacking in these platforms which helped me design Keeper.

📋 Takeaways

Nacho - Inspiration behind Keeper