PETCARE
A mobile app that connects pet owners with veterinarians in order to provide pets with better care
THE PROBLEM
Pet owners do not have a way to communicate with their pet's veterinarian outside of clinic visits, which may lead to a host of problems for their pet's longterm wellbeing
The owners of the veterinarian clinic my team and I worked with were concerned that most of their patients' owners only brought them to the clinic for emergencies, and overlooked small symptoms that could indicate a larger problem. However, as much as they would love to treat all of these pets in their clinic, there just aren't enough hours in the day for them to do check ups on every animal that showed signs of possible unwellness. Not to mention the fact that not every problem necessitates a visit, such as simply switching a pet's dietary recommendations.
PetCare aims to provide a solution to these issues - a way to communicate with pet owners outside of the clinic and take a more preventative approach to treating pets while not overworking their staff.
HIGH LEVEL TIMELINE
Semester long project
USER GOAL
To communicate with their pet's veterinarian in order to ask questions and receive information, suggestions, and other materials
BUSINESS GOAL
To inform pet owners, communicate preventative treatment measures, and lessen the need for owners to bring nonurgent cases to their clinic
MY ROLE
Product Manager, UI Designer, and Developer
Over the course of this 4 month long project, I played multiple roles.
As product manager, I was in charge of setting and assigning the tasks for each agile sprint based on what the product owner's feedback on our progress was that week.
In my role as UI designer and developer, I worked alongside the other developers in my team to build the front end of our website and make it look as polished as possible, while simultaneously working with the back end developers to make sure it was functioning as expected. Not only that, but I was in charge of creating the presentations of our current app screen designs, so that we could show them to our stakeholders at weekly meetings and receive feedback.
BREAKING DOWN THE PROCESS
Designing and developing the PetCare app from scratch was a tough balancing act, but with our team's use of agile methodologies and frequent meetings with stakeholders, we were able to deliver a great final product
After choosing to take on this project, my team and I began work by deciding to use agile methodologies to divide up our semester into 7 two week long sprints.
As product manager, I set tasks for each sprint and assigned them to the other members of our team at our sprint planning meetings on the first day of each new sprint.
Our first sprint was focused on discussing stakeholder's requirements and core features they wanted included, which allowed us to see the bigger picture in order to set our own smaller sprint tasks moving forward. Besides the discussion of what the stakeholders' wishes were for the final product, the design branding and the platforms we chose for building the app weere also discussed and decided on. The rest of the sprints were spent developing in tandem with designing the implemented features
Throughout the whole process, we stayed in constant communication with the product owners - receiving their feedback and keeping them up to date on our progress
Finally, the end of the semester came along and we sent in our final deliverables to the product owners and to our juniors for them to continue to improve or create features on the app we didn't have time to work on
KPIS TO LOOK OUT FOR
Task completion rate
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Time on task
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Conversion rates
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TITLE OF THE CALLOUT BLOCK
LESSONS LEARNED
What could be improved upon in future iterations
Given the limited time our team was given to both develop and design the PetCare application from scratch, there was much that could be improved on by future teams.
For example, in addition to needing to refine the function and design of the features we already implemented, there was one important feature we were unable to complete by the end of the semester: the chat feature. Due to the complexity involved in developing this feature, we were unable to support chat conversations between veterinarians and pet owners in-app. This is something that can hopefully be coded by future teams, especially since it will really make it easier for vets to communicate their pet's care more effectively than through the diet and prescription logs we implemented.
But overall, despite some things needing to be improved, the goals and main task features for this months long design solution were met, and the feedback received from the product owners was very positive. Thus, both users and the product owners' veterinary clinic should benefit from the PetCare app design.