Pet files project
Pet Files is a mobile application which helps pet owners track their pet’s health and book appointments with local veterinary practices. Pet Files keeps a record of your pet’s food intake, exercise, and symptoms. Pet Files’ mission is to prioritise the health of your pet along with the vet’s time and effort.
Project type
User Experience
TOOLS USED
Paper, Figma, Adobe Illustrator
DESIGN + PROTOTYPE
Created by Orla McCarney
Vets are working, on average, 84 hours per week
Veterinary Ireland
Why did I choose this Project?
We all love our pets and most of us are willing to spend a huge amount of money on food, pet insurance and medicine. The fear of losing them or spending large sums on surgeries and medication is very stressful and some people take that stress out on their local vets.
From my research, I learned that vets are overworked in the UK and Ireland. From a survey by Veterinary Ireland, I learned that vets are being overworked and the industry has a problem with work-life balance. This has lead to job posts not being filled, “23% of empty positions in Britain took more than six months to fill.”
Along with the boom of people buying pets during the pandemic, vets are left overworked, stressed, and working long unsociable hours. I think it would be an interesting challenge to design a pet health app that also made the mental health of the vet a priority.
user research
If I wanted Pet Files to be a solution to the mental health problem with vets, I needed to know what factors contribute to this as well as what conditions in pets are easily treatable online. This way Pet Files could cut down on the amount of people coming into the vet practice. To gather this information, I created a survey that I emailed to vet practices across Northern Ireland, from which I got 19 responses.
View the data from the responses below.
What I learned
The majority (89.5%) of respondents said they felt overworked and stressed from their jobs. This validated the problem. I asked them what they consider contributes most to the stress in their job, to which I added multiple choice options, “Time spent in consultations”, “Time spent emailing/calling pet owners”, “Time on large animal callouts” and “other”. This made it easier to fill out for vets who agreed with my statements and the ‘other’ option allowed others to specify exactly what stressed them. The majority (42.1%) agreed with the statement “Time spent emailing/calling pet owners”. Th second most popular choice (26.3%) was “Time spent in consultations”. Among the "other" responses, there was a common response of “Client’s unrealistic expectations” which contributed to their stress.
I asked them what the most common issues pets are, and the majority of respondents said vomiting and diarrhoea (89.5%) and allergies (68.4%). I then asked which of these issues could be diagnosed virtually. 68.2% said allergies and 47.1% said vomiting and diarrhoea. This is great as this means that visits to the vet clinic could be cut down if the most common issues could be diagnosed virtually. One of the most informative responses I got was from the question “What features in this app could be useful for you?” I got responses such as “Recording vaccines and reminders, enabling owners to reorder medication, record food and calorie intake and record medications and exercise.” This was great as it helped me to develop more depth to my idea and expand on what features would be important for this app
Strengths and weaknesses
One of Pet Files strengths comes from the number of respondents I got from my survey. I got 20 responses from vets across the country, which gave me some useful insights into beneficial features and unnecessary ones. It was the first survey I designed for user research and the types of questions I asked, and their wording could be improved. From this survey, I learned there should be a section in the app where users can log illnesses, medications, and food intake. This will give the vets a more holistic
view of the pet and can affect how they make their diagnoses.
In my opinion, Pet File’s colour scheme is one of its weaknesses. During the project’s development, I didn’t get to a point where I was happy with them. I used colour symbolism to decide on a blue-purple shade as the primary colour. This colour represents a blend of authority, wisdom, and luxury. Designing a colour palette around this was one of my biggest struggles. Originally, I wanted to play it safe and use
monochromatic colours. However, I realised I needed a contrasting colour for visual interest and to highlight buttons. I eventually found a magenta colour which I used frequently as an accent colour. As much as I like these colours, I understand that I needed a secondary colour scheme. Including different values and tones of colours, in an app, establishes a colour hierarchy. This will give users visual clues which enable them to see primary actions and information at a glance.
target audience
The target audience of Pet Files is pet owners from ages 18+ and vet clinics. According to UK Pet Food, around 57% percent of UK households house 38 million pets. In Ireland, according to a study by Pawsitive Living, 61% of all Irish households own either a cat or dog. This shows there is a large demographic in just the UK and Ireland that Pet Files could be marketed towards.
Pet Files could partner with vet clinics to encourage pet owners to download the app to track their pet’s health and book appointments. Pet owners will learn about what affects their pet’s health, therefore spending less time in appointments and lessening vets’ stress levels. I created user personas based on these two types of users.
technologies used
I used various technologies For the research section of this project, I used Miro for mind mapping and brainstorming exercises. I used Google Fonts to source my typefaces, which were Bakbak One and Poppins.
I also used Figma to create the prototype. The images I used were sourced from Unsplash. I used the Noun Project to find the icons I used and I designed the illustrations myself in Figma.
Key takeaways
This was the first project in university that I created on my own, from ideation to prototyping. During this project, my skills with using Figma improved massively. I used more components and tried to build on my knowledge of designing micro-interactions. After completing this project, I found websites online such as Khroma and Coolers that help build colour palettes which will be very useful in the future as this is something I struggled with.
The prototype is currently quite small so if I had more time, I would show how virtual vet appointments would work and how users would log health problems and exercise. I also didn’t know how to use the auto-layout feature in Figma at the time I was completing this project. Figma’s capabilities are expanding all the time and as it is the standard industry tool I will continue to learn and keep up to date with any updates and tutorials in the community.
Explore the Prototype
Click the image below to follow the link to the prototype.
