Usability Testing
Due to the specific identity of City Pups as a dog adoption platform for city-based users, I wanted to recruit participants that had familiarity with the dog adoption processes in New York City. As a result of my recruitment criteria, illuminating patterns quickly emerged proving the efficient failure of the City Pups product.
Emerging Patterns
Pattern 1 — How is City Pups different?
Because City Pups is designed to focus primarily on the needs and concerns of city-based adopters, the presumption is that the platform would provide a necessary alternative to existing platforms that focus on a broader demographic of users. However, my usability testing would suggest that existing platforms like Petfinder already provide a competitive service for city-based users. Petfinder, for instance, allows users to filter search results based on a variety of preferential factors like breed, size, age, behavior, and compatibility with other dogs or children. If City Pups were to continue to concentrate on city-based users only, it would put them at a competitive disadvantage to platforms that provide a service to all users in this field.
Pattern 2 — How necessary are user profiles?
While identifying the factors that I felt would improve compatibility between adopters and adoptees, I made the decision to introduce a profile creation process for users to share their preferences and constraints. The idea was to create a system for users to filter results before searching for dogs to adopt. However, in usability testing, my participants struggled to understand why users needed to create a profile in the first place. Instead of having users add preferences on sign-up, these preferences could be instead added to the filters section of the search page, thus shortening the onboarding process. Furthermore, once a user successfully adopts a dog, there would be no need for them to maintain a profile on City Pups. As a result, the sign-up process adds an unnecessary step to the adoption process unless it was to be used as a measure for adoption agencies looking to vet suitable adopters based on profile.
Summary of findings
In each of my five usability tests, participants struggled to understand what it was that set City Pups apart from existing services like Petfinder.com. This is despite having explained to participants that City Pups’ focus is on city-based adopters. I believe that the reason for this is that there are no critical user-experience issues for city-based users with any of the existing platforms.
Short of creating an entirely new user interface, the City Pups product itself does not solve any inherent flaws or inadequacies with existing platforms.
If the City Pups platform were to adapt, I could see the potential of including a profile creation process for adoption agencies. This system could ensure that pet information is adequate and organized.