American Horse Project

Product Walkthrough

This video depicts our user browsing to find a horse that fits their wants and needs. The user then sends a message to the horse’s rescue organization inquiring more about the horse.

Our Design Process:

• User Research: User Surveys, User Interviews
• Competitive Analysis of Pet Adoption Platforms and Horse Rescues
• Defined Problem Statements and Challenges
• Gathered Key User Insights: Affinity Map, Empathy Map
• Created User Personas to keep our users top of mind
• Defined Key User Task Flows
• Created Information Architecture of Horse Adoption Platform
• Determined Visual Design Elements: Colors, Iconography, Design System
• Early Designs: Sketching, Design Studio Workshops (Low-fidelity wireframes)
• Iterations: Grayscale Mid-fidelity Wireframes -> High-fidelity Wireframes
• Continued to iterate based on User Testing and Client Feedback

For a more detailed look…

Research & Synthesis

User Surveys

After conducting user surveys with 23 participants, we found that:

Users valued the personality of the horses they adopted above all else, followed by more tangible metrics such as age, photos/videos, size, gender, breed.
Users value clear photos, videos, and descriptions of animals, a simple and streamlined process, ease of use, and quick response times in an adoption platform
Reaching out to rescue organizations was the most common method users took to adopting rescues
Phones and Computers were the most used devices for browsing/choosing/adopting an animal

User Interviews

We conducted 30-minute interviews with 4 different target users: some animal adopters, some rescuers.

Our goal was to gain a better understanding of current thoughts and feelings on the adoption process—their wants and needs, roadblocks and frustrations, motivations for what they do.

After concluding each interview, our UX team debriefed and highlighted our **key insights** from each interview.
**Key Takeaways:**
Our key users **genuinely love animals** and are motivated to rescue/adopt them to better situations. Therefore, our users will go especially far to reach their goals.
Potential users of this site are more accustomed to traditional methods (calling, in-person visits) of horse adoption, so they may need a **simple**, **streamlined**, and **instructional** (where applicable) process.
These interviews reinforced the need for high-quality and standardized **photos/videos** of the horses in various positions, as most of a user’s judgement happens when looking at photos/videos.

We then categorized our key insights into relevant takeaways using an **affinity map** format.

**Empathy Matrix:** Another way to visualize what we learned about our target users.

User Personas

We then created user personas to continue to keep our users in mind while designing our product. Our personas were informed by the aggregate of our survey findings, interview takeaways, and overall research synthesis.

Competitive Analysis

We conducted a **feature analysis** of the most commonly mentioned platforms that our survey and interview participants had used before as inspiration.
We also conducted **heuristics evaluations** of the competitors as well, scoring them on their usability, design, etc. Along with our user research takeaways, our competitive analysis became the basis of features our platform would have.

Defining Problem Statements

We split up the needs of our 2 core users of the platform:

Horse Rescuers (rescue orgs and independent rescuers)

Improve convenience of uploading horse information
Simplify and streamline ease of platform use
System to review and approve qualify adopters
Provide clear photo and video-taking instructions

Horse Adopters

Improve Horse profile search-ability and filterability
View high-quality photos and videos of horses
Simplify form-filling for smoother adopting process
Ability to search for horses near the adopter

Design & Iteration

User Flows

With a clearer idea of our who our users were, and what their needs were, we began mapping out the flows of key tasks they would perform.

Wireflows

Using the user flows as a guideline to draw our wireframes.

This wireflow depicts a user navigating the site to select a horse they’re interested in and reaching out to the rescue organization to let them know they’re interested.

This wireflow depicts the user sign-up process.

This wireflow depicts the rescue sign-up process.

This wireflow depicts the process of an **adopter uploading a horse listing**. Key features we wanted to include were:
A clear and outlined process for uploading photos and videos.
Easy and understandable way to upload forms (vaccination, registration, etc.)
A standardized way for users to upload horse information—name, breed, gender, size, age, breed, discipline

What I learned

American Horse Project was formative in my journey as a UX designer because it’s the first time I’ve been so closely involved in the product process for a real product: ideation, planning, research, and design.

I also learned a lot about working in a large team, being in constant communication with both our client, the CEO of American Horse Project, and our interdisciplinary team of designers and developers. I collaborated with my team of talented, creative, and diligent designers nearly every day (and had a lot of fun along the way!).

Lastly, I discovered the importance of a Lean UX process. We held weekly standup meetings with our project manager and our developers, updating each other on our progress and roadblocks. We talked through what would and wouldn’t work. We also presented our findings to our client about every 2 weeks, showing our process and leaving room for constructive criticism, which we would then implement into our design.

Some additional takeaways as a designer:

Start thinking about (and work on) the design system early!! We eventually had to create one as part of our handoff process to our developers. While useful, it’s quite a large undertaking. Save yourself time and headache by considering it along the way.
Under-promise and Over-deliver: we’ve all heard this one before. Client input and feedback is crucial, but no one knows the status and timeline of the project better than the people who are working on it. Plus, they’ll be happier when you exceed their expectations during presentations!
Don’t be afraid to ask questions. I knew nothing about the horse adoption space, and this was my first time working so closely alongside developers, so I would have been lost if I didn’t reach out. I was definitely lucky to have a supportive and similarly curious team though!