Paw Pacer Mobile App

A wellness app to help dogs and owners balance their physical, mental and social health together. A case study focused on research, user testing, UX & UI design, branding and Marcom used for a multichannel product launch.

Prompt

With over 1.9 million households with dogs in the world, many suffer from poor physical, mental and emotional health. The results of the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 exposed the social isolation, anxiety, stress and poor physical health that was affected many owners and in turn, their dogs.

Create a fun, easy way to help dogs and owners lead longer, happier and healthy lives together. Build a single wellness app that has features to balance physical, mental and social needs of dogs, which in turn, will achieve the owners’ needs at the same time.

MVP Focus

Features to include:

  • Step tracker for dogs and owners that can be organized and saved for creating routines by time or distance

  • Must be fun and easy to use using game play to keep owners and dogs engaged.

  • Accommodate multiple dog and owner households with individual profiles of each dog

  • Establish balanced routines visible in real time and on dashboards to check well being of dogs & owners

  • Use mobile GPS to map locations, time and steps.

  • Create fitness goals that can be achieved for physical rewards

  • Provide dog size and breed converter to establish recommended standards good physical health.

  • Use customized dog alerts for calendar reminders and alerts for walking, playing and socializing times

  • Use social platforms for linking owners and dogs for interactions, competitions and sharing routes

  • Provide dog friendly establishments, parks, vet care, pet supplies and daycares on a map

Role

  • Landscape & competitive researcher

  • Strategist for app development & storytelling

  • UI Desiger creating user profiles, journeys & interactions

  • Product design of low fidelity mockups with priority guides & high fidelity prototypes for testing proof of concept

  • Facilitator for user testing, survey analysis

  • Brand Designer for multichannel distribution

Tools

  • Google Forms, Documents, Sheets & Slides for content strategies, survey distribution and results, and presentations for final design refinements

  • Figma for product design, wireframing, user flows, prototypes and testing

  • Adobe After Effects for videos

  • Adobe Illustrator & Photoshop for design assets, branding and mockups

Challenges & Opportunities

Benefits of Dog Walking

Owners were spending more remote hours online, less time socializing and were overwhelmed managing new routines that blend together in ambiguity as worktime and schooltime were both now at home. Interviews with established veterinarians and owners provided valuable evidence of the poor physical, mental and social health of dogs and owners when left unchecked.

Research showed help was definitely needed to lead more balanced and healthier lives for dogs and their owners. Walking provided daily physical, mental and social advantages for both that would have lasting effects.

MVP Keys to Success

Landscape research and competitive analysis of several existing apps determined that combining multiple features into a single wellness app would be key.

Table-stake features to balance physical, mental and social health included walk, play and socializing to align the needs of the dog based on size, breed and age.

Activities like daily playtime would improve mental health, fitness rewards and friendly competitions encouraged socializing. Emotional bonds of owners to their dogs is strong. Creating the dog profiles as the primary audience would be a powerful influencer for owners. And owners needed something fun, easy and manageable to keep them engaged in order to establish better daily routines.

Proof of Concept User Testing

Sketching the initial walk feature for mobile screens helped generate a journey map and additional key features for fitness, socialization and mental health. Creating the dog personas as the primary audience was a key consideration.

The owner profiles also provided necessary foundations to align both dog and their owners into a single wellness app. The map feature could prepare walking routes and provide dog friendly destinations, parks, clinics, supplies and dog-friendly eateries providing value. And links for social channels would allow sharing pictures, achievements and routes with others.

The Play Feature was a direct result of the survey feedback to build icons and new screens to engage the mental and physical aspects of the app that was engaging and encourage fun on a daily basis. Consulting with veterinarians helped identify scientific facts that correlated with research.

What does the research say about walking for dogs & owners?

Dogs and owners suffer from the same aliments of anxiety, stress & isolation. And dogs suffer from depression easily after only 4 hours of isolation. Depression can lead to unhappy dogs who then exhibit destructive and unwanted behavioral problems for their owners. Lack of the proper exercise leads to obesity, which is the most common preventable disease in dogs.

Owners feel guilty when their dog is unhappy and combined spend over one billion dollars a year on their dogs to make sure their dogs are happy. If they are invested in their dog’s well being, it can be a motivator to improve their own well being. It’s hard for people to develop new habits, like regular exercise when they are depressed and lack socialization. Routines that are fun and interactive can become daily habits that are good for both dogs and their owners.

FACT: Dog walking can improve your wellbeing

  • Research

  • Physical | Mental | Social Stats

  • Experts, Survey Results & Testing

  • Survey Results Impacts Designs

Building the Framework

A better way to achieve physical, mental and social wellbeing for dogs and owners.

  • Owner Profiles

  • Dog Persona

  • Key Features Journey Map

  • Sketches for Low Fidelity Wireframes

  • User Journey - Interactive walk

  • MVP Features

  • Website with interactive packaging

Using Marcom to Excite & Engage

To engage and excite owners Instagram ads and a promo video were created to inspire people to be better dog owners by using the Paw Pacer app to achieve better physical, mental and social health.