Improving online pet supplies service in Hong Kong
Fictional brand
Petpal
My Role
Service Designer
My Deliverables
Quantitative and Qualitative Research, Service Blueprint, Usability Test
Duration
2 weeks during boot camp
Background
Petal is a concept design trying to provide the needs of pet owners in Hong Kong. With the busy schedule of the pet owners, they sometimes forget to shop for pet supplies sometimes, and may not realize they have run out of items until their pets need them.
To address the challenge, Petpal aims to create a trusted and easy-to-use platform for pet owners to keep enough pet supplies available for their furry friends all the time. This concept offers recurring deliveries of pets’ preferred meals, along with a mystery box subscription featuring a variety of snacks, treats, and toys. By making pet supplies more convenient and accessible, Petpal aims to help busy pet owners provide consistent care for their beloved companions.
Process
Primary research to understand the shopping habits of the pet owners in Hong Kong
Since we wanted to step out of ourselves to understand pet owners better, we sent out a survey to a pet owner group on Facebook to collect quantitative data and talked to pet owners to collect qualitative data. However, the responses were scattered, and very hard for us to transform them into some meaningful insight, so we used an affinity map to cluster the related responses into groups.
What did we get from our user research?
We discovered the pet owners shared similar characteristics, so we used personas to summarize their details. Even though our persons are fictional characters, they demonstrate everything about the pet owners.
Since we had two weeks to work on this project, we decided to focus on the following pain points that busy pet owners face when they shop for pet supplies:
- Online shopping is supposed to be convenient, but instructions given online to complete simple orders are unclear and often leave the users frustrated.
- Pet owners do not have enough room to stock a large inventory of pet supplies at home, or the pet supplies do not last long.
- Some bulky items are difficult for pet owners to carry home.
Then we rephrased the problem into a "How Might We" question, to help us generates many innovative solutions:
"How might we provide an online shopping procedure that is easy and fast, so customers receive the orders regularly without a sweat?"
- Reduced the steps to complete an order easily.
- Offer pet owners subscription options for their pets.
- Auto-renew their selected plan with an easy cancel option.
How to infuse the solutions to our service?
As we know the opportunities to optimize the online shopping experience, we combined solutions and steps that customers will take to receive orders from us to create a Service Blueprint. Why did we choose a Service Blueprint over a Journey Map? Because it can guide us to think deeper about the business’s resources and the interaction between customers, employees, and support processes.
Time to visualize our solutions
When we were designing a subscription platform for users, we discovered other subscription platforms would ask questions to get to know their users, so we decided the follow the same direction. However...
"My questions are the best way to get to know our users! 😠" - Teammate A
We understood customers don't have the patience to answer questions, but we also couldn't decide which questions were the best questions to ask, so our team lead proposed to run a Design Sprint. Each of us listed out 1 - 2 questions, and we used the questions to create our first MVP and conduct usability tests.
Feedback from our 1st MVP:
- Test User 1 - "I like the service to customize a food plan for my cat, but there are too many steps to finish the quiz."
- Test User 2 - “If my dog is hungry, she wants to eat right away, so she has no patience to wait for me to finish the quiz before I feed her.”
After listening to the feedback from the users, we were more compromised to take out the questions now. We voted to select which questions to keep and what to take away. The result of our vote focused on the eating habit of the pets, so here is the 2nd MVP:
Feedback from the 2nd MVP:
- Test User 3 - “The questions are very easy to answer, but they aren’t related to the subscription plan.”
- Test User 4 - “The subscription plans are a suggestion, they are not specifically for my pets, so I would not use the customization service.”
- Test User 5 - “Questions are clear, but I can choose the pet food for my dog because I can finish the process faster.”
- Test User 6 - “Pets stick with the same brands all the time, and pet owners have quick access to get the food most of the time, so having multiple food brands in the subscription box is not feasible; however, it would be better if the subscription box includes treats, toys, or supplements. People subscribe to subscription boxes for fun. The boxes always fill with surprises; therefore, the intention of the subscription box would not be the same if you give them too much control.”
Final product
Even though this iteration is different from what we planned, we are glad to hear all the opinions from our test users.
💭 Reflection
- The importance of doing usability tests - The earlier we conduct user tests, the better. The reason is that we can easily adjust the products to fit into the market before it is too late.
- Other than that, in our research, not only did we find out the shopping habit of the pet owner, but we also uncovered the device they preferred to use. However, we didn’t put the device choices in our consideration. Therefore, I would redesign everything in mobile web or mobile app instead of the web if I could change one thing on this project.