As a pet owner myself (and someone who’s always had pets), this was a project that was very close to my heart. Pawsies, as I called it, is an app that aims to make the lives of people who work tirelessly to save animals much easier.
I noticed that there was an unmet need for an easier way to report a pet being lost or found in my city, besides posting on social media. And that's when I realized that what this community really needed was a product that could centralize their efforts and help them connect more easily with lost animals, as well as pet owners searching for their missing friends.
I started by defining the main user personas and conducted a concept testing survey with local rescuers and pet owners in order to identify their biggest pain points and validate my assumptions with actual users from the community back in Maracaibo, Venezuela. Once I had a good picture of those pain points, I mapped the user journey and determined the feature requirements for the product. After confirming the user flows and information architecture, I worked on the UI and created high-fidelity wireframes to gather more feedback from users.
In the process of creating this platform, I ended up receiving positive feedback from all kinds of users—and not just pet owners—who thought that this idea could easily be applied to other situations as well.