An App for Taking Better Care of Our Pets
Speculative Project
Case Study
THE PROBLEM
Joseph is trying to remember which folder has Fido’s vaccination record, which app he and his wife use for other pet care reminders, and whether she said she already gave Fido his morning meds. Unfortunately for Joseph, none of the multiple apps they use to keep track of Fido’s care actually work together.
Without one place to organize their pet’s information, pet owners are left juggling scattered apps and storage methods, meaning something inevitably slips through the cracks.
Pet owners also often need to share that information with a partner, a dog walker, or a family member watching the house. But when no one’s using the same app, care gets duplicated, missed, or lost between the people responsible for it.
The result is stress, confusion, and less-than-optimal pet care.
THE GOAL
To give pet owners a way to organize their pet’s daily schedule, set reminders, track medical information and history, and share their pet’s care with other caretakers.
THE WORK
UX/UI Designer (End-to-end)
Idea Conception // UX Research & User Interviews // Product Design & Branding // Prototyping // Usability Testing // Handoff
3 months: Q4 2025 - Q1 2026
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Pet owners have enough on their plate… they shouldn’t have to stress out about how they manage their pet’s care. I built Happy Pet to give them a single place they can trust for everything their pet needs, from reminders to medical records to caretaker coordination. It’s a real fix for a real frustration.
DOES AN ALL-IN-ONE OPTION FOR PET OWNERS EXIST?
Research Phase
3 weeks
Would pet owners be interested in using an app to organize their pet’s daily life and healthcare information?
If so, what features would they most like that app to have?
Interviews and competitive analysis gave me clear answers to these questions, which ultimately helped define and drive the app that Happy Pet became.
RESEARCH METHODS
Interviews
I interviewed pet owners to better understand where their current organizational systems were letting them down and where an app like this might fit into their care routines.
Competitive Analysis
I looked at the existing pet care apps on the market and broadly found bad layouts, too many steps, and no all-in-one solution.
KEY FINDINGS: Organization, Integration, Coordination
Interviews
- Organization is paramount: having all their pet’s information in one place, easily accessible, and searchable. Interviewees often used multiple resources to store pet information.
- Pet owners want dedicated reminders for daily activities, medications, and longer-term needs, like monthly actions.
- Pet owners want integration with pre-existing apps like calendar, reminders, other pet apps (Rover, Chewy, PetMeds, etc.).
- Unreliable alternatives: many people trust their vet to send necessary reminders — this can be unreliable and creates the potential to miss important care needs.
- Coordination with other household members or outside caretakers can be tricky, sometimes causing issues.
Competitive Analysis
- Revealed a gap in the market where no quality, all-in-one solution existed.
- Multiple apps attempt to provide organizational experiences; however, none successfully offers a comprehensive or reliable option for users.
- Other apps are not UX-friendly, with bad layouts and/or too many steps to click through.
Research Wrap-up
One thing became clear across the interviews and competitive analysis: the basic problem wasn’t that pet owners were missing information — it was that they were missing a place to put it.
WHAT DO PET OWNERS WANT AND NEED?
Define Phase
2 weeks
Creating affinity maps, points of view, how-might-we questions, and personas turned my research into a clearer picture of pet owners and the struggles they face. The challenge wasn’t understanding these struggles — it was resisting the urge to design solutions for every one of them.
AFFINITY MAPPING: What Actually Mattered To Pet Owners?
Creating an affinity map from the interviews allowed me to identify three key takeaways about what was important to pet owners:
- Organization: Organizational flexibility and access to information.
- Reminders: The ability to set reminders and/or sync reminders with personal calendar or reminders app.
- Shareability: The ability to share information between caretakers, inside or outside the home.
POVs & HMWs: How Can We Help Pet Owners Reduce Stress?
POVs and HMW questions allowed me to think openly and optimistically about potential solutions without yet worrying about feasibility.
POVs helped me find the real challenges pet owners were dealing with.
Joseph wants a streamlined, intuitive experience to keep track of his pet’s daily care information in one place and to synchronize and share it with other caretakers.
Rosey wants to be able to organize all her pets’ information in one place, including integrating veterinarian vaccination and appointment reminders.
HMWs allowed me to turn those challenges into questions I could design for.
How might we help pet owners better coordinate their pet’s care among family members and other caretakers?
How might we make it easier for pet owners to organize all of their pet’s information in one place?
PERSONAS: Who Are Pet Owners?
After synthesizing my research findings with POVs and HMWs, two distinct pet owners emerged. They helped me further empathize with the needs, goals, expectations, and mindset of pet owners before I moved into the design phase.
Joseph
Flustered doggie-dad who wants to coordinate and share daily pet care information and events with his wife.
Rosey
Organized, multi-pet mom who wants to keep all of her pets’ medical info in one place.
THE MOMENT I KNEW
IT COULD WORK
My initial research had shown an opportunity. Defining the problems pet owners were facing had raised possible solutions. Together, that work confirmed that there was a chance to design something pet owners actually wanted: an all-in-one resource to help them provide more comprehensive, better quality care for their pets.
FINDING HAPPY PET’S LOOK
Ideation Phase
6 weeks
With my research completed and definitions established, it was time for everything I’d learned to progress to something real — a structure for the site, user flows, and a look and feel for the Happy Pet brand.
This is my favorite part of the process — turning what I learned into design decisions that balanced usability, innovation, and visual appeal against what the research and the business actually called for.
PROJECT GOALS & PRIORITIZATION: Which Features Make The Cut?
Seeing what pet owners wanted, what the business required, and what was technically possible forced some difficult trade-offs. Ultimately, I sought to balance all three and passed on anything that didn’t reach that threshold.
Key features included the ability for pet owners to:
- Share daily or long-term care information within their household and caretaker community.
- Collect and access their pet’s complete medical, vaccination, and grooming records in one place.
- Access trustworthy information, including medical, first-aid, training, grooming, socializing, and general information.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
Organization, integration, and coordination were now established as the key needs of pet owners. I plotted this Information Architecture Map for Happy Pet around those ideas, making them the foundation that everything else would sit on.
USER & TASK FLOWS: How Pet Owners Get Started With Happy Pet
Next, I developed user and task flows so I could see how pet owners would move through the site, keeping what worked and cutting what got in their way.
WIREFRAMES: Determining The Important Elements
Using my task flows, I created low- and medium-fidelity wireframes to see if the key elements of each task flow would hold up for pet owners juggling reminders, records, and co-pet-parenting at the same time.
BRANDING & UI ELEMENTS: A Welcoming And Functional Place For Pet Owners
Given how much stress pet owners already feel, I wanted Happy Pet to bring relief, not more irritation — so I chose brand values that reflected those goals.
Connection, Enjoyment, Harmony, Information, and Simplicity became the values that guided every design decision — colors, typography, logos, and UI.
DOES THIS WORK FOR PET OWNERS?
Testing Phase
2 weeks
With Happy Pet’s foundation established, it was time to test it with real pet owners. I went in expecting to find out I’d missed some pain points, but it turned out I hadn’t.
PROTOTYPING
With the task flows and wireframes I created, I built out prototypes that real pet owners could actually test.
USABILITY TESTING: Are Pet Owners Satisfied?
To wrap up this phase, I conducted usability testing with a group of pet owners to determine any remaining pain points and further refine the app’s design.
Target Users:
- Five participants
- Primary age range: 30-60
- Variety of pet types (dogs, cats, etc.)
- Working professionals with a variety of family situations, tech-friendly individuals, Gen X and Millennials, multiple pet owners.
Success Rates:
- 100% of pet owners were able to complete each task without questions.
- 90% of pet owners experienced no pain points in completing the task.
- 100% of pet owners were able to complete each task in a reasonable amount of time.
- 100% of pet owners were satisfied with their experience once they completed the task.
Testing Wrap-up
Overall, feedback was overwhelmingly positive with only minor questions or a few suggested tweaks. With 100% of pet owners completing every task without a question, the core of the app was clearly working as intended.
REFINING THE DESIGN TO SUIT PET OWNERS
Iteration Phase
2 weeks
Considering that the overriding goal of Happy Pet is to eliminate pet owner confusion, I took what I learned from usability testing and refined the login process, removed unnecessary options from one flow, and clarified language throughout.
ITERATION: Cleaning Up Small Issues
There wasn’t much to fix, which I took as confirmation that the core design was working for pet owners. So I made smaller, mostly cosmetic tweaks — clearer terminology, leaner organization, and a few refinements to make the app feel more intuitive.
HANDOFF
With refinements completed, it was time to prepare the designs for handoff to the developer.
CONCLUSION
The creation of Happy Pet wasn’t without its challenges…
After synthesizing the research I collected, it was still tricky to determine which elements would help pet owners the most. While there were many common requests, there were also a number of other interesting feature ideas. Selecting which of these would be prioritized for the app and which would be placed into the “develop in the future” folder wasn’t easy.
It was also difficult during the design phase to find the right balance between offering pet owners as many of the features they wanted as possible while still keeping the interface clean and uncluttered.
However, by staying disciplined about the design process and trusting each phase to do its job, I was able to navigate these challenges to create a streamlined product that responds to pet owners’ real needs.
Happy Pet offers pet owners a comprehensive app for organizing their pet’s daily care, medical information, and other important information in one place, and allows them to share and synchronize care information with other caretakers. By addressing these key pain points, Happy Pet relieves stress and helps them provide the best care possible to their pets. User testing confirmed that the design holds up for the people it’s meant to serve, and points to a business opportunity worth exploring further in the broader pet care market.
Happy Pet, an elegant application that improves pet caretaking and reduces stress by offering pet owners a comprehensive way to manage their pet’s daily schedule, catalog medical information and history, and synchronize their pet’s care with other members of their household.