According to stories and news, some dog owners are very actively looking for new dog parks, but they are also afraid of meeting unexpected accidents because they want their dog can be safe and happy.

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Decide what do I need to know before interview 

I prepared the research questions in advance to guide the secondary research and user interviews. There are three major areas I focused on: 

Current resources, awareness, and experience.

 

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To further understand the user’s needs

What makes it hard for dogs & owners to have a satisfying walk.

My following research to find out what are some existing resources for dog owners to get help. Most products on marketing help owners to check the real-time data of dogs' physical body, and provide some basic communication between dog and owners. 

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User Interviews

Thinking from the users' perspective and empathizing with them​

I interviewed 8 people (4 male and 4 female, age around 19 - 52) and try to learn about their journey when looking for routes and identify pain points and frustrations with their experience.

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There were two concrete goals I established before conducting interviews :

• Awareness: Do owners know they have possibilities to meet "accidents" during walking?Will they realize that an in-advance arrangement can help with that?

• Experience: Learn about owner's walking experience in a different context, why do they like and dislike?

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Current products have many limitations for dog owners

Even though there are lots of map searching products, social media products offered for dog owners, limitations such as puppy relationships, facilities, atmosphere, events, and insufficient community assistants still make it hard for dog owners to experience the searching process.

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Design Opportunity:

A navigation app that quickly provides dog parks to dog owners and other friendly dog owners, providing a way for them to connect through walking, chatting, or community.

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Rationale:

• Why navigation App is the proper approach
  ‍It builds connections between dog & environment, dog & dog owner, dog & dog, which fosters tailored learning experience for senior learners.A

• Why app?
  56% of adults own smartphones, and this number is still increasing. It is one of the most convenient and common way for adults to looking for information.

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Understanding of a satisfying walking before providing right results

By talking with experienced dog owners about their experience of arranging process, and people who have been involved with unexcepted accidents during walking, I discovered that the searching process is very similar across the board: Applying a list of needs and wait for the searching results.

Sounds easy, right? However, the fact is you can ask 100 questions and still don't know if that place is the right fit for your searching. Besides the logistical questions such as distance, facility, and availability, what other questions should be asked and what information would need to be shown so our users can get the right results?

To better answer this question, I decided to do a competitive analysis to learn how other platforms were tackling this issue.

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How does searching & matching the user's taste work in a different context?

From my research, I haven't found a software or application about dog-walking with dog owners specifically, there're still a lof of areas can improve the searching & matching pattern, from navigator apps to the events community program. I compared and analyzed questions that the user needs to answer before they are applying the filter. The goal of doing a competitive analysis was to help me understand what are some of the searching & matching criteria those platforms used to provide the right results.

Social Apps require less information from owners, but learn more from user behaviors and often tend to recommend manually by algorithm later based on that.