Al Rahmeh for Animals: Designing a Responsive Pet Adoption Website
Timeline: Q1 2022
Role: UX/UI Designer and Researcher
Client: Al Rahmeh for Animals
Tools: Figma / FigJam / Adobe Illustrator / Dovetail
Introduction
Jordan is home to many stray dogs and cats. Many of these animals are neglected and some are even intentionally hurt by locals. Rahmeh offers those animals a temporary shelter until they find their forever homes.
The Problem
Visitors interested in adopting a dog from Rahmeh's website often encounter difficulties due to an unclear adoption process and insufficient information. This lack of clarity creates confusion among users, making it challenging for them to navigate the necessary steps and requirements for dog adoption.
This research is dedicated to enhancing the overall user experience and interface design of Rahmeh's website, with a specific focus on improving the dog adoption process. Ultimately, the aim is to inspire increased adoption rates by fostering an intuitive and engaging online experience.
Scope
Scope Considering more than 90% of the cases Rahmeh deals with are dogs, mainly Canaan breed, and dogs are harder to find adopters for in Jordan, this research will focus on dog adoption as opposed to other animals.
Research
I set out to understand the end-to-end journey of potential adopters, exploring their motivations, frustrations, and pain points when looking to adopt, starting with a literature review, followed by a stakeholder interview and competitor analysis, and finally user interviews.
Literature review and stakeholder interview findings:
Limited awareness: Potential adopters in Jordan often lack knowledge about the Canaan breed.
Reinforcement of perceived dangers: The exaggerated and negative media coverage inadvertently strengthens the belief in the breed's perceived dangers.
Symbol of status: Some individuals in Jordan view owning a dog as a symbol of social status and therefore prefer owning other breeds.
Challenges in local adoptions: Jordan has particularly low adoption rates for Canaan dogs, leading them to find adopters in other countries, mainly Canada, the US, and the UK.
Information accessibility challenges: Rahmeh stakeholders reported a significant number of messages and phone calls through their social media.
Competitor analysis revealed that
The adoption process on Rahmeh's website is unclear.
Competitor websites offer an organized layout and dedicated sections for pet profiles and search filters that are more convenient to use than social media.
Rahmeh's tone of voice is serious and formal, which may not resonate well with potential volunteers.
Rahmeh's design should be responsive.
Following the competitor analysis, I conducted, remote user interviews including testing of the current website with previous and potential adopters.
Putting everything together, the main insights below were derived from
Users would like to find dogs to meet (or virtually meet) before filling in an adoption form.
Social media isn’t effective for viewing the pets available.
For users outside of Jordan, organization transparency and clarity of the adoption process are very important.
Defining the Problem
A user persona was created to help guide the following design decisions
The following sitemap outlines the layout for the website design.
Based on the above sitemap, the following improved task flow was prepared to help guide the process of dog adoption.
The following How Might We questions and solutions were formulated to tackle the users’ pain points.
Following the research, I created high-fidelity wireframes.
Design
The following UI Kit was developed to offer the building blocks for the UI of the website. View full UI Kit.
Assessing the success of the new design
Testing and Iterating
A usability test was conducted including two tasks: Finding a specific dog and applying for adoption.
The results were compiled into an affinity map and the following priority revisions were identified and edited:
Shortened the text on the homepage to reduce information overload.
Made adoption from abroad clearer on the homepage by changing the text above the fold.
Added a call-to-action above the fold.
Edited the Happy Adopters section.
Shortened the space on the dog filtering page above the fold so that it’s clear that the photos change when someone clicks on a filter.
Made the FAQ section clearer so that contacting Rahmeh is the absolute last resort.
Created some high-fidelity wireframes to guide the website design.
