Overview
Tailwags is a UI design concept for a location-based dog walking website
that allows dog owners to select walkers in their area and schedule them to walk their dogs anytime, anywhere. To do this I followed the UI design process, taking initial UX research through stages of ideation to eventually create a high fidelity prototype. This was part of my UI Design Course at RMIT in 2022.
Tailwags!
Website Concept | UX & UI Design
Tools
My Role
UX researcher, UX designer
Tools
Figma, Photoshop, Miro
The Challenge
With this challenge in mind, and as part of my UI Design learning journey, I was tasked with creating a high-fidelity prototype of a mobile first responsive website that allows the dog owners the ability to book a dog walker either on short notice or regularly while exploring ways to encourage the dog owner to trust their dogs will be in safe hands. The flexibility of booking was the key element to the success of the website.
Objectives and Goals
To design a developer-ready high-fidelity prototype using the low-fidelity wireframes which were provided by the UX team. It was important that we created a simple hierarchy and user flow, a cohesive design system, and tested and iterated on our designs.
Emphasise
Define
Ideate
Design
Test
Design Process
The user interface design process follows an iterative workflow, involving tasks such as moodboard development, user flow creation, design element library setup, low-fidelity wireframe creation, user testing, and the production of high-fidelity and interactive prototypes, which are then handed over to the development team for implementation.
Product Users
Our Target audience is the working population of age group 18-60
Research
After conducting user research, two primary personas were identified: Busy Parent and Working Professional.
Busy Parent
Working Professional
Moodboard
It was important to gather ideas and get a feel for different design options for this website. The UI needed to be modern, consistent, and simple to use. For this mood board, I curated different font type, iconography and illustration to establish the overall aesthetics of the website. I dabbled with colour options, layout and aesthetic ideas, buttons, and imagery.
Adjectives like playful, friendly, warm, reliable, happy, healthy along with warm colour palette and imagery were used to gather inspiration for the project.
.png)
User Flow
UI flow and UI stack are two important elements of UI design that maps the blueprint of the design and considers gaps in the design flow. Based on the requirements highlighted by the UX team, the navigation needed to be clear and users needed to easily book or browse dog walkers.
User flow diagram was created and the 5 states of the UI stack which are the ideal, error, loading, empty and partial was also included.
Component Library
In this project, I used the basics of atomic design principles to build the parts of this component library. But as the project progressed and as the atoms and molecules grew into various organisms it started to become a more cohesive set of components and allowed for faster and easier creation of templates and pages.
The component library also went through many iteration.
Typography & Colours
Font Used
Colours
Buttons
Iconography
Input Fields
Low Wireframes
The low-fidelity designs served as a foundation for the subsequent creation of high-fidelity designs.
User Testing
Task 1: Please find a dog walker that’s available at 4pm on the 23 of July and make a booking.
-
What did you think of the booking flow (positive/negative)?
-
Where there any moments of hesitation of confusion for you? If yes, when? Why?
-
What are your thoughts on the calendar picker?
-
What are your thoughts on the booking confirmation?
-
Do you have any further feedback in relation to booking a walker?
Task 2 : You love Tailwags blog and would like to see if there are any new articles. Please go have a look.
-
How did you experience finding the blog and any new posts?
-
Were you able to find new posts where you expected them to be?
-
If no, why not? How could this be improved for you?
-
What is your impression of the blog page?
-
Do you have any further feedback in relation to the blog?
-
Do you have any other feedback about the site?
Solutions/iterations
Booking process:
● Add optional behind date and time field labels.
● In the calendar, bold the selected date.
● Remove OK/cancel buttons in calendar on Walker profile; once date and time are selected, ‘book now’ button to be available.
● Booking confirmation on separate page from where you can continue browsing walkers, or go back to walker profile.
Blog:
● New blog post on homepage + ‘see all articles’ button to link to the main blog page.
Walker profile:
● On all walkers page, on walker cards, add ‘show work area’ button > unfold section to show work area details.
Future consideration: open pop up to show work area details + a map of the area.
● On walker profile, move Work area section above availability calendar.
● Write ratings as 4.8/5.
● Add amount of walks on walker profile page, near their rating.
General:
● Add ‘My favourite walkers’ section to home page.
● Add ‘My favourites’ as menu item (in hamburger).
● Put hamburger icon on left side of nav bar, as per UX standard.
Overall Feedback
“Feels like a lovely, warm and welcoming site.”
“Looks like a site I’d go to as a pet owner, easy to read and use”
“Initial thought is that I love design and aesthetic - fresh and different - human feeling with illustration not clinical”
