Overview
PetPals is a mobile application designed to meet the diverse needs of pet owners by centralizing grooming services, food delivery, vet recommendations, and other essentials into a single, user-friendly interface. The app simplifies pet care by making these services easily accessible and ensuring a smooth, personalized experience for users. This project was developed as part of the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) program during my 7th semester. My team and I collaborated on business and revenue models, while I focused on UI/UX design, branding, and pitch presentation, which impressed the judges and earned us excellent feedback and grades.
Ginny, the dog that inspired us to solve such a significant and overlooked issue in a metropolitan city like Bangalore
User-Centered Research Methodology
Our research adopted user-centered design principles, gathering insights from over 90 pet owners using convenience sampling. Participants were drawn from apartments and colonies with a high concentration of pet owners, ensuring relevant insights.
Motivation:
- Busy pet owners struggle with time
- Vet/grooming appointments can be inconvenient & costly
- Limited access to pet services
- High pet abandonment/return rates
- Booming pet care market
- Pet care industry needs innovation
Problem Statement:
We propose a consolidated platform for scattered resources of pet needs. Get in direct touch with your vets and pet groomers in no time!
Competitive Analysis
Empathy Mapping
To better understand users, we created empathy maps focusing on four quadrants:
Key Insights from Research
Fragmentation in Services:
Many users found it challenging to coordinate grooming, vet visits, and product purchases across multiple apps or offline services.
Inconsistent Delivery & Vet Accessibility:
Some pet owners lacked access to trusted veterinarians and reliable home delivery options for pet essentials.
Service Expectations:
Users expected appointment reminders, product recommendations, and the ability to track orders easily. These insights shaped feature prioritization and service flows, ensuring that every interaction with PetPals addressed the core challenges faced by users.
User Personas
Grooming Services
As a pet owner on a tight schedule, I want to effortlessly book grooming services for my dog through PetPals. Whether it's at home or a nearby salon, I need a quick and user-friendly app so that schedule appointments and receive timely confirmations.
Vet Services and Medicine Delivery
As a responsible pet owner, I want PetPals to simplify vet appointments and medicine orders. I need an easy way so that I can receive prescribed medicines at my doorstep. Reminders for medication schedules would be a plus.
Pet Product and Toy Delivery
As a pet lover, I want a convenient way so that i can shop for top-notch pet products and toys. PetPals should offer a hassle-free marketplace with secure payment options, detailed product info, and swift delivery, making it easy for me to keep my pets happy and healthy.
Business Model Canvas
The Business Model Canvas (BMC) for PetPals serves as a strategic framework to outline the key elements of the pet care startup.
We found the many correlating factors in the problems people faced and this helped us narrow down the main features that the app will provide.
Branding and Design
The color palette for PetPals was inspired by a memorable moment at a friend's house. While working on the app with a mood board, my friend's dog, Ginny, showed a strong preference for the blue and yellow colors. Since the app focuses on pet care, particularly for dogs, it was a natural choice to select these colors.
The primary colors are blue and yellow, with red accents for other pets.
The font pairing chosen is both fun and subtle to demonstrate the vibe of the app. Majority of the colour palette can be seen by most animals and this essentially serves the purpose of catering to the needs of the user who is most important. A PET!
Designing with empathy means acknowledging the needs of all beings, including pets. By using colors like blue and yellow that dogs can see, PetPals ensures an engaging experience for both pets and their owners.
Some screens from the app :
PetPals offers a comprehensive solution to fragmented pet care by providing an all-in-one platform for grooming, vet services, and product delivery. Through user-centered research, empathy mapping, and iterative design, we developed an app that caters to both pet owners' and pets' needs. This project was an enriching experience, deepening my understanding of UX design, service design, and business modeling while showcasing my ability to translate user insights into impactful solutions.
