Pet Well
A simple price aggregator for pet prescriptions from virtual pharmacies.
Product: Mobile Website Screens
Role: Product and UX Designer
Date: 2022
Pet Well makes finding affordable pet prescriptions easy. This platform aggregates prices from the internet’s most reputable online pharmacies to connect users to the best deals. Users are able to input any medication and adjust filters to find the best offers. It allows pet parents to provide the best care for their pets while saving both time and money.
Background
The Problem:
Pet healthcare, specifically medications can be extremely expensive and in some cases inaccessible due to the cost.
The Solution:
A price aggregating platform that connects pet owners to the most affordable medications from the internet's most reputable online pharmacies.
Empathize and Define
Industry Research:
Healthcare is the most expensive part of having a pet.
Medication prices at the vet are often higher because the vets make a larger profit off of what they prescribe.
About 58% of all pet-medicine sales take place at veterinary clinics.
Online pharmacies are cheaper because they can house/have access to bulk quantities so they can sell medications at a lower cost. They also don’t have the same overhead costs as vet offices.
User Interviews: Top Findings
Interviewees consited of 4 pet owners and 1 veterinary technician
All interviews were conducted virtually over Zoom or Facetime
The top concern among the pet owners aside from getting great care for their pets was saving time and money.
A popular reason for animals being surrendered to shelters is due to owners not being able to afford healthcare for their pets.
All interviewees felt positively toward online pharmacies and online pricing comparison platforms.
User Personas
Using the data from the user interviews, I developed user personas of potential Pet Well Users. These two users have different backgrounds but a common goal. Pet Well's interface must be designed to support users of all backgrounds despite gaps in technical literacy.
Ideate & Prototype
Task Flows
These 2 task flows represent two ways a user can sign up for Pet Well and the subsequent steps each task requires.
User Flow
This user flow represents the signup process that the user will move through within the Pet Well website.
Low Fidelity Wireframes
These preliminary sketches show a few potential designs of the home, sign-in/sign-up, search results, & medication information screens. Following the sketches are the digitized low-fidelity wireframes.
Mid Fidelity Wireframes
After finalizing the foundations of my designs I added some necessary elements to my wireframes. This includes basic text placement, images, buttons, boxes, and some icons.
Style Guide
Pet Well wants to promote inclusivity and empathy while maintaining a welcoming environment. The color scheme was kept fairly neutral using a deep blue as the primary color. Since this is a website to help pets, a soft tan was added as a secondary tone to maintain an organic feel. Pet Well's logo was kept simple but playful with a pawprint in a simple pill shape and the company name in their font. Quicksand was chosen as Pet Well's font because it's easy to read and is a font users are accustomed to seeing which will add another layer of comfort for users.
High Fidelity Wireframes
Test & Iterate
Usability Testing
Tested 3 different tasks with 5 users.
Flow 1:
Sign up for a Pet Well account with a non-Google email
Flow 2:
Search for a medication
Flow 3:
Find the side effects of a medication
Research Goals & Results
Determine how easily users are able to complete a task.
Search was the easiest task for most users and hardest was either signing up or finding the side effects of a medication
Good learnability, users were much more comfortable after completing the initial task and playing with the UI
Determine how quickly users can complete a given task
Flow 1 - 82.6 seconds
Flow 2 - 6.6 seconds
Flow 3 - 25.2 seconds
*These numbers are the average of all 5 users.
Determine any points of common error of confusion.
Some difficulty finding where to sign up
Widespread difficulty finding where to get to additional information on a medication, current UI lacks direction
Success Metrics & Results
Time to complete a task
Flow 1 - 82.6 seconds
Flow 2 - 6.6 seconds
Flow 3 - 25.2 seconds
Comfort level when completing a task
The participants found it much easier to transition from flow 2 to flow 3 after they knew how to use the search function.
Opinions on the overall experience
Overall all users had a positive experience
3/5 users voted that their experience was “good” and 2/5 users voted that their experience was “extremely good”
Notes & Improvements
- An indicator should be added to the medication information card on the search results page.
- Adding 2 different boxes for first and last names - this is what most users are accustomed to so it may be helpful to maintain this structure
- Younger users had very little issue getting around the interface and completing the tasks but the older participants had a little more difficulty
Iterations
Before
After
Before
After
Final Designs
Conclusion
Creating and designing Pet Well drew my attention to the importance of technical literacy and how it affects the overall design. Young and more technologically savvy users were able to complete tasks in a short amount of time with an almost innate ability. Older users and those who are not as proficient in using digital interfaces were still able to complete the task at hand just with a little more time and errors. The goal of this design was for it to be accessible and easy to use for users who do and do not have experience with working on a mobile browser-based platform.
Due to time constraints, some pages as well as the desktop interfaces have not yet been finalized, next steps include completing these and performing more usability testing to solidify Pet Well’s end goal of supporting every user and their pets.
✦ let's connect ✦
Sophie Burt | 2023