Mentor
Linh Ly
Figma
Christine Tran, Harshini Kandagaddala
UX Research, UX Design, UI Design, Interviews
Responsibilities
Tools
Team
Developed a feature called routes for a pet walking app to enhance user motivation and engagement by offering a more interactive and goal-oriented walking experience.
2024
What is Biscuit Beacon?
Routes Final Screen
Distance/Time Tracker Final Screen
Biscuit Beacon is a community-driven app that helps dog owners locate and share nearby beacons that consist of treat jars, water bowls, dog parks, trails, toy bins, and missing dog flyers to enhance their walking experiences.
Here's a run through of me running the app :)
OVERVIEW
PROBLEM BREAKDOWN
We wanted to design a feature that can enable users to create routes and track their distance with a stopwatch.
01
This will enhance user engagement by encouraging pet owners to explore new routes and trails, enriching their dog-walking experiences.
02
This will be a way to track your pet's overall health with how far they need to travel, the time it takes, and what is needed to improve their overall fitness.
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FEATURE
USER ENGAGEMENT
PET HEALTH
SOLUTION
Developing a new feature?
After our research, we started to narrow down the problem and we came to a conclusion that Biscuit Beacon isn't attracting and engaging users effectively on their platform.
04/ Deliver
The final prototype with some in depth analysis of each element decision.
03/ Develop
My Team and I spent about three weeks iterating sketches.
02/ Define
Getting more insights from a user-interview with a dog owner of three years in Austin, TX.
01/ Discover
My UX Team and I began to conduct initial observations and surveys to get an understanding of the app.
DESIGN PROCESS
Applying the Double Diamond Method
Since we didn't have much research before joining session 4, we immediately began our research process. We had about 8 weeks to finish to conduct our research before creating our low and high-fidelity prototypes
To understand the problem, we began to use different research methods such as surveys, questionnaires, and user testing conduct some observations about the app to dive in deeper on the root cause.
03 | RESULTS
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B
Users said they want to be able to track the time and distance for their dog walks within the app.
Completing tasks or challenges was the most popular, with 66.7%
Reaching milestones was #2 with 61.9%
Users love bonding with their dog on a walk with 76.2%
Users love exercising with their dog on walks with 76.2%
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B
Currently, users aren't tracking their dog walks, except a fitness watch
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Users are lacking motivation, don't have enough time and they're bored during their walks
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Users want a way to track the distance and time for their dog-walks
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Getting to the bottom of the issue
We started with our intital observations of the app
01 | OBSERVATIONS
After our initial observations, we created a survey in Forms asking dog-owners what challenges they face, their motivation, and in-app rewards.
02 | SURVEY
DEFINE
Conducting an interview with a friend
I decided to interview my friend as he's had his dog for three years and tries to take different routes in Austin. Getting insights from him would allow us to understand the deeper issues of the app.
Krish Parmar
Age
21
Education
Sophomore
Occupation
Student
Location
Austin, TX
TEch literate
High
I love exploring and making adventures with my dog.
Personality
Thinker
Tech-savy
Bio
Krish lives in Austin and has a three year old German Shepard. Krish wants to use an app where he can track his dog’s distance and explore different routes.
Core needs
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Connect with users, share trails, and discover popular routes.
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Get live progress, weather updates, and hazard alerts for safe walks.
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Track routes with GPS and easily share them with others.
Frustrations
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Frequent glitches or inaccuracies in route tracking make it hard to monitor progress or distance accurately.
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Other apps fail to provide engaging tools
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Confusing navigation, slow loading times, and poorly designed interfaces from other apps.
Platform
Mobile App
Recognizing User Needs
"I would love to have a feature where users can share their routes so I can see the different adventures I can take."
"I would love to track my pet's distance and time for his overall health."
" I want to explore different places for my dog. Pictures of dogs playing would entice me."
"I would use this product to find parks nearby."
After my interview with Krish, I provided some insights on what he believed would be necessary to address the problem for Biscuit Beacon
Nike Run App
01/ Nike Run
Strava
02/Strava
INSPIRATION
The Nike Run app was a big inspiration for us especially with the countdown, the distance and time page, and the summary page showing your mile time and heart rate throughout the run. This will allow you to see how your dog is responding to certain distances and keep tracking of overall walking health.
The Nike Run App/Strava
Strava's community feature has garnered considerable attention over the past year. Users can talk to fellow runners and bikers and share their progress with other users. This brings in an element of motivation as you see your friends being active, which encourages you to push yourself.
We began to ideate our sketches on how we wanted the routes feature and how we wanted to track distance and time.
SKETCHES
Ideation Sessions
GOAL TRACKER
SUMMMARY PAGE
ROUTES
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B
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Notifications will occur at the top indicating nearby beacons and achieving certain walking distances.
We added the distance, timer, and stopwatch at the bottom
Click the timer button to activate the time and distance you want to set for your dog
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B
C
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C
The weather is a great way to see how well your dog was walking to get a good idea of what conditions work best.
Pet health will show personal milestones and suggest distances for next walk.
You'll see the duration, distance, and how many beacons you've collected during the walk.
We added a drop pin feature for users to select where they want the route.
You will be given a route based on where you dropped your pin. It will show you the time, distance, and how many beacons will be present
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There will be given directions for the route so you won't get lost with your dog.
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After many ideation sessions, we agreed on a design that led to creating our routes and distance/time features.
FINAL PRODUCT
Biscuit Beacon's New Features
It was a fantastic experience working with this team. Biscuit Beacon taught me a lot about what it takes to be a team player and be a helping hand to my teammates. I had an incredible team to support and help me throughout this internship. I learned a lot of from my mentor Linh and she taught me so much to be a better designer.
REFLECTION
My Time with Biscuit Beacon
The Full Design Process🧑🏽💻
If you're curious about the detailed research and design process behind this project, feel free to contact me!
NEXT STEPS
We want to implement a community feature to message your friends and fellow woofers on a walk. We want to conduct user usability testing with this feature soon. Potentially adding new beacons on walks to make it more fun for users. Another idea would be to market the company better through TikTok and Instagram to spread the word and show why it's unique
DONE DESK
