Erica DeSimone | Art Educator
Working as a manager all throughout my undergrad, I fell in love with small animals; specifically reptiles. During March of 2020, I was one of the many people who purchased a 'Covid Pet'. In doing my own personal research I found myself struggling immensely on finding the most reliable sources for information. This sparked the inspiration to find out if other pet owners struggled as much as I did. Rep-Tales is designed to help the pet parent, not mater the level of knowledge.
The Pet Industry growing industry that makes billions of dollars annually. Pet parents of all different types use many different platforms to show off their pets, learn about their pets, and purchase items to spoil them. For Reptile pet parents, finding a trustworthy place to learn about their animals, and a place where they can share stories is important to them and needed.
Rep-Tales is a reptilian community service where personal stories of both pets and pet owners can be shared. Users can post videos, photos and learn health-care info about their beloved pets from one another. These interactions create this trustworthy community, unlike social media reptile groups on Facebook, TikTok and Reddit.
Phase one of the research plan for Rep - Tales was observation. Observing not only pet parents in environments like pet stores, but also online. The physical and the digital presence of the user influenced the first survey sent out.
The two data points above were collected from the second survey sent out. This survey was sent out to reptile pet parents only and gave me very conclusive results. For these pet parents, many learned about their pet by talking to others and relied on information from people rather than online sources. Reptile pet parents like to share facts with one another. They relied on one another for care facts and general reptile knowledge due to websites with this sort of content being an unreliable source of factual information about their beloved pets. This data made it known to me that these pet parents utilize their community to learn about their pets and grow with one another as owner.
In my data collection, I reached over 1,000 individuals globally with just surveys alone.
New Reptile Owner
"We purchased a pre-made kit for our bearded dragon, and found out that half of the items included were harming him."
Reptile Collector
"I love sharing with people how I care for my reptiles. When they thank me for my ideas or tell me my pets are cool it feels really good."
Many different pet owner types came about during my research. I interviewed many new reptile owners as well as expert reptile owners as well. From the new owners I found that many were misinformed about the care of the animal, and they sought out these reptile experts to help them out. For the reptile expert, or collector in this case, they love to share about their pets online. They are the perfect people to help the novice owners out, and many of them feel satisfied when they help others out.
From my research I created 3 personas. Each have traits and characteristics of the individuals that I interviewed and surveyed, they face the same problems as real life reptile pet parents.
Empathizing with my users was a key part in identifying their pain points. Finding out their emotional needs behind their actions indicated areas that I would be able to focus on designing a solution for.
Journey Maps identified the exact area in my personas experiences that I could design for. Creating their reptile journey and focusing on frustrating or confusing situations that were plausible for my users gave a finite place to design for.
Using Agile UX, I took the data that I collected through various research methodologies and made a strict timeline using sprints to create Rep-Tales. I tested on my users consistently throughout the design process to ensure that my product was usable.
From my users I was able to create 6 key features for Rep-Tales. At this time, I was focused on how users connect with one another, ReptiConnect became the beta name for my process.
Using Procreate I sketched out UI ideas for Rep-Tales. I looked at many different social services to generate ideas on how my feed should work, I made sure not to copy them because I wanted Rep-Tales to stand alone as a social community.
Following my persona Hailey, I drew storyboards to represent how she uses Rep-Tales in her daily life. While designing her solution it became evident to me that what I was creating revolved around the stories and experiences of my users. My name changed to Rep-Tales, as my users were telling "Tales" of their pets to one another.
Hailey walks into her reptile room, and is unsure when the last time she fed her pet snake Zipper was. She opens up her Rep-Tales app and goes to the Vital Tracker, she sees that she has not fed him in a while, and he needs to eat. She tracks that Zipper is going to eat a small rat today, and goes to the fridge to defrost the meal.
While waiting for the small rat to defrost, she scrolls down her News Feed and see's what her herptile friends are up to. Once ready, she feeds Zipper the rat. She decides that she wants to post a picture of him trying to get the rat. She selects the post option and creates her content. She makes sure to add a feeding warning in case others users find his meal uncomfortable.
After posting, she gets notified that users have commented and liked her post- this makes her feel happy. She reptiles to users users questions and comments and even users the messenger function to private message another snake owner. She puts her phone down eventually, and is happy with the community that she has. She loves to share her hobby with others!
Using Adobe XD I broke down my key features and designed for each one. I created my UI using dark mode, due to it causing less strain on the eyes. This service is to be used daily, so causing too much eye strain would cause discomfort for my users. The UI was tested throughout the process, with many different types of users. One user was color deficient, which aided to making Rep-Tales accessible if my user could only see shades or minimal colors.
The final prototype was creating using Adobe XD. This was tested on multiple users, ensuring that the prototype worked as well as making sure that it functioned as well. This was tested on 20 reptile owners, as well as one user that does not own any pets at all. His test was focused on usability and ease of flow throughout Rep-Tales.
E-commerce is a growing addition to many social services. Facebook has a marketplace, as well as Instagram allows users to set up a business profile. Adding this function to Rep-Tales will provide users with a one stop place for all of their reptile needs. Many reptile owners currently like to spoil their pets with custom made items, so providing them with an easy was to do so is the next step. Having small owned businesses and creators will be essential to the community aspect of Rep-Tales.