The animal rescue organization transports over 2,000 animals annually from various local shelters in rural New Mexico to Colorado. This helps free up capacity at rural shelters and bring animals to an area with much higher adoption demand. The organization is completely foster-based, which means all animals need to secure a foster home to be transported. The logistics are currently coordinated through a private Facebook Group with ~200 volunteers.

Here is an example of a post from the Facebook Group (Mr. Stache has found a foster home!):

The organization needs to ensure that important information - like foster animals looking for a home or vaccination requirements - is communicated to foster volunteers to ensure animals meet requirements for adoption. The current process of posting all information on a Facebook Group was not enabling fosters to tap into the community's opportunities and resources in a helpful way.

I conducted five 30-minute user interviews with animal fosters in this organization to gather perspectives on user pains and motivations. I also conducted a content audit on the Facebook Group for a 14-day period to understand what needs the current tool addressed. I categorized 191 posts on the group's timeline by topic to realize the large number of functions the Facebook Group served, and the opportunity for improving these experiences. This research helped me to formulate an initial site map.

I created an affinity map to synthesize the findings from my user interviews. A theme emerged: Fosters feel a need to constantly monitor the Facebook feed to ensure they see vital information, especially pertaining to available foster animals. Even if volunteers weren't looking to foster, that information overwhelmed the group's feed, creating a frustrating experience. I created user personas to synthesize user motivations and challenges. Based on my research and user interviews, I decided to focus my design process on the following challenge:

I determined that a mobile app would be a preferable solution since 4/5 interviewers indicated that they relied on phones to view information on the Facebook group. In addition, I wanted information to be accessible in contexts like animal pick ups, when access to computers wouldn't be feasible. I started the ideation process by creating a user flow map to imagine how a user would select a foster animal using an app.

Next, I created sketches to brainstorm ideas for completing this user flow.

I selected an idea that best represented my user flow and continued refining the design through a process of sketch prototyping (Marvel POP), wireframing (Figma), and hi-fi prototyping (Figma), integrating usability testing throughout the process.

I conducted ten usability tests (five with a sketch prototype, five with a hi-fi prototype). I asked users to "sign up to foster a dog that gets along with other dogs." These tests illustrated important design improvements.

When testers navigated to the foster page, they initially spent time interpreting the information on the page. I wanted to make the intent of the page clearer. I simplified the interface to highlight the main button and added information on available animals so users could have context to guide their actions. I created a separate page, "My Fosters" for information regarding upcoming, current and past fosters to remove distractions and consolidate this information.

The "favorites" functionality was added after testing the sketch prototype, when testers indicated that they wanted a way to quickly scan and organize information. This was a popular feature in the hi-fi prototype testing, but users also wanted an easier way to scan information and reference their "favorites" list. I redesigned the "Search" page to add labelling to the icons and to place them consistently for easy scanning. I also added "favorites" to the main navigation menu so that users could quickly reference this list from anywhere in the app.

Testers only glanced the confirmation page that provided details on how and where to pick up their animals. I realized the importance of emphasizing these details to ensure a smooth pick up process. I redesigned the upcoming fosters page to organize the content based on the information necessary for next steps (date/pick up location).

Here's are a few screens from my final solution (See the full prototype):

As a next step, I'm interested in thinking about ways to make the selection process even more seamless. For example, could it be more motivating to have an "assistant" feature that guides the foster selection process? Additionally, creating features to help fosters once they have an animal in their care (i.e. information on required shots, adoption profile writing tips) and in the adoption selection process (i.e. list of screened applicants) would be great potential roadmap items.