PETNET

A Rescue and Fostering Networking App

My wife and I have been advocates of animals all our lives, and our relationships with animals have helped to define us as humans.

We have been fosters and rescue parents to both dogs and cats, we have worked with rescues as volunteers and donators. We have had a special needs rescue dog for the past 7 years, and we can't imagine our lives without her.

Throughout our work with a local rescue, we have become even more attuned to the struggles that both rescue staff and the volunteers that work with them must endure. And that is where my wife's initial idea (I give her all the credit!) was born.

PETNET is a solution that provides a platform for fosters to be reviewed and approved, and for rescues to check their status and assign them rescue animals to foster. It also offers a robust community platform for users and stakeholders alike to contribute and communicate, enhancing the process for everyone involved.

More than ever after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and the surrender or abandonment of many pets that were adopted over the last two years, pet rescues now desperately need foster homes for their animals. With no available universal network, rescues are forced to connect with fosters on a case-by-case personal basis. This can be both time-consuming and stressful for everyone involved, including the animals.

Problem Statement

There is an opportunity to link rescues with available fosters and facilitate the fostering of animals so that rescues can accept additional pets and save more lives.

Research

I began my data gathering with some desk research of the current status of rescues and shelters in the US after 2+ years of Covid-19, and a competitive analysis of the applications currently on the market that seemed to address the most similar issues and userbase.

Direct/Adjacent
Competitors

Indirect
Competitor

Maddie's Pet Assistant

Developed to provide health and behavioral support to caregivers after pets go home.

Strengths

Offers support and advice to fosters after the adoption

Weaknesses

Technical/UI issues, does not help find homes or connect fosters to rescues

Find Benji

Offers services to pet adopters or people seeking to rehome pets.

Strengths

Unique concept, free adoptions, ability to connect with local owners

Weaknesses

Problems with onboarding and updating, does not work with rescues or fosters and adopting from unvetted owners could carry risk

Petfinder

App that will support a wide assortment of pet types to prospective adopters

Strengths

Large audience, robust filters, can contact shelters directly

Weaknesses

Crashing/technical problems, only addresses adoptions, does not use fosters or connect users to rescues

Competitive Analysis Trends

Although these competitors all had useful base concepts, there were a few defining threads for them all that separated them from the features that PETNET is proposed to offer.

Technical Issues

All competitors reviewed had several major functional flaws that had been noted by users in reviews, despite the generally positive ratings.

Lack of network

Social networks for these audiences are generally fragmented and localized.

Functionality

There was no available app located that could serve as a network between rescues and fosters and serve the features that PETNET can offer.

User Research

After collecting the competitive analysis data, I conducted some user interviews. I needed to get a better idea of what features my target audiences would be looking for and what pain points were the most urgent and would need to be addressed in the initial build. At this point I also narrowed down which user groups the initial version of the app would focus on: rescues and fosters.

User Interview Objectives

1

Gather information on how fosters and rescues currently handle the processes of fostering animals

2

Determine where the pain and frustration points are in those processes

3

Discover what features would best serve these users in the PetNet app

Participants

Users that participated (8 total), some fulfilling the criteria for more than one user group:

Animal rescue employees - 4
Fosters of rescue animals - 4
Veterinarians - 2
Prospective pet adopters - 3
Donors to pet rescues - 1

Key Findings

After questioning the users on their systems for keeping in contact with their rescue/fosters and options to manage the processes for assigning and accepting animals, I drew the following conclusions:

Facebook messenger was the main method used to keep in contact by every user
Facebook also was the only social media platform still used by all participants
Half of our users were over 45, several displayed concern about possible tech confusion
The interface of the app will need to be simple and hopefully reminiscent of Facebook's controls
Virtual home screenings are a new accepted norm since the Covid pandemic began.
Most users felt that profile tags were probably the most important feature being offered by PETNET
All users had experienced a fostering misassignment/subsequent surrender at some point (that such tags would have likely helped)
Users mentioned unprompted that some sort of follow-up option after adoption is needed.

Personas

Next, I created personas for my two main user types, rescues and fosters based on some median elements of the users I interviewed. Angela Hernandez is an extrovert who is less tech savvy, she would definitely be making use of the more social aspects of the app. The other persona, Jennae Kingston works in a technical field and prefers to handle all processes within the app whenever possible.

Journey Maps

Once the personas were made, my next step was creating journey maps for both the before and after states of each user flow.

Prototypes

In this stage, I started out with rough sketches to get a starting idea of where I wanted to go.

Then, I moved on to wireframes and began to tighten up my ideas, trying to keep in mind the elements my users had mentioned: simplicity, familiarity and clean design.