Pet MD Mobile App
Being a pet parent doesn’t have to be hard!
Pet MD is the one stop shop for pet owners navigating pet ownership.
Timeline: February-March 2024
Role: UX Researcher, UX Designer, UI designer
Problem
Pet ownership is hard, confusing, and expensive to navigate on your own. While the internet has endless resources, it can be tricky to troubleshoot your pets’ issues quickly and accurately. Going directly to the veterinarian with every issue can become pricy and inconvenient.
Solution
Pet MD is the one-stop-shop for pet owners navigating pet parenthood.
My app will allow users to identify medical or behavioral issues with their pets by giving them access to a virtual diagnose function, real verified veterinarians, and a community of other pet parents.
The app also functions as a social media platform where pet parents can communicate through messaging, groups, and posts to get advice, make plans, and just chat about shared interests.
Finally, the app acts as a database for users to house their pet’s medical records, history, photos, and more.
Pet MD Objectives
Connect
Communicate with fellow pet parents and verified professionals
Diagnose
Troubleshoot your pet’s issues and get them diagnosed
Document
Store all of your pet’s medical files, history, and more all in one place
Save Money
Save by getting non emergent diagnoses without having to go to the vet
With Pet MD, pet ownership is made simple, accessible, and affordable. Pet MD aims to create a community for pet owners and act as the first line of defense for troubled pet parents.
User Persona
A user of Pet MD could be anyone who owns any species of pet. This criteria could cover many different demographics but for the purposes of this study and the social aspect, I will be focusing on a young user with an unconventional career, as young users are more likely to use social media and her unconventional career motivates her to try and be more frugal with her expenses.
Age: 23
Location: Huntington Beach
Occupation: Tattoo Artist
Housing: Living in an apartment with her boyfriend
Emma Hayes
Lives with her boyfriend in a 1 bedroom apartment. Her boyfriend works as a bartender and she owns a tattoo studio. She enjoys painting and has a beautiful potted plant collection.
Bio
Frequency
She uses the app approx. everyday or every other day depending on if she is currently experiencing pet issues.
Favorite Apps
Navigate pet ownership
Simplify her daily tasks
Organize her documents
Save money when possible
Wants and Needs
Spending hours searching the web for little behavioral and health quirks her pets experience
Worrying that she’s not doing the right things as a pet owner
Paying for expensive vet visits
Frustrations
Navigation Flowchart
The Group, Home, and Messages tabs allow for socializing with the community and sharing information with like-minded pet parents.
The Diagnose, Home, and Messages work in collaboration to help you diagnose your pet and work toward a treatment for them.
The Account tab allows for documentation of all things related to your pet and their care.
PetMD Branding
Ideation and Exploration
Logo Exploration Themes: Veterinarian, Medical, Pets (dogs and cats), healing
Color Scheme Exploration: Dark Blue = Medical, Pastel Orange = Playful and compliment to blue, Pastel Blue/Aqua = Medical and compliment to orange
Typography Exploration Themes: Playful, Medical, Bold
Final Graphics and Color
Final App Icon
Final Color Palette
#256FFF
#FCB040
#FDD09E
Final Typography
Final Illustrations
Concern
Welcoming
Happy
Final Product
Taking the project objectives in mind, PetMD prioritizes 3 main things;
Connection: PetMD focuses on creating a network for pet parents to chat, give advice to each other, and connect with their community.
Diagnose: The app’s end goal is the health and wellbeing of our furry companions, therefore, the usability of the Diagnose function was paramount.
Document: PetMD serves as a digital record of pet history, so it was important to create easy to navigate and digestible formats for the pet’s in-app profile.
Key Functions: Connection
Post
Ask questions, get suggestions, and connect with your pet parent community through the Home page. Pet parents can also categorize their posts by animal, concern level, and issue type so that the post finds the right audience.
In this example, the user makes a post asking for advice about her bunny’s behavioral quirk and adds her location so that she shows up on local user’s feeds.
Comment
Commenting on PetMD allows for the free exchange of recommendations, questions, and more.
In this example, the user leaves advice for a fellow cat owner as she has experience resolving the same issue with her own cat.
Filter
The Filter function is a useful tool for pet parents to filter for or filter out content based on what they are looking for.
In this example, the user used the filter option to only see posts from their friends and only posts relating to rodents so that they can see which of their friends also have bunnies and see if any of them have dealt with similar issues to what they are facing.
Key Functions: Diagnose
Diagnose Tab
One of the most important functions of the app, to help pet parents diagnose their pets, is made possible through the Diagnose tab. Like the name suggests, the objective of this tab is to diagnose your pet’s issues, be it behavioral, medical, or something else! The diagnoses is deduced using symptoms the pet parents observes and provides along with photos. The app then gives likely diagnoses for pet parents to review and confirm. If the issue isn’t resolved, the pet parent can always utilize the community resources to help or contact a vet through the app.
Search Function
The Search function is vital to helping pet parents diagnose their pets, however, it can be used for a variety of reasons. One way it can help pet parents diagnose their pets is by allowing them to search for recommended veterinarians within the app. Each vet will have a profile with their credentials, their successes, posts, the clinic they work for, and their contact information. This allows pet parents to connect with vets online and consult them about their pet’s issues without even leaving the comfort of their home!
Key Functions: Document
Pet Profiles
While each owner has their own profile to interact with the community, pet parents also can add pet profiles to their accounts to keep documentation of all things about their pets. The pet profile can include photos, posts about them, the groups that the pet parent joined because of them, and most importantly, their medical history. In Files and Documents, pet parents can upload check-up history, medications, and vaccination records. In History, pet parents can save in app diagnoses. This function really contributes to PetMD’s guarantee of being the ultimate app for pet parents!
Reflection
While this wasn’t the first time I’ve prototyped an app, this project certainly presented unique challenges that I was tasked with navigating. This idea for the app was my own, thus I had full creative freedom. I wanted to create an app that encompassing any need a pet parent might have but that would also mean condensing many functions into a single app. I initially struggled with the user experience portion of this project as I wanted all of the functions to feel fluid, easily accessible, and intuitive. I believe PetMD was able to achieve this and I am content with the final product!
This was certainly a substantial project but, if I were ever to expand it, I would be interested in creating a co-parenting function that allows pet parents to share pet profiles with their partners so that both could access all of the pet’s data and add to it.
Thank you for reading and please reach out to me with any questions you may have!
Try my final prototype!
