Pound Dog Rescue
Pound Dog Rescue
Self-directed Team Project / Jan 2020
An engaging, community tool for a deserving organization.
Branding designed in collaboration with Holly Phipps, Christian Marshall and Parm Bhinder. Photography by Jenn Wilson Photography.
Pound Dog Rescue is an amazing organization that saves dogs all across Canada and re-homes them to the right families with proper screening, education, and more. As part of a self directed project our team gave their brand a refresh, and I designed an app that could help them to streamline their adoption processes, build community, and remind users of important events. Ask me about the dogs I’ve fostered for their organization!
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Objective: Create a deliverable for the redesign of a chosen charity. *The charity that was decided upon was Pound Dog Rescue* This project was used to add consistency and user-friendly assets that would keep the charity in the forefront of its donors’ minds and expand their reach.
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01. To engage users with PDR and create strong relationships between donors, adopters, and volunteers, creating a sense of community.
02. Communicate clearly the gratitude PDR has for users and the help they provide their dogs.
03. Enable PDR’s dogs to get the help that they need through generous donations, volunteering, and adoptions.
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The main challenge was organizing all of the content that PDR has to offer. They are a complex organization with many channels. The challenge is finding a way to organize it through a familiar and simple system. Other challenges included creating a sense of community and making the donation process extremely user-friendly.
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In the future, I could see this project being extended further through more sections and more intuitive gestures and micro-animations. The app could be tested with more users that fit into the target audience that we might not have been able to reach in the first round of testing. Another conversation with PDR could also improve the goals and narrow in on the first version that could go to development.
Why an app?
The app was created as a tool to create a strong community around PDR. They are about creating safe homes for dogs and connecting them with passionate people. Through the mobile app, features like “Community” were created for users and PDR to share updates on dogs who need homes, have found homes, and more. An app like this would improve PDR’s online presence, as most competitors have an app. 90% of the time spent on smartphones is in apps. They are also more likely to attract users’ attention than websites as they are always on the home screen of their device. PDR needed an app to continuously engage with users and make donating as user-friendly as possible.
Research + Testing
Research and brainstorming were conducted to review the competitive landscape and understand both their successes and failures. Research was also completed on how charities use apps to engage with their supporters and increase donations and volunteer uptake. Along with that, research was conducted on how to turn the app into a community space where users would be active and share. Testing was done to streamline the overall organization of the app and personas were designed to understand user needs, wants and limitations.
Key Research & Findings
Solution Video
The final prototype showcases the main features and screens within the application. Sections such as the Community, Dogs, Donations, Items, Events, as well as search, save, preferences, and profile were all considered. In the future, I could see this project being further refined through more card sorting or tree testing exercises to increase the fluidity of the app.
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