Paw Voyage — Emily Lear

For traveling pet owners who are looking to stay in a hostel, the Paw Voyage app provides an all-encompassing platform where users can find the perfect hostel for themselves and their pets.

The Team

Makenzie Doyle
UX/UI Designer | UX Researcher | Animator | Logo Designer

Emily Lear
UX/UI Designer | UX Researcher

Veronica Vizcaya
UX/UI Designer | UX Researcher | Illustrator

Timeline

Although there is a large variety of products that allows for users to book and check into hostels, the options and information offered to pet owners is limited. Pet owners are unable to easily locate hostels that accommodate pets as sources are currently spread among different platforms. There is also a lack of clear information provided about booking and checking into hostels with a furry companion.

PROBLEM

Create a mobile app that will exclusively contain a variety of pet-friendly hostels for pet owners. Users will be able to search, book, and check in remotely to a hostel all within a single app.

Solution

Know thy enemy :)

When looking at our competitors, the biggest thing we found was that although platforms did offer a pet-friendly filter option to narrow down search results, the filters did not go beyond or expand upon what pet-friendly meant.

We also found that this wasn’t very beneficial in the long run because a lot of times, there would be little to no search results or results would be confusing and misleading.

We also found that a lot of sites and apps would redirect you to a different source in order to book or check in to a hostel. This seemed to be confusing and misleading as these services are not actually offered by the product itself. WorldHostels showed that it had a far better process in which the user could do everything through one app without being redirected elsewhere.

Through our interviews and surveys we were able to identify several needs that our app could fulfill to help get more people comfortable with traveling with their pets.

The biggest concerns people had with traveling with their pets was the ability to easily find a place that is not only pet friendly, but does not charge extra fees for bringing a pet along as well.

People were also concerned with their pets being safe and comfortable at the place they are staying. They want to know just how pet-friendly the hostels really are.

62 Total Responses

Survey Data

WOULD YOU STAY IN A HOSTEL WITH PETS?

HOW OFTERN DO YOU TRAVEL?

DO YOU HAVE A PET(S)

Painpoints

Users can be confused and overwhelmed about the amount of options and information.

Sights often turn users around to different sites.
Some options show up under pet friendly searches but don’t give any information on why they are pet-friendly or what the owner may need to do in order to have a pet with them. They also lack any info on amenities and resources for pets.
Sometimes there are no options given for a location.

Opportunities

Have one source that provides multiple options and is well organized with key information, up front, and easy to filter.
Have users be able to search, learn, book and check-in on one platform with an option link to the hostel’s personal site.
Have an app that only shows pet-friendly places then allow for more filters and information that is geared towards pets and pet owners.
Give pet-friendly city and town recommendations along with hostels in those areas.

User has stayed in several hostels before and is looking to stay in another in Switzerland with their dog.

User has never stayed in a hostel before, is traveling to Peru with their dog and is looking for a hostel to stay in.

After gaining a better understanding of the problems we needed to solve, we were able to come up with a list of “how might we” questions in order to learn more about how we could tackle these specific problems and areas of our product. We divided these questions into “user” and “product” questions.

After researching and gaining insight into our product, we began to have a better understanding on which problems needed to be solved. Based on the information we learned, we created a set of goals for the user, brand, and business.

Without using Paw Voyage, when you search for “pet-friendly hostels” online you end up going through a loop trying to find a site with comprehensive information about staying in a hostel with pets, which is frustrating, inefficient, and one of the biggest discouraging factors when it comes to traveling with animal companions.

Site Map

New User Flow

A User Journey Map was created to mark the areas of the current process that could be improved with our product.

Designing

During our first round of sketches, we explored different layouts for how our product would look and function. We considered potential ideas for the check in process and the ways this would be brought to life the best. We were able to base our ideas off of these sketches and later use them to build our lo fi prototypes.

Lofi

Once we were done getting the basic layout of our app prototyped, we were able to move onto the next step which was user testing. User testing was another essential step in order to refine our product and learn more about our solution. These were some of the common themes we found in our testing:

Pros:

Good layout
Easy to use
Approachable
Having list of top pet friendly cities and trending in discover
Favorite button
Like pet sitting filter option
Like the Noise-tolerence level filter
Allowing users to input their personal info and pet info on account.

Cons:

Could be more fun and engaging
List filters form home page with the specific hostel’s Descriptions
Icon Filters on the home page instead of text
Move action item to after the filters on the home page
Need more pet sitter information on the hostels page and check-in
Discover page need more filter options
Buttons and icons are too big

Hifi

During this round of testing, we began to become more familiar with different areas of our product and which elements were functional. We were reaching a point where our product was close to being finalized but we still needed to work through small details.