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Introduction

I have been concerned that there are currently many issues related to stray animals in society. From the current responses on the internet, most stray animal centres rely on social media postings and one-on-one matching by customer service, and the circulation of animals is very slow. It is also costly and stressful to operate and difficult to maintain in the long term. From personal experience, as a volunteer, I have visited stray animal centres for social services and activities. I found that the large number of animals placed a burden on the operation of the stray animal centre itself, as well as on the associated social service agencies, in terms of funding, space and manpower.  

I would like to create a website that serves the social issue of stray animals to meet the needs of different users. Firstly, stray animal centres can post animal information on the website, provide adoption programmes, or other related content to sustain the activities and operations of stray animal rescue. Secondly, ordinary users can look for their favourite animals on the website and apply for adoption. The result is the integration, adoption and socialisation of stray animals, and a sustainable operating model for the social organisations involved.

Interview

To delve into the current market, I sought out participants in the stray animal societies at my undergraduate school as well as other universities and interviewed them.

The following pictures are quesion and responds. For more detail, you can see by  Figma

Persona Type Picked

Overall, I found four types of potential users. The final focus was on practitioners who rescue stray animals as the target audience.

There are several reasons that I choose adopters as the persona type. Firstly, among the society, adopters are the majority of people, which account for the largest number. So aiming at this type can serve more people, offer them functional website that can help them solve their problems. Besides, it is easier to get in touch with adopters, since help-seekers are rare, seldom citizens will pay so much attention to homeless animals and help them, more people just walk away. As for rescuers, they are professional, but less likely to find them and get in touch with them.       Ben is a girl who already live by herself, but she always feel a little bit lonely. Since she do not want to pay the expensive price on a animals, and want to contribute to the society, she just raise the idea of adopt a cute animals, which can achieve a win-win situation.

Through the interviews, I found out that persona will promote itself in two ways. If it is an aid station with a small radiating area, it will be more inclined to spread the word by word of mouth, mainly focusing on social media with strong connections, such as WeChat and Xiaohongshu. If it is a relief station with a larger radiation area, it will concentrate on web pages and microblogs. The keywords and hashtags that are often used are: stray animals, adoption, management

Problem Statement

In order to clearly define the problem, I have made a problem statement that How might we make NGO people (who/users) address the problem of gain more investment and acheive more adoption(what/needs) to work efficiently and benefit to society(why/goals).

Current story Map

From a product perspective, I mapped out the story in order to understand and familiarise myself with the features and content required

Current Journey Map

In order to understand this product from the user's perspective, I have drawn journey map base on  NGO people who manage stray pet

Position Map

Compared to other competing products already in the market, I have drawn a comparison chart to clearly represent the strengths and weaknesses of each product and the current vacancies in the market

Data Research

In order to understand this product from the user's perspective, I have drawn journey map base on  NGO people who manage stray pet

I scraped the data against two of the more established websites already in existence and found some problems and room for improvement.The two sites searched are Spca and Scda

There are a few problems with the data that is currently available. Firstly, it is difficult to forget uniformity in the data crawled as different organisations have different websites, each with different styles and content. For example, some sites only state the sex and age of the animal, another site will state the address of the animal, the species, etc. So for some of the data, it is missing. In addition, an important need for persona is to increase the efficiency of adoption, but some websites and agencies do not have a similar section and only direct users to contact by email or phone, which shows that content with necessary steps is also missing. Secondly, some agencies do not categorise their information well, with unconventional stray animals such as turtles and birds mixed in with information on cats and dogs, creating fragmented and discontinuous information. Another problem is that in most websites, the adoption information is not updated in a timely manner. I.e., adoption information has been posted, but after filling out the application form it is found to have been adopted. persona indicates that due to staffing reasons and the sheer volume of work, the status of information in the back office is often forgotten to be updated. This can result in outdated and incorrect information misleading adopters.

The information that is currently difficult to capture is the organisational structure, how we work together, the donation process, and the adoption process. In order to solve the manpower problem, we need to know the existing manpower structure, but generally organisations do not publicise the relevant information, so we intend to ask persona to refine it. In order to increase social influence and build a good reputation, it is necessary to increase cooperation with other organisations or companies to create a win-win situation. However, most of the collaborations are currently presented in press releases or implicitly revealed, so it is not possible to directly capture the collaborators and the specific ways of collaboration, and it is necessary to summarise them based on a large amount of text. Regarding the donation process, it can affect credibility and funding sources. It is envisaged that the research needs to be expanded. As small organisations do not have a well-developed process, they basically provide information about the recipient and make a direct transfer donation, but this can lead to financial opacity. So on the one hand, it is intended to refer to the donation methods of established large organisations and summarise the common methods. Finally, there is the adoption process, which is not summarised on some websites and platforms. Again, it is necessary to visit persona and research a large number of similar websites for specific information.

Project Contribution

I believe this project demonstrates my concern for social pain points and a mindset of positive solutions. Specifically, I want to focus on the business need for a sustainable operation of a homeless agency, which focuses on two issues: diverse funding sources and more efficient ways to adopt. The functional and content requirements will be constructed, then the interaction design and information architecture of the architecture layer will be considered, and finally a suitable visual design will be presented.