• Table of Contents:

Project Overview

Timeline: June - August 2023

Tools: Figma & Figjam, Squarespace, Canva

Meet the Team

UX Researcher: Samuele Tran

UX Designer + Content Strategist: Teresa Nguyen 🦦

Visual Designer: Made Widyadhari ✎

Web Builder: Eric Chen 🐉

Marketing Strategists: Tracy Vu & Susan Duong 🍓

Meet the Mentor

Alan Tran — Staff UX Engineer @ Illumina 💡

About [San Diego Animal Sanctuary]

San Diego Animal Sanctuary (SDAS) is a new 501(c)(3) non-profit animal rescue and sanctuary founded in 2021 and located in San Diego, California. As a volunteer-run organization, SDAS is dedicated to rescuing dogs and other animals facing euthanasia, homelessness, neglect, or abuse and providing them with a safe haven. No matter the animal's background, SDAS seeks to give at-risk animals a second chance at life.

Objectives

1. Redesign the website with Squarespace for better navigation, SEO, and to showcase adoptable pets in an engaging, user-friendly way.
2. Create a strong, memorable brand identity with a polished logo that represents values, and consistent branding across platforms.
3. Improve marketing through content & social media to increase adoptions, donors, and community involvement.

🐶 Phase 1 & 2: Discover and Define

Problem Statement

<aside> <img src="/icons/light-bulb_green.svg" alt="/icons/light-bulb_green.svg" width="40px" /> How might we improve navigation, effectively showcase adoptable dogs, and establish polished branding to attract more adopters, fosters, donors, and community support for this new, volunteer-run animal sanctuary working to save dogs from euthanasia and abuse?

</aside>

User Research

• Interview

  • Data Mining

    • Initially, we interviewed with the founder of San Diego Animal Sanctuary, Sabrina, to find any pre-existing issues as well as establish clear expectations with her in which we documented.

    

  • Unstructured Interviews

    • Once we got an idea of issues already prevalent with the website, we conducted 11 unstructured user interviews and observed our users interactions with the original website. We documented their thoughts, actions, and reactions to every page existing onto an Mind Map for easier exploration of trends and patterns.

    https://www.figma.com/file/ETFIiOYLHm1KMvHI4ur8Hj/Animal-Sanctuary-Affinity-Map?type=whiteboard&node-id=0-1

Key Insights

In conducting our data mining and user interviews, we found specific trends or patterns on each section of the website that were persistently showing up with our users.

| Landing Page | • Two wish lists in landing page is confusing • Inconsistent button shapes, sizes, and colors • Colors blend in with backgrounds • Some users like the structure/organization • Users do not like the ovals | | --- | --- | | About Page | • Happy Tails liked • Clear intentions/goals of the pages and clear word choice for tabs • Text/blurb to learn more about happy tails animals adopted/their story -- descriptions • Confusing on why it is called “Happy Tails” or what it means to users • Map is confusing/not specific • Unable to click on about | | Adopt Page | • Users like the carousel of pictures of dogs • Clear and easy process to adopt/go to application • Carousel can be confusing | | Donate Page | Donate button needs to be bigger/centered | | Volunteer Page | • Clarity on the page and is easy for users to read/apply • Some issues with the photos either by layout/organization or by relatedness | | Foster Page | • Giant blurb makes it hard to read/intimidating • Different buttons that link to the same page |

Competitive Analysis

In-depth Competitive Analysis (Full screen for more details!)

We conducted a competitive analysis on both websites and Instagram pages of animal shelters and rescues that share the common goal of saving dogs from euthanasia and abuse. This helped us recognize areas for improvement and gain inspiration.

By benchmarking against similar organizations' website functionality, user experience, and branding strategies, we identified opportunities to enhance our own site and presence to better appeal to potential adopters, fosters, donors, and other target audiences.

Website Opportunities

🌊 Add grid collage of animal profiles with an organized sorting & filtering feature

🌊 Embed internal animal profiles for a consistent web layout

🌊 Highlight what makes SDAS different from others → focus on rescuing high-kill animals

🌊 Have distinguishable visual identity, with consistent color palette, logo, and branding

🌊 Differentiate adopting vs fostering clearly

🌊 Add more written testimonials to convince new community members to join

SWOT Analysis

We synthesized our findings from the competitive analysis into a SWOT analysis, where we analyzed the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities for improvement, and potential threats facing the animal sanctuary.

| Strengths:

• Focus on rescuing high-kill animals and providing lifelong care
• Offer training and sanctuary to ensure proper care
• Interact with local community through events and tabling to attract a younger demographic | Weaknesses:
• Website not optimized for SEO or user experience
• No differentiated branding guidelines or assets
• Inconsistent social media messaging and engagement
• Lack of paid advertising and retargeting | | --- | --- | | Opportunities:
• Develop clear brand guidelines and assets to improve consistency
• Implement keyword targeting and blogging to boost SEO
• Expand social media strategy with engagement tactics and contests | Threats:
• Competition from more established rescues as a newer/smaller organization
• Confusion from name change of similar organization San Diego Animal Sanctuary and Farm
• SEO challenges impacting web traffic and discovery |