adpt

A UX design exercise. About 6.5 million companion animals enter US shelters every year. I talked with the director of a shelter charity in New York, whose point stuck with me: nothing replaces meeting an animal face to face. So the app doesn’t try to replace the shelter visit. It helps people screen compatible pets and talk to shelters, so the visits they do make count.

Onboarding is three questions: your name, what you’re looking for, and where. In brief user testing, swipeable cards made people skim, so I moved to a slower, button-based list that kept them with each animal longer. In hindsight the strict Material Design made it clear and a little anonymous.