Langtown
Noticing the insufficient space in animal shelters in Taiwan from my volunteer experiences, I led my team to develop the Langtown adoption platform in the Design for Taiwan program to increase the adoption rate of our partner animal shelter. Ultimately, our social design increased the overall adoption rate by 28.7% in three months.
Duration
Aug, 2021 – Dec, 2022
Team
2 Product Designer, 1 Graphic Designer, 1 Front-End Developer, 1 Content Marketing Specialist
My Role
As a leader, I headed a team of five. I was responsible for product management, task allocation and service design.
As a product designer, I conducted the preliminary user research, field study, wireframe sketches, UI design, prototype design, and usability testing, and rolled out the website with Webflow.
Background
After the government banned the euthanasia of stray animals in 2017, the space of both governmental and nongovernmental animal shelters in Taiwan is noticeably insufficient due to the rising number of stray animals. To enhance quality of life for these animals and relieve the crippling burden on animal shelters, our goal is to increase adoption rates by optimizing the adoption services for potential adopters.
Preliminary Study
1. Field Research on Animal Shelters
My team and I visited both governmental and nongovernmental animal shelters to observe the living environment of animals, investigate the current adoption process, and interview the shelter managers.
2. Survey of Adoption Experiences
We did a survey to study the adoption experience. Our survey, which received 281 responses in total from online pet forums, revealed that 170 adopters had frustrating experiences with adopting animals. Among these frustrated respondents, 55% of them failed to adopt dogs or cats from nongovernmental animal shelters, and 42% of them found the adoption process too complicated.
3. In-Depth Interviews
To gain further insight about the complexity of the adoption process, we recruited seven adopters for interviews. Three of them had adopted animals from governmental animal shelters, while the others had adopted animals from nongovernmental organizations.
Considering the frustrating experiences of adopting animals are more common in nongovernmental organizations than in governmental animal shelters, we decided to focus on improving the adoption experience in nongovernmental animal shelters.
User Research
Using the data and information collected from our previous research, I created two primary adopter personas to help our team better understand our users. Both personas represent the main adopters in nongovernmental animal shelters. One persona depicts experienced adopters and their approach to caring for cats, while the other portrays enthusiastic newcomers who are eager to adopt stray animals with compassion and kindness.
Define Problems
Besides creating adopter personas, we also collected the concerns and pain points of shelter managers, which helped us identify three major problems causing adopters to abandon the adoption process.
- Some adopters differ with shelter managers on taking care of animals, while some may not have a thorough understanding of how to properly care for a dog or cat. This results in a loss of trust from shelter managers.
- The procedure for adopting animals is not clearly revealed. As a result, misunderstandings between adopters and shelter managers often lead to a waste of time and may escalate into conflicts during communication.
- Most of the adoption procedures focus on investigating adopters’ personal information, rather than their passion and knowledge for caring for animals. The adopters feel offended and concerned about privacy violations.
Objective
To ensure that adopters successfully complete the adoption process, we aim to provide adoption services that foster mutual trust and prevent misunderstandings between the adopters and shelter managers.
Design Ideation
As most adopters are used to reaching out to shelter managers through online platforms, we created the Langtown adoption platform and developed four main functions addressing the problems and following our objective.
Must Know before Adoption
Equip adopters with sufficient knowledge and appropriate attitude toward keeping animals.
Game for Adopters
Enable self-examination through a practical and playful game after the “Must Know before Adoption” part.
Survey before Meeting
Check the qualifications of adopters and provide clear explanations for each survey question to alleviate the concerns of privacy violation.
Reservation for Meeting
Provide a convenient and timesaving way for adopters and shelter managers to contact and know more about each other
According to the four main functions, I made sketches of wireframes and held an online workshop to discuss with other team members.
Design Development
In this phase, my team and I created a lo-fi prototype based on the wireframes and conducted three usability tests to trial our adoption platform.
After receiving feedback from users, we transformed the lo-fi prototype into a high-fidelity version and conducted five additional usability tests. During the process, we made three versions of the high fidelity prototype in total to continually test and refine our design.
The following images present the most recent version of Langtown, which I had developed through Webflow with our front-end developer.
Collaborative Partnership
After rolling out Langtown, we collaborated with a nongovernmental animal shelter based in Hsinchu, a local branch of Hsinchu Cat Care Program, from June to December in 2022. The branch is called the Cat Team of HCCP. Our team facilitates both the adopters and shelter managers to communicate, complete the adoption process, and ultimately helps cats find their new homes. To ensure our service works smoothly, I made this service blueprint to illustrate the adoption process.
Results
From August to November in 2022, we facilitated the Cat Team of HCCP to match new caregivers and successfully helped seven cats find new homes through Langtown within three months. The overall adoption rate increased 28.7%.
Most adopters consider that “Must Know before Adoption” is practical and clearly displayed for reviewing and learning new knowledge. Moreover, both adopters and shelter managers find “Game for Adopters” and “Survey before Meeting” helpful and satisfying for checking the passion and knowledge to take care of animals.
The adoption process on Langtown are transparent, which creates a sense of trust and alleviates conflicts between the adopters and shelter managers.
Feedback from Adopters
“Langtown is an excellent platform for novice adopters like me as it offers a comprehensive introduction and learning resources on cat care. Thank you for creating this platform. I had a positive experience with the adoption process.”
“Providing explanations for each survey question helps adopters understand the purpose behind the questions, which can prevent misunderstandings and potential offense.”
Feedback from Shelter Managers of the Cat Team
“The step ‘Survey before Meeting’ helps me save a lot of time. The adopters and I align our concepts of keeping cats before we meet, so we can focus on other discussions when meeting each other.”
“The information and requirements of adopting a cat are clearly revealed on the adoption platform, which helps both the shelter manager and adopters reach consensus efficiently and communicate smoothly.”
My teammates and I promoted the idea of Langtown at the Design for Taiwan Exhibition in 2022.
Satoru and Sukuna are the first two cats that were adopted through Langtown.
Lessons Learned
Through this project, I learned to design products based on thorough user research and a strong value proposition while considering stakeholders’ needs.
Moreover, I found that promoting our design and communicating its value are the most challenging parts. After launching our adoption platform, I reached out to many shelter managers to propose our services and seek collaborators. However, only the Cat Team of HCCP accepted our proposal and became our partner.
I also learned that designing products with sustainable business strategies is crucial for fostering social innovation. Despite our efforts to enhance adoption rates, we had to stop our service due to insufficient funding. To address this issue, we could collaborate with pet insurance companies or pet food manufacturers and implement a subscription model for adopters. This approach would allow us to diversify our development strategy and potentially achieve sustainable success.
Overall, this is a precious experience for me to lead a cross-functional team, implement social design holistically, and communicate with complex stakeholders.
