PetSync
PetSync is an all-encompassing, pet health mobile application for pet owners. PetSync has the potential to provide pet owners with easy access to consolidated patient records and vet-curated education materials in a simple user-driven experience. This app was an IDEXX Innovate project.
Each year IDEXX hosts two innovation days, it is a form of a hackathon, and it is a time-limited event where people work in teams to “hack” on a key problem, new idea, or new feature. Teams are recognized for excellence in the following categories: Most Operationally Complete, Most Commercially Viable, and Most Out-of-the-Box, and Best Use of Cross-Team Collaboration. I assembled a team of three UX designers, a veterinarian, and a developer to become team Petsync. Our goal for the event was to create a 15-minute presentation and high-fidelity prototype that demonstrated the key functionality of the app within 5 days.
My Role
UX/UI Design
Prototyping
Storytelling
Team
3 Designers/Researchers
1 Sr. Software Engineer
1 Veterinarian
1 Product Owner
Demographic
Pet Owners
The Problem
In today’s veterinary world, many veterinarians and their staff are overburdened and under-supported in analyzing the needs of their patients, providing emotional & educational support to pet owners, and also for caring efficiently and effectively for their patients.
According to a past AVMA economics study, 60% of practices self-reported inefficiencies throughout their practice, including things like wasted time on the phone answering questions that could easily be answered through other self-sufficient means for the pet owner. Veterinarians are also 3.5 times more likely to commit suicide than other members of the general population. Why is this? There are a lot of reasons some of the bigger ones are work fatigue, and having to justify the costs of services to angry pet owners. Pet owners are often uncertain about treatment plans and uninformed about the value of preventative care. This can lead to distrust toward veterinary staff and cause suspicion toward true cost of care.
This pandemic in particular has caused huge amounts of stress and mental strain on the vet community. When most of the population went to work from home full-time they wanted company, so they got pets. With this huge want for animal companionship, pet ownership increased by 6% in the US alone. Over 70% of US households own a pet, there are roughly 135 million cats and dogs alone. There are only about 126 thousand vets practicing in the US today. That's roughly 1070 dogs and cats to every 1 vet, with each pet being seen on average 2.5 times a year. Not all, but a lot of practices work 60+ hours per week 6-7 days a week depending on the type of practice. Emergency clinics are open usually 24/7. All interaction between the pet owner and the vet were done over the phone as owners we no longer allowed to enter the clinics with their pets. Frustration and fatigue were being felt all around.
So, how do we combat these increasing problems with software and provide the necessary support to veterinarians and their staff while providing pet owners the insight they wanted?
Our solution was to create PetSync, an all-encompassing pet health mobile application.
First Steps
Before beginning the design work for this project, we all agreed that creating a brief survey to better understand the pet owner's perspective would benefit us even if we only had a few days total for the project. As pet owners ourselves we had a lot of assumptions, but we wanted the data to back us up.
Below is a sample from questions we sent out in the survey:
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Do you have an pets?
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Do you visit the vet with your pets?
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Do you have other family members go with you to the vet?
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How often do you go to the vet?
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What do you need/want to know about your pets health?
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How do you find out more information about your pets various medical conditions or needs?
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Do you use a mobile phone? If so how often do you use it for pet related content?
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Do you feel confident in understanding any diagnostic results your vet may share with you?
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Do you ever leave the vet's office confused or unsure about your pet's health?
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Have you ever been frustrated with the services your vet provides you for your pet?
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If you had access to a mobile app for your pets health what kind of content would you expect it to provide you?
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How often would you use something like a pet health app?
Things we heard from pet owners:
The most interesting responses we received were around what kind of content they would expect from an app like PetSync.
"I'd like a way to remind myself when I need to give my dog his pills and when I need to refill his pills. Things like flea prevention would be nice to be reminded of too, its easy to lose track of that."
"I'd like a way to see my pets medical records but maybe in a less confusing way, I don't always understand the medical terms."
"Booking new appointments without having to call into the office"
"A messaging system so I can ask questions about my dogs health or medications."
"I'd like to know what planned expenses I should be expecting before I go there."
We also interviewed three veterinarians and asked what they felt would make or break an app like PetSync.
Things we heard from the veterinarians:
"I'd like a library detailing information about each diagnostic test we offer and why they are important, I think if we can show the customer the value they will be far more compliant. I'd also like a library of articles and videos containing information on medical conditions pets may have, Dr. Google has always been more trouble than not and I'd rather my customers get their information from one source that has pertinent medical information."
"If we could have a clinic side to this app, something that gives us access it would be good if it would connect to our PIMS [practice management system] and pull all of our data over without us manually having to do it. I'd also like to be able to sell our product through something like this as well and allow our customers to pay on the app. Less time at the counter means more time our team can spend with patients."
"With covid, it would be easier for us and I'm sure the client to just use an app like this to check in, check out, and pay for everything. Where we have to do this all over the phone now it might be nice too if we could have some kind of live view of any diagnostic results we need to show them."
The takeaways:
We quickly had a growing list of potential functionally but only a few days to wireframe, mockup, and prototype a design. We narrowed down the requirements to demonstrate a typical "covid" workflow.
Check in → Update Pet Information → Review Diagnostic Results → Checkout and Pay
It was a simple but powerful workflow to demonstrate how effective a tool like this could be during these challenging times.
A Quick Persona
Because we wanted to have a narrative story to go along with the final demo of PetSync we decided to create a user persona to base our narrative. The persona was distilled from the data we received from our initial pet owner survey as well as prior pet owner research done at IDEXX. Alexis Mathers would become the focus of our PetSync narrative.
Wireframes and Mockups
Once we had our workflow settled, I began working on simple wireframes for each step needed to accomplish our narrative. These were quick iterative designs and I gave myself one day to finalize them before moving on to mockups. Where we were limited in time, I needed to move through the design process quickly. I had done prior iOS UX design best practices research for another IDEXX product so I was able to transfer that knowledge to these wireframes. My goal was to keep to a simple layout with the main focus on the pet profiles and pertinent medical findings. This workflow was only going to demonstrate a small portion of the potential functionality and had to be demoed in less than 4 minutes. Since the goal was for this to become an IDEXX product, I utilized the IDEXX design system for the colors and components.
Example wireframes for the first five steps in the workflow, splash screen, check-in popup, patient questionnaire, dashboard, and medical results.
Example mockups for the first five steps in the workflow, splash screen, check-in popup, patient questionnaire, dashboard, and medical results.
The Narrative and Demo
For Alexis and veterinarians, time savings and convenience are extremely important. We wanted to demonstrate how efficient the PetSync app could be for both the pet owner and the veterinarian in a real-world scenario during the pandemic. We took the example of a wellness exam visit, something a pet owner does at least once a year, and built out our narrative. The prototype was built using a combination of Sketch and Invision.
Final Thoughts and Reflection
This was an incredibly fun and rewarding project to work on. We had some excellent cross-collaboration with teams we don't typically work with, which was exciting! This demo was also a great way to quickly jump into the pet owner space, which was something I was not familiar with. My focus at IDEXX has been mainly within the veterinarian and medical specialist realms so this was a breath of fresh air and a whole new user base to study. Though the project was only five days in total, I am proud of my team's work. We won the Most Commercially Viable award for this project out of the 16 other incredible innovations. Though the app will not be built, the concepts, functionality, and workflow it suggested were consumed into another IDEXX product.