PetPulse Mobile App
Timeline - Tools - Role
Timeline
3 weeks
Tools
Figma, Google Forms, Google Sheets
Role
UX/UI Designer & Researcher
Team of 5 - led survey design, competitive audits, MVP scope, IA, and user flows
About
Situation
Pet Activity & Health Tracking App
PetPulse was conceived as part of a UX design project aimed at addressing the gaps in existing pet-care technology.
Current solutions like FitBark, Whistle, and 11Pets offer fragmented experiences, forcing pet owners to juggle multiple apps for tracking location, health, and wellness. Through initial discovery, our team identified a strong opportunity to design a mobile-first MVP that combines these core needs into one seamless platform.
Task
User Personas
To ground our design decisions in real user needs, we created personas that represented the two key segments uncovered in our research. These personas helped us stay aligned with our audience throughout ideation, IA, and MVP definition.
By designing with Samantha and Julian in mind, we addressed two very different archetypes: the social, on-the-go urban user with one pet and the organized, data-driven suburban caretaker with more than one pet. Together, they anchored our MVP to balance community engagement with structured health and activity tracking.
Core Tasks
Before jumping into solutions, our team needed to step back and get really clear on what problem we were solving. Pet owners already have dozens of apps fighting for attention — so how could PetPulse stand out and truly serve them?
Our core tasks became:
📍 Validate core user needs and opportunity areas
→ Ran a 15-question survey and synthesized responses to confirm what matters most: location safety, wellness tracking, simple reminders, and trustworthy information.
📍 Define an MVP that is mobile-first (iOS/Android)
→ The product had to feel seamless from the start, with fast onboarding, transparent pricing, and clear health/activity signals surfaced early.
📍 Produce IA, critical user flows, and high-fidelity screens for usability validation
→ To move from ideas to something testable, we focused on mapping the information architecture, building out the most critical flows, and designing high-fidelity wireframes for moderated testing.
In short, the task wasn’t just to design “another pet app” — it was to create a foundation for an MVP that puts owners first, balancing usability, trust, and functionality.
Action
Once we had a clear picture of the problem, it was time to roll up our sleeves and start building toward solutions. We broke the process down into focused steps that connected research to design decisions:
1) Primary Research - Survey
We developed a 15-question Google Form to capture pet types, tracking habits, notification preferences, and desired features.
The survey results confirmed insights such as:
📊 Pet owners are highly engaged with wellness
📊 Want weekly/alert-based notifications
📊 Looking for activity, health, reminders, and expert guidance
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2) Competitive UX Audits
Next, our team conducted in-depth UX audits of competitor apps to uncover onboarding friction, unclear pricing, and missed opportunities in IA, which helped us define the must-have features for our own MVP.
We audited FitBark, Whistle, and 11Pets for onboarding flows, IA, pricing transparency, and accessibility.
Identified must-haves in MVP:
💡 Hero/value clarity
💡 <3s perceived load
💡 Upfront pricing
💡 Streamlined task flows
💡 Consistent mobile branding
3) MVP Definition
From research insights and audits, we distilled the must-have features into a lean MVP that would address the core user problems.
⏱️ Fast Onboarding:
→ Single-screen pet profile, guided device pairing, and upfront privacy settings
🗺️ Location:
→ Live map, customizable geofence alerts, and one-tap emergency sharing
🐾 Health/Activity:
→ Daily & weekly summaries, trend highlights, and simple logs
🐶 Community:
→ Lightweight achievements and local or breed-based groups
💰 Pricing:
→ Upfront visibility for free vs. premium tiers.
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4) Information Architecture & Critical Flows
With the MVP framework in place, we mapped the information architecture and designed critical user flows to ensure that high-value tasks could be completed quickly and intuitively.
It was important for us to develop a seamless IA and app experience into a bottom-tab IA with five core areas: Home, Location, Health, Community, and Settings.
From there, we designed user flows for the highest value tasks. These include:
🟢 App onboarding
🟢 Home screen navigation (including location tracking)
🟢 Pet profile set-up
🟢 Health tracking
🟢 Weekly health and activity summaries
🟢Account navigation and customizations
5) Wireframes - Lo-Fi & Hi-Fi
After mapping the IA and flows, we began visualizing the product through iterative wireframing, starting with low fidelity and progressing to high fidelity.
Lo-Fi Wireframes
We first created low-fidelity sketches and grayscale wireframes to rapidly explore layout, hierarchy, and navigation.
These quick iterations allowed us to test multiple concepts without heavy design investment, ensuring that the structure of each screen aligned with user needs before adding detail.
Hi-Fi Wireframes
Once the structure was validated, we moved into high-fidelity prototypes. These mobile-first screens reflected the MVP priorities and incorporated best practices, task clarity, and consistent visual patterns.
By progressing from lo-fi to hi-fi, we were able to validate the experience at multiple levels of fidelity, reducing risk and aligning our final designs closely to user expectations.
Action
Results
What We Discovered
After synthesizing the research and iterating through flows, we were able to deliver strong outcomes for this stage of the project:
✅ Defined MVP directly mapped to validated user needs and competitive audit insights.
✅ Reduced cognitive load by simplifying onboarding into one screen and minimizing task steps.
✅ Delivered testable artifacts: IA diagrams, key task flows, and high-fidelity wireframes ready for usability sessions.
✅ Planned success metrics (to be validated):
→ Onboarding completion rate: 85–90% (good apps average ~80%, excellent >90%).
→ Time-to-value (dashboard insight): <2 minutes (benchmark is under 3 minutes for setup + first key task).
→ Geofence setup success (first session): 75–80% (initial setup tasks often fall lower; aim to increase through guided flows).
→ Pricing comprehension (clarity & trust): 85%+ (measured by correct selection without confusion).
→ Weekly return rate (by week 4): 50–60% (healthy retention target for lifestyle/wellness apps).
While quantitative metrics are still placeholders until testing, the foundation we created provides measurable ways to track usability and product success.
Reflection
Front-to-End Project Reflection
The process confirmed how important a research-first, iterative approach is in UX design. By connecting findings directly to mobile-first design and transparent pricing, we created flows that reduced friction and built trust. This gave the MVP a strong foundation for testing.
That said, we identified several opportunities to improve. Accessibility needs to be prioritized from the start, with features like adjustable text and voice integration. Notification settings should allow more granular control so users can tailor alerts to their lifestyle. Community features, while exciting, must be validated with different types of users to prove long-term value.
This phase of the project concluded with a defined MVP, clear IA, and high-fidelity wireframes ready for testing. While our work wrapped here, the natural next step would be to move into usability validation. Moderated sessions, A/B testing, and analytics would provide the insights needed to refine onboarding, health summaries, and pricing clarity, ensuring that PetPulse not only functions well but truly resonates with its users.
