Babe is a pet care application that I developed to enable pet owners to track and respond to their pets' status round the clock. This is made possible by the chip that is embedded under the skin of pets, which sends data to the Babe application. In addition to tracking their pets' status, owners can also access different services such as booking a vet appointment through the Babe application.

One of the key reasons for the success of Babe is my adoption of the five-stage design thinking methodology. This approach enables me to provide a solution-based approach to solving the problem of pet care. I understand that the needs of pet owners are complex and varied, and I have found that following this iterative process helps me to derive the best possible solution. Through each stage of the process, I am able to gain a deeper understanding of my users, define the problem at hand, ideate and prototype solutions, and test and iterate until I arrive at a final solution that truly meets the needs of pet owners.

During the first stage of the design thinking process, I focused on developing a deep understanding and empathy towards pet owners. To gain insights into their needs, wants, and pain points when it comes to caring for their pets, I conducted extensive user research that involved a range of activities.

Firstly, I spent time observing pet owners in their natural environment - at home or in their courtyards with their pets. By doing so, I was able to observe how they interacted with their pets and the products they used, such as pet food, toys, and grooming tools. This gave me a better understanding of their behaviours and needs and helped me identify pain points in their daily routines.

In addition to observations, I engaged with pet owners in interviews to gain further insights. During these interviews, I asked questions about their experiences with pet care and any challenges they faced. This allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of their motivations, emotions, and decision-making processes.

Furthermore, I conducted surveys and online research to gather information about pet care trends and common issues faced by pet owners. This helped me identify gaps in the market and opportunities to create innovative solutions that would improve the pet care experience for pet owners.

Through these research activities, I gained valuable insights that helped me identify the key problems that pet owners face, including the challenge of tracking and responding to their pet's status round the clock. This led me to develop the Babe pet care application, which enables pet owners to track and respond to their pet's status in real-time, based on the data sent by the chip that is deeply embedded under the skin of pets.

Overall, the empathize stage of the design thinking process was critical in helping me gain a deep understanding of pet owners' needs and pain points, which in turn allowed me to develop a solution that truly meets their needs and improves their overall pet care experience.

During the Define stage, we put together the information we have gathered during the Empathise stage. This is where we will analyse our observations and synthesise them in order to define the core problems that we have identified up to this point. We should seek to define the problem as a problem statement in a human-centred manner.

An Empathy map will help us understand our user’s needs while we develop a deeper understanding of the persons we are designing for. There are many techniques we use to develop this kind of empathy. An Empathy Map is just one tool that can help us empathise and synthesise our observations from the research phase, and draw out unexpected insights about our user’s needs. An Empathy Map allows us to sum up our learning from engagements with people in the field of design research. The map provides four major areas in which to focus our attention on, thus providing an overview of a person’s experience. Empathy maps are also great as a background for the construction of the personas that we would often want to create later.

An Empathy Map consists of four quadrants. The four quadrants reflect four key traits, which the user demonstrated/possessed during the observation/research stage. The four quadrants refer to what the user: Said, Did, Thought, and Felt. It’s fairly easy to determine what the user said and did. However, determining what they thought and felt should be based on careful observations and analysis as to how they behaved and responded to certain activities, suggestions, conversations, etc.

Now, we’re ready to generate ideas to create the best pet care application. The solid background of knowledge from the first two phases means we can start to “think outside the box”, look for alternative ways to view the problem and identify innovative solutions to the problem statement we’ve created. Brainstorming is particularly useful here.

In general terms the way we design information architecture (IA) for the mobile environment is very similar to the way that you design the IA for the desktop. The approach we use is near identical in fact but there are some important things to bear in mind when we do so:

Deliver what’s important on the mobile platform – that means we should focus on what’s important to the user when they’re using a smartphone. That doesn’t mean that our users will necessarily be using our app when they’re on the move or on the street – we need to research the way that they will use the app. That, in turn, lets us focus on the content that’s of value to the user and cut down the volume of data that we present on mobile. In our case clients will be using this application during day time mostly at home or office

Content should be focused on mobile – that’s smaller, simpler and easier to handle content than on the desktop. The limit of screen real estate makes large volumes of content more confusing on mobile than on a larger monitor.

Navigation should be simple – that means limiting the number of menu options and keeping things focused on what’s important to the user.

Designing pages for websites and applications doesn't always produce the best results. The design process separates look, feel and process from what the user is trying to accomplish. An alternative approach to this kind of design is to design for user flows and thus focus on what the user needs to get done and how to deliver that in the most effective manner possible. This should lead to better user experiences as it places the user at the heart of the design process.

Wireframing is a process where we designers draw overviews of interactive products to establish the structure and flow of possible design solutions. These outlines reflect user and business needs in pet care domain. Paper or software-rendered wireframes help teams and stakeholders ideate towards optimal, user-focused prototypes and products. Here we follow the paper prototyping method first and thus the wireframes are created and tested on paper. Please find below the hand drawn wireframes.

User interface design patterns are the means by which structure and order can get together to make powerful user experiences. Structure and order are also a user’s best friends, and along with the fact that old habits die hard, it is essential that we designers consider user interfaces very carefully before they set the final design in stone. Products should consist of such good interactions that users don’t even notice how they got from point A to point B. Failing to do so can lead to user interfaces that are difficult or confusing to navigate, requiring the user to spend an unreasonable amount of time decoding the display—and just a few seconds too many can be “unreasonable”—rather than fulfilling their original aims and objectives.

Mock-ups play a crucial role in our design process as they help us gather feedback from users about our designs and ideas early on. By incorporating user feedback, we can refine our designs and create a final visual design that truly meets the needs of our users.

After incorporating all the feedback, we created the final visual design mock-ups, which are shown below. These mock-ups are a representation of the final product design and demonstrate how users will interact with the Babe pet care application. The final visual design mock-ups were carefully created to ensure that the user experience is intuitive, engaging, and meets the needs of pet owners. By creating these mock-ups, we were able to bring our ideas to life and create a clear vision for the final product