Animal Rescue Idea

The iterative design process is one that many designers take for granted.  It is more helpful than one would imagine. The first step is the ideation process.  Ideas are inspired by life events.

I spent the weekend at home and helped my younger sister volunteer with her Girl Scout troop at the Gainesville Humane Society. I had to hold my tears back in front of the girls when we entered the big dog kennel. You could tell that these dogs had been abused in some way or another.  They were frightened and had sad begging eyes. We took the puppies out for walks and sadly returned them to their cages. The day ended with some girls in tears and others begging to take the dogs home. I was one of the begging ones, sending pictures via text message to my mom of the sad doggy faces...



Later on I thought to myself, there are so many people who are unaware of what goes on. I went online to researched and broke down when I learned about puppy mills and kill shelters. I wondered how long they would hold those dogs in the shelter in Gainesville until it was too late and they were put to death... It is a horrifying situation and one that we all should be aware of. But mostly we should all be aware that we can make a difference, at least in some little way.

So I put my skills to use and came up with the idea to make a mobile interface that will bring social pet lovers as well as animal rescue personnel together into one place to help our feline friends. It will be informative as well as a social place for pet lovers to interact with one another.  First step was sketching...




The next step was to create a prototype. Prototypes are important and should never be excluded.  The first one should be on paper. It should be rough and player testing should be loose in this initial step. Ideas can be thrown out or kept. This step helps to decide the scope and what is necessary for the interface.  Design is an ongoing process...




The steps of interactive design are unique in that user testing is a must. The target audience must be defines and a set of design values must be the main focus. I will continue the process and blog my results. I am looking forward to the outcome. The final product will be a mobile website. 

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