Pawfect Pets
- alliehe
- Mar 19, 2025
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 9, 2025
1st place for NJIT SIGCHI Design Jam
March 2024
Deliverables: App Prototype
Team of 2
Project Overview
Animal shelters struggle to find homes for pets due to low visibility, lack of online presence, and limited community engagement. Many potential adopters rely on outdated websites or disconnected social media pages, making it difficult to connect with shelters and find adoptable pets.
To solve this, my team designed Pawfect Pets, a social adoption platform that connects animal shelters, adopters, donors, and volunteers in one place. Unlike traditional pet adoption sites, Pawfect Pets focuses on building a community, allowing users to:
Follow their favorite shelters and get updates on adoptable pets.
Explore detailed pet profiles with images, behavior insights, and breed information.
Engage with shelters through donations, volunteering, and event participation.
Stay updated with personalized feeds and event notifications.
By combining adoption, education, and community-building, Pawfect Pets improves shelter visibility, streamlines adoption, and strengthens support for animal welfare.
Figma Prototype link:
Slide Deck: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ye32KT8PUClJR2ddmdh7bEKw22Xi7inMOzgE6GEeWWc/edit?usp=sharing
My Contributions
Role: Designer / Researcher
Conducted user research to understand adoption challenges from shelters and pet seekers.
Designed high-fidelity wireframes and prototype
Led competitive analysis, identifying gaps in existing pet adoption platforms
The Problem
Lack of Shelter Visibility: Many small shelters lack the resources or digital presence to reach potential adopters
Fragmented Information: Users must navigate multiple sites to find adoption details, volunteer opportunities, or donation options
Unengaging Experience: Existing platforms lack personalization and community-building features, making adoption feel transactional instead of relational.
The Solution
🐾 Pawfect Pets modernizes the adoption process by integrating:
Personalized Feed – Follow shelters, get real-time updates, and engage with posts.
Breed Book – Learn about different dog and cat breeds and see available pets in your area.
Pet Profiles – View detailed bios, adoption status, and behavior insights with real shelter updates.
Shelter Profiles – Explore local shelters, donate, volunteer, or attend events.
Event Notifications – Get alerts for fundraisers, urgent adoptions, and volunteer drives.
By enhancing engagement, visibility, and support, Pawfect Pets helps more animals find loving homes faster.
The Process
User Research & Competitive Analysis
We analyzed existing pet adoption sites like Petfinder, AdoptAPet, and GetYourPet. Our findings revealed:
No strong community engagement features—most sites only provide listings.
Limited shelter profiles—making it harder to build trust and encourage adoptions.
No way for past adopters to update shelters on their pets, missing an opportunity for long-term engagement.
Personas & Use Cases
We created four personas based on common user needs:
🐕 Shelter Manager (Shawn): Needs more visibility for pets and community support (donations & volunteers).
🐾 First-Time Adopter (Aisha): Wants to ensure a pet is compatible with her kids and understands pet care.
🐕 Chronic Adopter (Peter): Owns multiple pets and wants a fast way to browse shelters & find pets that match his home.
🐾 Animal Lover (Charlie): Can't adopt yet but wants to volunteer, donate, and engage with shelters.
Design & Prototyping
I developed the high-fidelity prototype in Figma, ensuring a visually engaging and intuitive experience.
Features:
Personalized Feed: See latest posts from shelters. Filter content based on your preferences, such as following specific shelters, proximity, or recent updates. Users cannot post, but they can be tagged and featured
Breed Book: An extensive library of cat and dog breeds, providing valuable information and showing available pets of specific breeds in participating shelters.
Pet Profiles: Discover pets looking for homes. Each profile includes information and posts related to the pet, seeing their personality and suitability for your home.
Shelter Profiles: Explore detailed profiles of shelters in your area. Learn about them,, contact, events, and how you can contribute through donations or volunteering.
User Profiles and Preferences: Customize your experience by setting up your profile and preferences.
Event Notifications: Never miss out on shelter events, fundraisers, or urgent needs. Get timely notifications and details on how you can participate or help.
Usability Testing & Feedback
We couldn't conduct any testing, since this was fora design Jam. The judges said they much prefer Pawfect Pets over static, traditional, adoption sites and apps. They also loved the community and the interaction aspects. In the future, we hope to conduct testing with pet adopters and shelter staff to gathering key insights.
Results
🏆 1st Place Winner – SIGCHI Design Jam 2024
Praised for innovative community-driven adoption platform
Increased engagement potential – judges and fellow competitions preferred Pawfect Pets over static pet listing sites.
Scalable impact – Future integration with local shelters & rescue organizations could expand adoption rates nationwide.
This project successfully transformed pet adoption into a community-driven experience, making it easier for shelters to connect with adopters and supporters.
Figma Prototype Link:
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