During major holidays in China, pet owners face a recurring challenge: finding trustworthy, affordable care for their pets while they travel. Traditional options limited them to either institutional facilities or individual pet sitters, with neither fully meeting the needs of discerning pet owners seeking quality care at reasonable prices.
The Wangwangda team approached me to solve this problem through a home boarding platform that brings together pet owners with passionate pet lovers. My solution focuses on creating comfortable, cage-free experiences where pets can stay in real homes, enjoying freedom and attention instead of being confined in traditional kennels. The platform serves a dual purpose - helping pet owners find reliable care during their absence while enabling animal lovers to earn income doing what they love.
Tasked with launching at the Qianhai Shenzhen-Hong Kong Youth Innovation and Entrepreneur Hub, we faced a critical timeline: delivering high-fidelity iOS and Android prototypes in just two months.
With app store submissions, security testing, and usability reviews ahead, I had four weeks to perfect the core experience.
Our analysis of China's pet service market revealed an untapped opportunity. While existing services focused on basic pet needs, we identified significant growth potential in premium experiences.
Wangwangda stepped in to bridge this gap, positioning itself beyond traditional care to create a distinctive service in this emerging market.
Kano model competitive analysis results are shown below
As first movers, we needed quick, deep insights into the pet boarding market.
Drawing from the 2018 Chinese Pet Industry White Paper and eight in-depth interviews with pet owners aged 20-50, we identified our core demographic: educated, affluent women in developed cities.
Our intensive discovery revealed that quality pet boarding transcends basic accommodation. Through market analysis and user research, we identified four essential needs:
We developed personas to guide our design decisions, with Wanying Lei as our primary user archetype for Phase 1, ensuring our team maintained user-centric focus throughout development.
The following is the profile of Wangying Lei, an Art Collection Manager
After securing core functionality approval, I mapped essential user journeys for pet owners and sitters.
Through intensive card sorting and workflow analysis, I transformed initial sketches into mid-fidelity wireframes, establishing consistent patterns, spacing, and typography that would scale across the platform. Each iteration refined the experience until navigation felt intuitive for both sides of our marketplace.
Wangwangda APP user task flow and Wangwangda APP mid-fidelity wireframes below
The design language needed to reflect our platform's core mission: connecting pet owners with caring sitters. I chose a minimal, vibrant color palette paired with STHeiti font to create an approachable, trustworthy aesthetic that resonated with our target users.
Over two intensive weeks, I crafted 70 unique screens, each designed to make the pet-sitting journey intuitive and engaging. Every visual element was refined to enhance both functionality and emotional connection with our users.
The app's real-world performance taught us valuable lessons. Users loved the clean interface and core features, particularly highlighting the platform's ease of use. We did face challenges with booking delays and accuracy - issues beyond the design scope that the team continued to address after my departure.
While I moved on after delivery, seeing the platform reach 170,000 downloads and receive enthusiastic client feedback made this project especially rewarding. It pushed me to grow as a designer and showed how thoughtful UX can help solve real community needs.
