KKB 395 Blog
RSPCA Multi-purpose Mobile Application Design
Hyunjin Kang
N10246509
Choosing the Organization
The project idea came from a friend of mine. She was trying to send her dog’s baby for adoption and looking for a person who is suitable to take the responsibility. One idea came to my mind which is building a mobile application that has adoption matching system. Starting from there, I decided to develop a multi-purpose mobile application that provide comfortable and reliable information and functions for pets and the pet owners. For the animal and human welfare, which is what RSPCA is aiming for their goal, I decided to add more functions in the app other than adoption matching function. The organization needed a strong ‘social impact’ strategy, which is the net effect of an activity on a community and the well-being of individuals and families within that community. Also, I needed to add functions that can be attractive and useful for the organization’s aiming age group of audience, which are 13- 17-year-olds, and 18-24-years-olds. Furthermore, I needed to consider the budget limitation to execute programs. Since this organization is a non-government, community-based charity organization, they required an overarching consideration of cost efficiencies in concept development and delivery of projects. Finally, I needed to consider the organization’s 5 key areas of social impact framework, which are animal welfare, human wellbeing, stronger community, benefits for industry, and benefits for government and society, to innovatively help drive the development of the organization’s social impact strategy concept.
Developing concept
The main idea was brought from a friend of mine who had been struggling to afford her original pet’s babies. So, she tried to find a right person who can take care of her pet’s babies. She posted some posts on her SNS to find the right person, but she couldn’t find someone get in touch with her. Also, she asked several close friends who are reliable, but for many reasons they couldn’t afford another pet either. In this situation, I started to think why people are not interested on having another pet or why SNS or adoption to close people don’t work. One thing came up to my mind was that not every people are interested in having a pet. Also, close friends can feel way much burden on raising a close one’s pet’s babies. So, I developed an idea to create an application that can match owners and someone who wants to get an adoption. According to the RSPCA Australia National Statistics 2020-2021 report, they received 103,057 animals in 2020-2021 financial year.
With RSPCA’s and the original owners’ effort, 73.91% of dogs and 67.53% of cats were rehomed or reunited with their owners. The statistics show great amount of reunion and rehome of lost or wild pets, but I thought the application can help significantly on the raise of the statistics. Original idea was creating matching program, but after seeing the statistics, I thought there should also be a function with finding an original owner because that’s one of the main aims and goals of RSPCA. So, I set pet adoption matching system and finding an original owner as main goals of the application.
Also, I though adding few more functions that RSPCA to the app would be a good idea. I researched RSPCA’s website and there were shopping, news and events, blog, and information of the organization. I decided to put all the information and I also decided to add social function to the application. The age group that this project is aiming is 13- 17-year-olds, and 18-24-years-olds and updating their status on social media is a popular culture in the age groups. According to a research conducted by Australian Government eSafety commissioner on February 2021, over 70 percent of 14 to 17 year olds used social media. Similar functions that social media provides, such as updating their life with their pets in real time, were expected to attract the aimed age group.
Aims of the Project
There were some goals while making the application. First thing was to make the application simple and easy to use. The age group this project is aiming is teenagers and early 20s and it should be easy to use for them. Not only the age group this project is aiming for, but this application will be used by all the other age groups and the basic needs for the application is to provide easy and clear user interface for better user experience. Second thing to consider was 'social impact'. The organization specifically asked a project that can socially impact communities and furthermore government. I thought RSPCA is the most suitable to make this project happen, because RSPCA is one of the biggest animal welfare organization in Australia, and they have enough data that is necessary to conduct the project. Also, they are providing multiple services to the customer that can be implemented to the mobile application. Currently the organization only have a mobile application that provides information about pet friendly venues in Southern Australia. It was expected that there will be much more interaction with users and potential sponsors by having a mobile application. According to the RSPCA's annual report 2022, there are over 29 million pets in Australia. With over 29 million pets found in the country of Australia, it has some of the highest pet ownership rates in the world. With much more interaction with users expected by creating the application, I expected there would be significantly improved convenience to pet owners in Australia. Also, RSPCA is a community based animal welfare charity, donations are necessary to run the organization. With more contact with users through the mobile application, improved donation rates are expected. With improved donation rate, RSPCA can provide better service to the pet owners and better welfare to the animals under the organization's care.
Early Stage Project Concept
Low Fidelity Concept Development
Medium Fidelity Concept
Design
Font : I tried to find a font that is acceptable in every OS and platforms. Original plan was to use RSPCA’s original font from the font logo, which is TREBUCHET MS (this is the font used according to the RSPCA Brand Style Guide), but it made the design had too much terminals and ascenders. I wanted to use Sans Serif or Monotype font to make the application view clear to the users. So I decided to use Verdana and Calibri font for the main font of the application.
Contents Layout : Using normal rectangles is too bold and not a good design for the application. I benchmarked famous mobile applications such as Didi or Uber for the GPS and Maps page and instagram or facebook for the log in screen. For the buttons or camera page, I referenced Commonwealth Bank application. Also, I set safety area for the design on the top and the bottom of the screen according to the Apple’s iphone interface guidelines, which was 44px on the top and 34 px on the bottom.
Contents Layout : Using normal rectangles is too bold and not a good design for the application. I benchmarked famous mobile applications such as Didi or Uber for the GPS and Maps page and instagram or facebook for the log in screen. For the buttons or camera page, I referenced Commonwealth Bank application. Also, I set safety area for the design on the top and the bottom of the screen according to the Apple’s iphone interface guidelines, which was 44px on the top and 34 px on the bottom.
Changes made from low fidelity to medium fidelity
Logo : According to the RSPCA’s style guide V3 section 3.1, the RSPCA paw prints must always be used in full and must not be altered, modified, rotated or rearranged in any way. For colour of the logo, the RSPCA paw prints can be reproduced in RSPCA green, 100% black or white. No other colour or colour combinations are acceptable. So I chose to use original paw logo with RSPCA green colour.
Background colour of the application : Original plan was using Blue colour from RSPCA’s font logo, but it was visually not attractive as it made hard to recognise all the contents. So I decided to make it lighter blue with RGB code of #8BD7FF.
Background colour of the application : Original plan was using Blue colour from RSPCA’s font logo, but it was visually not attractive as it made hard to recognise all the contents. So I decided to make it lighter blue with RGB code of #8BD7FF.
Concept Development
High Fidelity Concept
Adjustments made from Mid Fidelity to High Fidelity concept
The background colour : The background colour has been changed from light blue to white. The combination between background colour and content colours didn’t go well together and it was hard to recognize the contents. So I changed background colour into white, and changed the contents and icon colours to the light blue that was used as a background colour from mid fidelity model. Due to the changed background colours, I changed all the colours for the fonts and icons. Also, for the contents boxes, I put shadows under the boxes so that the design looks simple and well organized but still the contents boxes are clearly separated from the background.
Removed pages : News page and support page have been removed. News are already on the main page so I couldn’t think of reason to keep the separate news page. For support page, I decided to put them in the option page, since the option page shows all app related information and help.
Icons and interaction adjustment : Icons are redesigned to make a better user interface since the background colour has changed. All the icons were mostly light grey or white, and I changed them to much darker grey. Also, there were many new pages were created for more functions, especially in bar menu related pages such as social, report, GPS, missing pet, adoption, and donation pages. For social, missing pet, and adoption pages, I made sample pages so that users can understand the functions of the pages. All buttons are working and when user clicks all of the first contents on each page, they can see the details of the contents.
Removed pages : News page and support page have been removed. News are already on the main page so I couldn’t think of reason to keep the separate news page. For support page, I decided to put them in the option page, since the option page shows all app related information and help.
Icons and interaction adjustment : Icons are redesigned to make a better user interface since the background colour has changed. All the icons were mostly light grey or white, and I changed them to much darker grey. Also, there were many new pages were created for more functions, especially in bar menu related pages such as social, report, GPS, missing pet, adoption, and donation pages. For social, missing pet, and adoption pages, I made sample pages so that users can understand the functions of the pages. All buttons are working and when user clicks all of the first contents on each page, they can see the details of the contents.
Budget Management
The main outcome of budget would be designing application and developing application. According to the Business of Apps website, the cost is different according to the time consumed to make the application and the complexity of the application. To develop a simple app, it takes approximately 2-4 months, 4-6 months to make a mid-complexity app and 9 moths and up for a complex application. According to seek.com.au, app development hourly rates, which currently placed around $55 to $75, the app development price cost for a application with a basic user interface and a set of basic features ranges from $20000 to $36000, Medium c omplexity app development project costs between $36000 to $52000 and a complex application project would require at least approximately $76000. There are many functions to the application and special functions such as GPS system, real time updated data, and map, I set this application in between the range of medium complexity and high complexity. The final expected budget for developing this application system is estimated at $64000.
Next consideration was applying google maps in the application. Google had multiple options of fees for using google maps. For this application, only static maps is required, not street view or 3D models of the maps. They used monthly payment system and for Maps Static API, usage of 102000 maploads per month will cost $313.64 (203.20 USD). This cost can be different according to the number of users or how often users interact with map related systems in the application, but at the starting stage, 102000 of maploads per month looked reasonable. Also, this cost can cover the usage of GPS system, which is one of the main functions of the application. Google Maps for mobile offers GPS system. The final estimated budget for using google maps in the application is $313.64/month.
For this project, GPS tracker is needed for pet GPS tracking system. However, developing a whole new GPS tracking device was too expensive. According to the website predictable designs, The total landed cost for the hypothetical BLE GPS tracking device was $24.09 at 100k units. That was way more expensive than expected cost for GPS devices. So, I did research if RSPCA is already selling their own pet tracking devices. They had a pet tracking category in their shop page, but there was no item registered in the database. Most of the items sold in RSPCA’s shop, they were third-party items. Therefore, it seemed making a deal with a pet GPS company the best option for GPS devices, and sell them in the RSCPA’s online shop.
