Pals 4 Paws
Pals 4 Paws
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Connecting animal lovers with understaffed shelters shouldn't be hindered by redundant paperwork. Pals 4 Paws simplifies and gamifies the volunteer experience, making it fun and effortless for users to support multiple rescue organizations in their area.
During testing, our original tab bar split metrics between Pawgress and Profile tabs, which confused users.
User Feedback: "First of all, I have no idea what these points are... it's hard for me to conceptualize where those would be within the app."
The Fix: We cut the fluff. We merged the redundant profile architecture into a single, cohesive "Pawgress" hub. This immediately cleared up navigation, creating a straightforward path for scheduling shifts and monitoring volunteer impact.
Final High-Fidelity Artifacts
Our final screens deliver a clean, modern aesthetic paired with highly intuitive UX patterns:
The Gamified Dashboard: Greets volunteers with their current tier status ("Starter Volunteer"), a visual progress bar toward their next badge, and quick stats for hours logged.
Frictionless Scheduling: Displays clear, localized opportunity cards ("Weekend Warriors") with transparent time commitment blocks and direct registration actions.
My Contribution & The Team
My Contribution & The Team
This was a 1-week hackathon sprint at General Assembly. As the only team member with a graphic design background, I led the user research, established the visual framework, and ran the testing phases.
Here is exactly what I did:
User Research & Analysis: I conducted user interviews to identify why people stop volunteering at animal shelters. I analyzed the qualitative data alongside industry reports, which led our team to target the primary friction point: redundant onboarding paperwork.
UI Kit & Visual System: I built our Figma UI kit and foundational design system from scratch. I established the color palette, typography hierarchy, and component library to ensure the interface was clean, accessible, and consistent.
Layout Design & Usaging Testing: I translated our initial sketches into structured screen layouts. I then ran the usability testing sessions, discovered the navigation flaws in our original tab bar, and led the team's layout iterations based on that direct user feedback.
The Outcome
The Outcome
In 7 days, we delivered a high-fidelity mobile prototype.
By grounding my visual design decisions in our user research, we replaced a fractured, paperwork-heavy onboarding process with a single, universal application. The final layout proved that pairing streamlined onboarding with a consolidated "Pawgress" hub removes the barriers to entry for volunteers, directly helping understaffed shelters increase operations and save more animals.
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