Service Dog Tutor Logo
Scope & Focus
Service Dog Tutor, established in 2012 by owner Jean Cary, provides two distinctive dog training services; dog obedience training and service dog training. Her service dog training is unique because she will either adapt a dog the client already has or help find the right dog for service work if they don’t have already have a dog. Both services emphasis training both the dog and the owner to achieve the desired training goals.
The focus of the project is to improve the customer’s journey through the website and strengthen the Service Dog Tutor brand message. One of the brand messages is the advantages that can be gain by having a well-trained dog either as a pet or as much more. The steps to accomplish start with research and progress to a hi-fidelity responsive prototype ending with overall project summary for the next steps. The goal is an easy to use website with a clear branding message to build trust and increase sales.
Service Dog turning the lights on
Project Background
Service Dog Tutor is a home-based business as a majority of the dog training is conducted either at the dog owner’s house or a mutually agreed location like a public park. Jean has spoken about how successful her business is especially the training of a companion dog to become a service dog. Comments from Jean have pointed out several areas to the Service Dog Tutor website that can be improved upon to further capitalize on the growing success of her business. Further analysis and research revealed a few more areas for improvements.
Process
The project will progress through five phases. Each phase is broken down into sub-phases as noted below.
High Level Design Goals and Objectives
These are the high-level goals and objectives:
• Redesign the website to be more responsive user design based.
• Improve the Interface Design of the current website
• Strength the brand
1. Empathize
• The chosen methodologies to investigate dog training are Secondary and Primary research.
• Primary Research role is to learn more about the potential users through direct interviews and observations, what their behavior is and their motivation for seeking dog training.
• From the Secondary Research deliverable, we will gain a better understanding of the Problem, how to determine the opportunities to improve the website.
• All interviews will be conducted by phone. Prepared questions will be asked to guide the conversation.
Research Data
Data about their dog
People who grew up with a dog seem to have a more realistic expectation on the training and care of a dog. Knowing the age of the dog bought together a clear picture of whether the current dog could be trained as a service dog or if a another younger one is needed. Whether a dog is pure or not is not as critical as people think if the dog can exhibit traits and abilities to be a service dog.
Below are graphs on the data on the dogs from the people interviewed. Four dogs will be or are going through training to be a service dog and two are pets that have gone through or is looking for obedience training.
Here are the job titles of the six interviews:
#1 = SW Engineer / Stay at home mom
#2 = Stay at home mom
#3 = Recreational Therapist
#4 = Technology worker - engineering
#5 = Social worker
#6 = Retired Nurse
(4) interviews by phone
(2) interviews in-person at a pet store
Comments
• Participant #1: “I wasn’t familiar with the different service dog training categories. ”
• Participant #2: “Certifications had little to do from what you get out of the dog training. ”
• Participant #3: “Did not like the group generic training. It was the reason why I decided to look for one-on-one dog training”
• Participant #4: “I liked that my dog was exposed to different things.”
Research Findings - Finding a Service Dog Trainer
• Located locally is imperative
• One-on-one training is very important
• Being flexible and adaptable with the dog, owner and situation
• Liked that the trainer is knowledgeable in the different service dog types like therapy or mobility
• The majority of searching happens on a laptop, tablet or desktop in this order. Smart phone was used more as a platform to which videos or for contact information.
• Price does matters. They want value.
Research Synthesis
A few key data points came to light. There is strong motivation to find the right service dog trainer. The person doing the looking is either looking for themselves or looking for a loved one like for one of their children. They have a strong appetite for information about service dog training. They will read through the whole website to gain as much information as possible to feel secure this trainer is the right one for their situation. Part of their motivation comes from the knowledge that there is a 24-month waiting period and can cost up to $27,000 to obtain a service dog from an agency. Secondly, a service dog from an agency may not be trained to handle all the needs of the handler as some of them have several needs. There is also the getting to know each other time period as well. With your own dog, that time period is eliminated.
The people looking for obedience dog training are motivated as well but driven by a different set of requirements. One-on-one at home training fits the training into their busy schedule and optimizes the training around their level.
Current information, experience and at-home training are key factors in selecting a service dog trainer. This also applies to people looking for obedience dog as well. All the information was taken into consideration in the creation of the empathy map and accompany persona(s).
Personas and Empathy Maps
Two Personas and their empathy maps emerged from the research. One for service dog and a second one for obedience dog training. The weight of making the right choice for a service dog trainer is apparent from the research compared to the dog owner looking for obedience training. For both, finding the right training and trainer is paramount.
The first Persona shown is for Kimberly. She is looking for service dog training for one or her children. She learns that the training will involve the whole family to be effective.
The second Persona is David. He is looking for obedience training for their adapted rescued dog. Group dog training did not work out from him and his wife. They feel it only covers the basics and individual dog training would be the best way to train their dog and them too.
2. Define
Overview
Who: People who are interested in at home service or obedience dog training.
What: Dog training for service dogs and house hold dogs including their handler(s).
Where: Service Dog Tutor trainer will come to the client’s house
When: This is determined between the client and the Trainer. For service dog training several times a month between 14-18 months.
Why: Cost, time and customization. The overall cost is lower than the national average of $27,000 to buy a service dog. There is an average of two to three years to obtain a service dog depending on its training. Some service dogs are only trained for one handicap.
Define Summary
From the interviews and research looking for service dog training is not a trival task. The investment in time, resources and finances is a huge commitment. Prospective clients will go through the whole website and read everything. They will do it in parts. Read, ask questions vie email. Read, and ask more questions. Watching videos is informative and instructive if short. They will not sit through a long video.
The interviews combined with the reviewing the Service Dog Tutor website and competitors’ site reveal several that can be improved on the Service Dog Tutor website to provide a better journey for the prospective clients. It became clear that people who visit the site are either focused in service dog or obedience dog training. The other category may interest them and help sway them to pick Service Dog Tutor as it demonstrates the expertise and experience the trainer has.
Define - Branding
• Strong
• Logo was purchased. No need to change
• Add blue color to project security and trust
• Add more white space around images and text for clarity and impact
• Keep the green color
Define - Website
• Clearer deliniation between service dog training and obedience dog training
• Further classification under the service dog and obedience training such as puppy obedience training, emotional support or mobility service dog training
• Layout the large amount of informational text to be easier to read and not formed as a large block of text
• Organize the videos into two categories: service dog training and obedience dog training
• Keep the videos viewing on the website and not launch the viewer to another website or page
• Shorten the video to seconds vs. minutes
Context Scenario
3. Ideate
With the establishment of the Personas, Kimberly and David, and their Empathy Map coupled with the project goals synthesis from the research and competitive analysis ideas were generated to create a web journey that meets their needs. The wire frames was focused on laptop, tablet and desktop as the research pointed to those devices the main ones for view the Service Dog Tutor.
Wire frames - Low fidelity
Below are the Landing page and the Resource page concepts from Revision 3.
What was the design trying to resolve?
• Separating the Service Dog training and Dog Obedience training services and information into their own pages.
• Service Dog Tutor had a very informative video that is over four minutes long. To be more effective, the video would be separated into shorter videos and grouped into either Service Dog or Obedience training pages.
•
4. Prototype
Below is the Pull Down Menu for Service Dog Training and the Emotional Support Dog Training page to the right of it. The different service dog training pages can also be accessed from the Landing page under the Service Dog Training section. Each service dog training page has the overall web layout but is configure to optimize the content unique to each service dog training topic. The prototype was created in Adobe Xd.
5. Test
The High-Fidelity prototype was tested by four individuals in person. Two looking for service dog training and two looking for obedience dog training.
The task for the service dog looking participants was to find information about Emotional Support Dog Training. Second task was to find the Class Schedule, open it and then close it. The third task was to locate videos pertaining to service dog training in the Resource page. Lastly was to find the contact information for the trainer by either going to the Contact page or finding the information in the Footer.
The primary task for the obedience dog looking participants was to find information about dog training. The other three tasks were the same as above.
Summary
All participants completed the above task without any errors. None had any difficulty navigating through the website. Two were familiar with the current site. Both who are service dog clients liked the layout and the break of the text.
All participants liked the way the videos were presented in the Resource page, organized into Service dog and Obedience dog related videos with a corresponding image and short brief of the video content.
Some improvements they mentioned was a clearer outline of pricing. The current text was used as is. Two participants mentioned they would like to see more testimonials on the pages. Three mentioned they would like to see the phone number and email address on the top or near the top of the page.
Below are the Landing pages from the prototype and the current web site for side-by-side comparison.
Proposed vs. Current Web Site Layout
Executive Summary
Overall the prototype was a success. The web site provides a clearer direction for the two potential customers, the one looking for service dog training and the second one looking for obedience dog training. From there, the web site guides them to a specific category like emotional support dog training or puppy dog training.
Service Dog Tutor provides detailed information about Service Dog certification and requirements that clients pointed out not readily found.
The majority of the test participants are happy clients. People not identified and interviewed were those who visited the current web site and choice to not to use Service Dog Tutor. In the real, world it would be important to try to find those individuals or ones who picked a competitor instead and find out why they made that decision.