Jenn Godoy — PRODUCT / WEB / BRAND
© Jenn Godoy — Product Designer

PAWSIES: LOST & FOUND PET APP


PRODUCT DESIGN · UX / UI DESIGN

KEY GOAL

Design the user experience and interface for a mobile app that helps people report lost or found pets and reunite them with their owners. Users can create detailed reports, search for potential matches, and contact others who may have information about a missing pet. The experience needed to make this process simple, intuitive, and easier to navigate than relying on scattered social media posts.

— MY ROLE

Product Designer


— SKILLS APPLIED

  • Concept Design

Visual Design

Information Architecture

User Flows

UX/UI Design

Naming

Logo design

Visual identity


— PROJECT DATE

  • 2017 – 2018


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The Challenge


The challenge was to centralize the process of reporting and searching for lost pets for pet owners, rescuers, and non-profit organizations in Maracaibo, Venezuela. Social media was commonly used for this purpose, but posts were difficult to organize, search, and revisit over time. Pawsies explored how a dedicated platform could make lost-and-found reports easier to create, discover, and connect.

Research


As a pet owner myself (and someone who’s always had pets), this project was very close to my heart. I had already seen how heavily the local community relied on social media to share missing-pet reports. I wanted to understand whether the problem extended beyond my own experience.


What started as a passion project later became part of my postgraduate studies, giving me the opportunity to explore the problem more systematically through research.


I conducted surveys and interviews with local pet owners and rescuers to learn how they searched for missing animals, shared information, and connected with others during the process. The research reinforced several recurring problems: information was fragmented across social networks, older posts quickly became difficult to find, and there was no consistent way to search or compare lost-and-found reports.

Survey Findings

Summary of the survey inputs used to validate the concept (n = 22)

Recurring themes in the open-ended answers:


Fragmented information: Reports were spread across associations, WhatsApp, Instagram, and other channels, making it difficult for lost and found posts to meet.


“The information isn’t centralized… the person who loses a pet reports it to associations they know, while the person who finds one might share it on WhatsApp.”


Reach & discoverability: People worried that posts were not shared enough, that not everyone used the same networks, and that older information quickly became difficult to find.


“Instagram may not be the right channel because the owner or the person who finds the pet may not use it.”


  • Trust & verification: Some responses mentioned scams, uncertainty around who the real owner was, and concerns about whether a pet would be properly cared for.

  • “Knowing whether the people claiming to be the owners really are.”


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User Personas

Ideation


With their feedback in hand, I began mapping the core journey around two primary actions: reporting a lost or found pet, and searching for potential matches.


The experience needed to make reporting quick and accessible, with simple search filters, easy pet description inputs, and intuitive contact features, while collecting enough useful information, such as pet characteristics and location, to improve search results. From there, users needed an easy way to browse possible matches and contact the person behind a report.

Design

I designed the interface around quick access to reporting and searching, using straightforward navigation and clear inputs for describing a pet and narrowing search results. I wanted to make sure that users could quickly report or search for missing pets with minimal effort. The visual direction needed to feel friendly and approachable without undermining the seriousness of losing a pet.


In addition to the app’s interface, I also created its brand identity. I called it Pawsies. The brand was designed to be friendly and trustworthy, resonating with the community of pet lovers and rescuers who would use it.


  • It’s Nice That
  • AIGA
  • Fonts In Use
  • The Dieline


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Testing and Iteration


After developing some high-fidelity prototypes, with a small group of users to understand whether the main reporting and search flows felt clear. The feedback was positive overall, but it also highlighted opportunities to add more useful search filters and make the contact action more prominent when viewing a report. I incorporated those changes into later iterations to make it easier to move from finding a potential match to actually connecting with the other person.


What was especially encouraging was learning that some participants also saw potential for the same underlying concept to support other types of community-based lost-and-found experiences.

What users liked

Open-ended concept feedback repeatedly described the idea as easy, practical, useful, and potentially faster than the existing process.


Search improvements

Testing highlighted the need for additional filters so users could narrow reports using more specific pet characteristics.


Contact visibility

  • The contact action needed to be more prominent once a user identified a possible match.


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Key Learnings

  • Community products depend on information structure. Centralizing reports only becomes useful when people can describe, search, and compare them consistently.


  • The moment after discovery matters as much as search itself. Finding a possible match has little value if the user can't quickly understand the report and contact the right person.


Research can validate the problem without prescribing the solution. Interviews and surveys confirmed frustration with the existing process, while testing helped determine how the product could address it.


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Conclusion


Working on Pawsies was a particularly meaningful and rewarding experience because it applied product design to a problem I had seen firsthand in my local community. Designing a solution that could make the lives of people who work tirelessly to save animals much easier meant a lot to me. This project allowed me to sharpen my skills in user research, UX/UI, and branding, while also reinforcing the power of design to make a real impact in a community.