Fostering Forever Friends
Our Mission Over 1.5-2.6 million animals are euthanized in shelters each year (ASPCA, n.d.). Our mission is to help give more animals a chance to find a forever home. We hope to make fostering and adoption easier for people to do while giving adoption centers a reliable platform to post their animals.
What It Is Fostering Forever Friends is a website that is meant to act as a platform between people and adoption centers. In this website, adoption centers will create animal profiles explaining who the animal is and basic information about the animal (such as its gender, breed, age, vaccinations). The premise of this website is that it will allow adoption centers to promote their animals to more people along with giving users a chance to see animals in the area they may not be likely to see otherwise. This website can act as a life line for animals who are about to be euthanized, alerting users to these animals in need.
Special Features This program will contain many features that will contribute to how the webpage will operate. The program resembles Tinder in the sense that users can swipe left if they are not interested in the animal, and swipe right if they are interested in adopting or fostering, which will then open up a chat for the user and shelter to communicate with. There will also be a save tab where users can save animals they are interested in but are not yet sure if they want to adopt or foster. Both the user and the adoption center must have a profile picture, basic contact information, age, and location present on their profile. The Shelter must also put if the animal is up-to-date on their vaccinations, what gender the animal is, the size of the animal, if it has special needs, and how long they have been in the shelter. Contact information is also required by both the user and the adoption centers so as to help with communication outside of the website. Another major selling point is that shelters can turn on an emergency alert on an animals’ profile if it is soon to be euthanized, in this way we hope to alert more people of animals in need. The emergency alert will make this animal a priority animal, placing it at the top of the list of other animals of that category for people to first see. Many people would adopt animals who are about to be put down, but this information is usually hard to find. If someone does not want to see these notifications then they can go into their settings area to turn off the emergency alerts. Notifications also allows people to see if their saved animals were adopted and if there is a new animal posted, though they can turn off these notifications if they wish.
How Are We Different? Research has shown that having a profile picture increases the chance of being chosen by 14% (Abbot, 2019). This will increase the number of animals that will be adopted and fostered from the site. Many websites and apps that help with the adoption of pets do not require basic information such as a profile picture, age, gender, vaccine update, special needs, and location; this greatly affects the number of animals that are adopted. Emergency alerts of animals about to be euthanized are another special feature most websites and apps don’t have. This alert prioritizes the animal so people can see they are in major need, making them more likely to be adopted. Having required information, priority animals, and notifications if saved animals adopted will help our website to stand out against others.
Future Development In the future we would like this website to have an app version. This app would allow users to have easier access than the website, allowing more people to glance at animals for adoption more frequently. Having a heat map of animal locations is also desired for both the app and the website, allowing potential pet owners to see where animals are located. We would also like to expand the website so people can ask animal advice and connect with other animal owners. Through this app we want to make exploring for potential pets as easy as possible, give shelters a platform to share animals for adoption, and giving these animals a bigger chance to find a home. References Abbot, L. (2019, August 5). 10 Tips for Picking the Right LinkedIn Profile Picture . Retrieved from Linkedin: https://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/blog/2014/12/5-tips-for-picking-the-right-linkedin-profile-pi ASPCA. (n.d.). Pet Statistics. Retrieved from ASPCA: https://www.aspca.org/animal-homelessness/shelter-intake-and-surrender/pet-st
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