Patch

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  Our Brand!

Inspiration

Our project is driven by a shared passion for animals and a desire to improve the pet adoption experience through better design. While we were generally aware of challenges like limited visibility for shelter animals and difficulty finding homes for older pets, speaking with a mentor who had firsthand experience with online adoption revealed how complex and frustrating the process can be in practice. We explored existing platforms such as Petfinder, which play an important role in connecting shelters with adopters. However, we found that the experience can still feel overwhelming and difficult to navigate when users are trying to determine the right pet fit. This inspired us to create Patch, a more guided and accessible adoption experience focused on compatibility, clarity, and ease of use. Our goal is to support both adopters and shelters by making it easier to form meaningful, long-term matches between people and pets.

What it does

Patch is a compatibility-focused pet adoption app that helps potential adopters discover pets that are the right fit for their daily lives and long-term needs. Our platform uses personalized onboarding and behavioral insights to match users with pets they’re more likely to bond with and successfully care for. By reducing search fatigue and improving how adopters evaluate pets, we help people form stronger emotional connections with animals while making the adoption process easier to navigate from start to finish. Patch is a smarter way to adopt pets through lifestyle-based matching, transparent pet profiles, and personalized recommendations.

How we built it

Our project is designed around identifying and addressing the pain points commonly found in existing pet adoption platforms. While existing platforms successfully connect users with shelters and adoptable animals, our research showed that the process often prioritizes endless browsing rather than helping users confidently find a compatible match. We studied a wide range of adopter groups, including first-time adopters, experienced owners, apartment renters, families, students, and shelter volunteers, to design for real-world adoption needs. We wanted a design for a wide range of real adoption scenarios rather than a single “ideal user.” To better understand current pain points, we conducted competitive analysis on existing adoption platforms and shelter websites, including Petfinder, Good Dog and rescue-based adoption systems. We also analyzed user reviews, observed adoption flows, evaluated filtering and onboarding systems, and gathered informal interview feedback from users about their adoption experiences. Across these platforms, several recurring frustrations emerged. Many users described the adoption process as mentally exhausting because they were forced to manually browse through hundreds of pets with little guidance. Users often struggled to understand whether a pet would fit their lifestyle, with limited insight into behavior, energy level, or home compatibility. We also found trust issues due to inconsistent descriptions, outdated interfaces, broken features, and inaccurate location data - especially when pets were fostered in locations different from what was listed. From our findings, four themes emerged: adoption is overwhelming, compatibility matters more than browsing, personalization is missing, and trust is inconsistent. To address this, we designed a guided onboarding flow that translates user lifestyle factors - such as living situation, schedule, and household dynamics - into personalized pet recommendations. We also structured pet data around behavioral traits, energy levels, and housing suitability to enable more meaningful matching. Overall, our project reframes pet adoption from a browsing-heavy experience into a compatibility-driven one, helping users make more confident and informed decisions while improving long-term adoption success.

Challenges we ran into

Balancing simplicity and depth in the user experience: One of the main challenges we faced was designing an experience that reduced overwhelming choice without oversimplifying the adoption process. Pet adoption involves many important factors, and we needed to ensure users could make informed decisions without feeling lost in too many options. Defining “compatibility” in a meaningful way: We struggled with clearly defining what compatibility actually means in a way that is both useful and measurable. We iterated on how to balance lifestyle, energy level, personality, and home environment, since oversimplifying led to weak matches while adding too much complexity made the system harder to use. Refining scope throughout development: Aligning on scope was an ongoing challenge. As we learned more from user research and feedback, we continuously refined our direction, balancing ambitious features with what we could realistically design and implement within the hackathon timeframe.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Teamwork and collaboration: We strengthened our ability to collaborate across research, design, ideation, and implementation while continuously refining our project through feedback and iteration. Reducing overwhelming browsing: We addressed overwhelming pet browsing by creating a guided onboarding flow that provides personalized recommendations instead of endless scrolling. Improving compatibility matching: We designed a matching system based on lifestyle, personality, schedule, and living situation to help users find pets that better fit their needs. Enhancing filtering and usability: We improved filtering by allowing users to search through traits such as species, personality, friendliness, energy level, and special needs. Building trust and clarity: We focused on creating clearer pet recommendations and supportive guidance to help users feel more confident during the adoption process. Learning design tools: We made significant progress using Figma to create wireframes, prototypes, and collaborative UI designs. Project branding: We are especially proud of our logo and visual identity, which helped create a warm, accessible, and user-friendly feel for the platform.

What we learned

User research and accessibility: We learned how important user research is in creating thoughtful, accessible, and socially impactful designs. Through interviews, competitive analysis, and platform reviews, we better understood the barriers users face during pet adoption. Turning insights into solutions: We learned how to identify pain points and translate research findings into design decisions that improve usability, compatibility matching, and the overall adoption experience for a wide range of users. Learning design tools: We gained hands-on experience using Figma to create wireframes, user flows, and interactive prototypes while prioritizing accessibility, readability, and intuitive navigation. Balancing impact and feasibility: We learned how to balance accessibility, technical feasibility, user needs, and project scope within a limited timeframe, reinforcing the importance of iterative and user-centered design for social good.

What's next for Patch

Expand accessibility for shelters and adopters: Our next step is to refine the platform so it can be easily adopted by a wide range of shelters and rescue organizations, especially smaller or under-resourced groups that may not have access to advanced digital tools. Support shelters in increasing successful placements: Beyond listing pets, the platform can evolve into a tool that helps shelters better understand adopter needs, reduce mismatches, and ultimately lower return rates. **Community awareness & outreach (advertising impact): **A key part of increasing adoption success is improving visibility and awareness of shelter animals. Strategic outreach and awareness campaigns—such as social media storytelling, featured pet spotlights, and community partnerships—can play an important role in increasing public engagement. By improving how adoptable pets are shared and discovered, we can help shelters reach wider audiences and increase the likelihood of successful matches. **Long-term vision for social impact: **Ultimately, our goal is not just to improve the adoption experience, but to increase the number of successful, long-term pet adoptions by making the process more transparent, humane, and accessible for everyone involved.

Built With

• figma