Guide Dogs

Introduction:

Guide Dogs ambition is a future where every person with sight loss has the confidence and support they need to live their lives to the full. As part of a 5 Year Strategic Plan the Guide Dogs digital team wanted to explore how design thinking and emerging technologies could help the organisation to improve customer and staff satisfaction, increase productivity and reduce operational costs. I partnered with a Technical Architect to run a series of workshops designed to explore how technologies such as Voice, IoT and Automation could improve the key services offered by Guide Dogs. Attendees included senior Guide Dogs stakeholders and subject matter experts.

Each half-day workshop was divided into two parts. Part one focused on identifying the current and potential users of the experience in order to capture their motivations, tasks, feelings and pain points. This enabled us to create a full picture of each persona and identify the opportunities to meet their needs. The second part of the workshop used the Google Crazy 8 approach to rapidly generate ideas that could solve the problems identified. Dot voting was used to prioritise ideas and select which should be developed into a prototype.

Rehoming - The challenge:

Every year Guide Dogs breeds and trains hundreds of dogs and around 75% go on to become active guide dogs. The remaining 25% are unfortunately withdrawn from service as they are not suitable or have health conditions that prevent them becoming a guide dog. Dogs that are not suitable for work make great pets and Guide Dogs rehomes over 900 dogs each year with new owners. Owning a dog is a big emotional and financial commitment so it is very important to Guide Dogs that each dog is matched with the best possible home.

The current Guide Dogs Rehoming experience is far from ideal for both Applicants and the regional Rehoming Teams. Applicants currently need to download and complete a four page application form which must then be submitted by post or email. Once submitted the Applicant is not given any feedback and may not receive any response for several months. Within Guide Dogs each of the regional rehoming teams uses slightly different processes and data is not captured consistently, making it difficult to build a nationwide strategy. This makes the matching process highly inefficient and wastes valuable time. On average it can take up to 51 days to rehome each dog.

Rehoming - The outcome:

The first stage in defining a new Rehoming experience was to conduct a workshop with key Guide Dogs stakeholders, including the CTO, Head of Digital and members of the Rehoming teams. In part one of the workshop I ran the team through a series of questions to capture the primary users of the current rehoming service. 5 user groups were defined, including Service Users, Applicants, The Rehoming Team, Volunteer Dog Walkers, and of course the Dog. For each user group we captured motivations, tasks, feelings and pain points. 

Next I asked the rehoming team to describe the current rehoming experience in order to map each stage of the process. Everyone in the workshop then took part in a ‘Crazy 8’ task to generate 8 ideas in 8 minutes, a high pressure but fun activity. Everyone then presented their ideas back to the group. Following a dot voting process the winning idea was ’Tinder for Dogs’ – an experience to match people looking for a dog with Guide Dogs that have been withdrawn from training or retired from service.

Following the workshop I gathered additional research around the concept of matching services, including pet and human dating experiences. Working with the Technical Architect we then generated ideas for the future rehoming experience and defined the key success criteria for an initial prototype. I created a user journey to show how the new experience would work for applicants and the rehoming team. I identified where a new matching algorithm could automate the process, saving time for the Rehoming Teams and allowing them to focus on finding the best possible home for each dog. The final stage was to present the workshop output, additional research and proposed prototype plan to the Guide Dogs stakeholder team.