🌏 Welcome to RouRou! An online marketplace for upcycled pet products; Committed to closing the loop on textile waste.
Chief Technology Officer, Research, Business Strategy, UX/UI, Prototype.
I was a part of the whole process.
👩🏻💻 My Role
3 Months, Aug - Nov, 2022
⌛ Duration
🌟 Project Overview
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Eva Chiu | Chief Communications Officer
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Azai Carothers | Chief Product Officer
🤝 Design Team
Figma, Miro, Wix, Social Media Channels, Google, Forms, Drive, Doc, Slides, Zoom,
🧰 Tools Used
Our Process: Design Thinking Approach
🌟 RouRou: Closing the Loop on Textile Waste ♾️
THE SOLUTION
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Textile waste turned into pet products—old fabrics into bandanas, discards into cozy pet beds.
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Empower artists to sell and showcase creativity.
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Sustainability, creativity, and pet love.
🐾 Online Marketplace: Where Waste Meets Pet Passion
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Owners swap textile waste for upcycled pet products, fueling a circular economy.
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Donors transform into contributors, crafting a story where waste gains value.
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Upcycling artists thrive with a constant stream of materials.
🔄 ♻️ Exchange System: Loop
Released to the world and on social media, not just showcasing products but a movement and awareness towards a sustainable and pet-loving world. 🚀
🌏 RouRou's Impact
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Subscription Marvel: Trade in textile waste or buy a monthly/yearly subscription for a blind box surprise for their pets. No more bored pets.
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Commissions Service for Tailored Elegance: Customized pet products for a unique style. Allow more jobs for upcycling artists.
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🛠️ DIY Kits + Tutorials - Unleash Creativity: For crafters at heart we educate and promote upcycling through Kits and tutorials turn textile scraps into toys for pets.
The RouRou Experience: 🎁 Subscription Marvel, ✂️Commissions & 🛠️ DIY Kits
INITIAL PROBLEM + SHIFTING FOCUS
🌏 Textile Waste Avalanche. Limited Options to Recycle Textile Waste in Australia.
Once upon a time, in a world awash with textile waste, our journey unfolded. A staggering 3 million tonnes are discarded annually, with each Aussie contributing 40 kg of textile waste. Despite 83% donating textiles, 14% sadly end up in landfills. It's a neverending textile avalanche.
Our initial mission to connect donors with upcycling artists faced a tough challenge - preliminary research revealed that it was too vast, too complex, too ambitious to solve in our given timeframe.
🔄 Shifted to Upcycling Textile Waste to the Booming Pet Industry 🐶
💡 The Switch to Pet Love & Sustainability 🌱 🐾
Within the complex puzzle, a niche market appeared - the pet industry. A thriving $3.9 billion market, where 86% shop online. Yet, eco-friendly options were lacking, and non-recyclable pet toys in landfills. Recognizing this, we pivoted to upcycled pet products, as it aligned with both environmental impact with business growth. 🐕 🌱
01 RESEARCH + EMPATHISE
🪝Diving into the Problem & User Needs
Online Ethnography + Questionaire + User Interviews + Competitor Analysis
🚀 Mission Goals:
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Validate assumptions.
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Understand user complexities and textile waste intricacies.
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Identify challenges, needs, and behaviours.
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Uncover sustainability and pet product market dynamics.
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Learn from competitor product/service successes and failures.
Embarked on a digital treasure hunt, exploring potential users' stories, sustainability discussions, and desires for eco-friendly solutions. Identified 3 user segments:
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Primary: Eco-conscious Pet Owners
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Secondary: Upcycling Artists and Donors
💻 Online Ethnography:
🔍 Analysed 55 Tweets
Dived into the quantitative research, with questions exploring shopping habits, sustainability concerns, and user preferences. Gathered insights, pain points, and needs from:
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Donators (8 responses)
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Upcycling Artists (12 responses)
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Potential Customers (17 responses)
📑 3 Sets of Questionnaires:
📊 Collected 37 Responses
We conducted one-on-one semi-structured interviews with pet owners to uncover in-depth insights into our direction. Questions around their desires for upcycled pet products, spending habits, challenges with existing pet products, criteria and values regarding pet products and their concern about pet's carbon paw prints and sustinability.
💬 Interviews: 🗣️ Listened to 7 Pet Owners
Navigated the competitive landscape, dissecting strategies of 6 key competitors. Identified market gaps and opportunities, ensuring our business could surpass industry standards and gain a competitive edge. 🌐✨
📊 Competitor Analysis: 🔍 6 Key Players
02 DEFINE | PERSONAS
👤 Persona Crafting: Designing Real Stories
🚀 Insight-Driven Personas: From research insights, we crafted detailed personas—meet Lendra (Buyer/Donator), Ryan (Buyer), and Jennifer (Partner/Upcycle Artist). These personas are refined qualities of real users, illustrating motivations, challenges, and aspirations. Each persona leads us on a path of user-centric design—real stories steering our creative ship. 🗺️✨
🌟 Crafting a Purposeful Vision:
02 DEFINE | PROBLEM & VISION STATEMENT
🌏 Problem Statement:
Landfills burgeon as textile waste skyrockets in Australia. Simultaneously, the pet industry flourishes, yet lacks sustainable alternatives. Our mission: develop an eco-conscious marketplace empowering upcycling artists, offering pet owners affordable, sustainable options, reduce textile waste, carbon paw print and environmental impact of the pet industry.
🚀 Vision Statement:
We envision pet owners can spoil their furry friends with eco-friendly, upcycled pet products. Vision: An accessible platform uniting passionate upcycling artists with pet lovers, fostering a circular economy, and mitigating the pet industry's environmental toll. By repurposing materials that would not have been able to be accepted by charity or conventional recycling facilities..🌿🐾
Prioritizing & Reframe Pains + Gains into How Might We Statement
02 DEFINE | HOW MIGHT WE'S (HMW's)
Guided by research and personas, we refined the key pains and gains of Lendra, Ryan, and Jennifer. Leveraging these insights, we transformed pains and gains into How Might We (HMW) statements. This phase wasn't just about solutions; it was a shift—transforming challenges into opportunities.
Brainstormed 18 HMWs, refining the core into 4 impactful questions that would lead us to solutions.
🌟 Selected HMWs:
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How might we make the donation process more informative and convenient?
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How might we make upcycled pet products accessible and widespread?
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How might we help sustainable creators to connect with customers?
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How might we create a platform to collect these damaged items and upcycle them?
03 IDEATION + DEVELOP | GENERATE IDEAS + SOLUTIONS
🚀 Develop & Ideation Phase — Ideas Turns Into a Reality:
🌪️ We generated 60+ ideas from Crazy8s and brainstorming/writing. 🔍
We used prioritization tools—Dot Voting, Decision Matrix, Cost vs. Effort Analysis—became our compass in deciding the ultimate concept.
🌈 Transformative Fun: Our ideation journey was a rollercoaster of creativity, I had a blast. 💡 With our minds full of insight and hearts full of creativity, we embarked on brainstorming sessions—ideation at its finest.
🗳️ Decision Dilemma: Voting became our best friend. The Decision Matrix criteria—feasibility, desirability, visibility, environmental impact, Cost vs. Effort—guided our compass, steering us toward the concept with the optimal impact in our constrained timeframe.
🌟 Top Ten Concepts: From a pool of ideas, we narrowed it down to 10. Discussions happened—rounds of laughter, mutual understanding, and active listening.
🤝 Unified Brilliance: The stars aligned, and in happy agreement, we merged our 3 key ideas into one concept. A concept so clear, so loved—it marked the birth of RouRou!
🌿 A zero-waste pet product business commitment to sustainability & impactful design 🐾
🚀 Setting Sail: Business Model Canvas
03 IDEATION + DEVELOP | BUSINESS MODEL
🎨 Crafting Success: We turned to strategic planning and painted our vision but laid down the strategic path for RouRou's journey.
🔍 Precision in Design: Each block is meticulously crafted to solve our HMWs, connect user needs, and relieve challenges.
💰 Financial Stability: Simultaneously ensuring the business generates enough revenue for sustainable growth and impact.
03 DEVELOP + IDEATION | VALUE PROPOSITION CANVAS
Ensure Value & Product — Market Fit & User-Centric Solution 😌
We iterated the value proposition and business model simultaneously. 💬 We embraced quote from Seth Godin, “Don’t find customers for your product, find products for your customers.” 🎨 We built Value Proposition Canvases tailored to each persona, ensuring our solution centres users' needs, pains, and gains.
Potential Buyer VPC
Donors VPC
Creators VPC
🎯 Positioning & Our Brand
03 DEVELOP + IDEATION | BUSINESS STRATEGY
⭐ Brand Target
Mission: Connect sustainable creators with pet owners and donors, fostering a circular economy.
📍 Position Map
RouRou is positioned between "affordable" and "reusable", and aims to make upcycled pet products accessible to all pet owners.
🌱 Value Chain: How does RouRou Work?
Nurturing sustainability across the value chain. Transformation Tale: From textile waste to fun upcycled pet products, each step is meticulously crafted for sustainability, ethics, and creativity. Linking all users.
🔄 After-sales Service & End-of-Life Strategies
⚙️ Repair & Renew: Empowering users, the closed-loop system invites owners to discard textiles, and return damaged pet products, then we transform them into new, upcycled treasures, ensuring upcycling artists have an endless supply of materials.
✅ Quality Assurance: Certain products bear a 30-day guarantee, embodying our commitment to durability and quality.
🎁 Transfomring waste & build a community through Subscription Marvel + Commissions + DIY Kits + Tutorials
Foster creativity and sustainability, all nurturing a circular economy.
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Empower Upcycling Artists: Providing a platform for upcycling artists to sell, connect with buyers, and promote their craft.
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Textile Exchange Ecosystem: Encouraging users to contribute to textile waste reduction through subscriptions, with metrics of their environmental impact.
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Personalized Box: Customizing Blind Boxes based on user preferences ensures a personalized touch, keeping their pets joy alive through surprises box.
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Social Impact: Users share donation stories, fostering collective commitment to sustainability and waste reduction goals.
05 DEVELOP + DELIVER | MVP + PROTOTYPING
🎭 Storyboards & User Journey Maps to Visualise the Entire User Experience 🗺️
👥 Built based on our personas, these tools illustrate the touchpoints, capturing the emotions, and how they use and benefit from RouRou's products and services. 💖 User-Centric: Every decision was designed with users in mind, ensuring every interaction, and users are satisfied. 🎨🚀
04 DEVELOP + DELIVER | MVP DEVELOPEMNT + PROTOTYPING
🚀 Crafting RouRou's Reality: MVP Development
In close team collaboration, we delved into the MVP development phase.
🌟 MVP Objective: Building a simplified version of RouRou with core functionality for public use.
🎯 Aimed for early adoption to validate our solution and test the usability of our MVP with real users.
🔍 Focused on gathering feedback for future iterations and RouRou's growth.
🧸 Pet Product Prototyping: Upcycling
🎨 Unique Challenge: We Faced the task of finding upcycling artists for our eco-friendly pet product prototypes.
🔄 We turned the challenge into an opportunity—our diverse team, skilled in fine art and product design, took the role of upcycling artists. 🚀 We embarked on a fun, collaborative workshop, transforming ourselves into upcycling artists. We crafted 7 distinct pet product prototypes, both functional and aesthetic. We recorded our process and took photos for our website and growth hacking.
✨ Learning: Because we were in the shoes of the artist we were able fine-tune our offerings and the functionality and textile waste exchange system🐾🌿 I also learnt to make toys for my furry friend 😝.
🎨 💻 Web Design & Development
👩🏻💻 As CTO, I oversaw technical performance for flawless functionality. We crafted a user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing platform, ensuring a seamless user experience.
🎯 Design Goal: Every element is designed with a singular goal—to make sustainability universally accessible and undeniably appealing. 🌿✨
🗺️ Information Architecture (IA): Focus on Organizing, Structuring & Labelling Content Effectively
The information architecture has been meticulously planned, creating a digital landscape that mirrors our sustainable mission. 🌿🖱️
🎯 Aim:
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To help users to easily navigate the web and find information, make eco-conscious choices and our brand and complete tasks.
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Ensure a seamless user experience where every click and scroll is a step navigated with ease.
🎨 Design System — Ensure Consistency & Brand Identity.
🌿 Mission: The visual design of RouRou mirrors our vision: eco-friendly, modern, and trustworthy.
📐 Precision Matters: Ensured font, size, and icons were not just elements but intuitive guides for a seamless user journey and consistency.
📘 Design System Blueprint: Crafted a design system as a guiding blueprint for all visual components, guaranteeing uniformity across digital realms.
🌿 Colour Palette:
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Earthy Browns: Conveys reliability and security, echoing our commitment to sustainability.
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Neutral Beiges: Infuses warmth and approachability, making users feel at home in the RouRou haven.
🚀 User-Friendly Navigation: Integrated intuitive icons, ensuring users effortlessly glide through the platform—a navigation breeze.
📏 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1: Choose the right typography and size to ensure readability, accessibility and aesthetics. 🌐✨
🛠 Web Design Iterations
From our 1st to 2nd iteration, we changed the whole entire look to match our new design system. Using photos and changed the content placement to flow and navigate better to show user-friendly and
🔄 Strategic Decision: We went for a direct approach to the Wix web builder, bypassing traditional wireframing due to time constraints. Which enabled a swift launch to test the waters and gather valuable insights.
🚀 SEO Strategies to Boost Organic Traffic to RouRou's Website:
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Keyword Research & Optimization.
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Website & Content Structure.
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Structured Data.
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Used SEO strategies and google analytics .
🧶 Prototype Process
🌐 Features added for online marketplace
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🐾 Pet Product Listings + Filters: Tailored sections for dogs, cats, and other pets ensure you find the perfect match.
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🔄 Textile Exchange Hub: A central space for donating textile waste—a hub of transformation.
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🎨 Upcycling Artist Process: Witness the magic of upcycled pet products with detailed insights into the artistic journey.
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📚 Educational Corners: Informative segments empower eco-conscious choices, making every decision intentional.
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🔍 Search Bar + User-Friendly Filters: Effortlessly narrow down choices based on pet preferences, materials, and more, enhancing your exploration.
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🤖 Chatbot + FAQ: Learn more, give feedback—a virtual guide at your service.
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🌿 Truth & Transparency: Sustainability communicated across every pixel, fostering trust in every interaction.
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✒️ Engaging UX Writing: Invite users into the RouRou story, vision, mission, goals, and process with compelling narratives.
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🛒 Quick Checkout Experience: Swift, hassle-free purchase process for a seamless journey from exploration to acquisition. 🚀
Every choice is intentional, creating a visual journey that aligns with our mission of sustainability. 🌿🌐✨
05 USER TESTING + IMPLEMENTATION
🕵️♀️ Engaging with Real Potential Users 🐕
🐾 👥 Concept & Product Testing: Interviewed 11 Pet Owners & 5 Pet Store Staff
🖥️ Website Usability Testing: Tested with 6 Pet Owners 🐶
To ensure every click, scroll, and swipe felt intuitive and user-friendly. I led the web usability testing and semi-structured interviews based on Nielson Norman Group's design usability attributes.
🎯 Objective: Tested effectiveness, efficiency, satisfaction, and cognitive load as users explored our website to understand the strengths, weaknesses, intuitiveness and user expectations.
💡 Approach: Utilized tasks, rating and think-aloud protocol for users to share thoughts while interacting with the site. user expectations. 🌐🎶
We went to dog parks and pet stores to interview and engage with pet owners and store staff. 👀 We observed how their pets interacted with our products.
🗣️ Discussions: Around RouRou's concepts, exploring perceptions, appeal, and feedback on the desirability, pricing, and potential improvements.
🌟 Positive Feedback: Our feedback was mostly positive, indicating a strong market interest in buying our products and using RouRou's service. 🎵Happy Doggies🐕
05 USER TESTING + IMPLEMENTATION | SUMMARY
🗂️ Insights from Interview Concept + Product + Usability Testing
Synthesised data through affinity diagram & iterated our business model + website based on their feedback.
🌟 Current Market Snapshot:
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People don't consider sustainability first when shopping for pet products
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Currently sustainable pet products market is very small - trouble selling
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Limited awareness: People don't know upcycled pet products exists
Overall feedback showed enthusiasm & genuine interest in RouRou 🐾💚
🚀 Insights from Usability Testing
Users faced interaction and some visual flaws which drove iterative design adjustments, ensuring the platform met user needs and preferences.
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Hero Section: Commented to change the backdrop to pets using ROUROU’s up-cycled products, which gives a better first impression.
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A user suggested relocating the “Our Process” section to the "Our Story" page, seamlessly intertwining process and narrative for a richer user experience.
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Want More Details: Users wanted more product descriptions. Be more transparent.
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A direct donation button for users eager to contribute.
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Not Responsive: An iPad user tester addressed layout flaws and typos.
💖 Desirability:
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Businesses express eagerness to partner with RouRou.
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A willingness to pay more for RouRou's products and sustainable pet products is evident.
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Strong interest in the circular economy model, connecting creators with customers and donors.
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Anticipation for the personalized service of repurposing donations according to donors' wishes.
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An inclination towards material donations is expressed.
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People want to donate materials.
🗣️ Quotes from Testing:
"It’s a great idea and I think most people in this area (Glebe) would be interested”
“I really like the idea that you could swap it in when it's used and buy it again.”
“If there were sustainable options like these easily available to me I would definitely go for that.”
“I love the idea of a guarantee or subscription. I’d pay $50 for a toy if there was a guarantee.”
“I would pay more for stuff thats natural and sustainable like this.”
“I hate when my dog destroys a toy, it’s so messy and I don’t know what to do with it. I like the idea that I could send it back and it would turn it into something else.”
🛠️ Implementation & Iterated Business Strategy & MVP Design Based on User Feedback
05 USER TESTING + IMPLEMENTATION
🔧 Refined RouRou's Business Model
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Introduced a 30-day product guarantee on certain items
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Further developing our subscription model.
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Changed an outstanding backdrop.
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Relocated “Our Process” section to Our Story page.
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Added a direct donation button.
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Fixed the responsiveness of the website so it works and fits on all devices.
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Simplify the steps to clear and add items to the cart.
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Added more details and descriptions of the products and about RouRou.
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Set best-sellers on top of the product lists.
🤓 Final Website Design & Iterations Made
🚀 Growth Hacking: AARRR. Release to the real world ⚖️
📊 Embraced the AARRR Framework (Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, Revenue) through RouRou's journey of growth hacking.
🌐 Strategic Focus: We focused on Transparency, Sustainability, and Community.
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Posted content and videos on Instagram and TikTok.
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Show pets playing with our product, behind the scenes of our process as educational content on upcycling.
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Posted forums on Facebook and Reddit.
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Sold our product on Facebook Marketplace.
06 PITCH + RESULTS + NEXT STEPS
Traction Results: Span of 4 Weeks
The project achieved significant milestones during its launch. Without buying ads, our metrics demonstrated strong traction.
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Sold a product on Facebook Marketplace
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With 16 clicks on listing
🚀 Next Steps & Market Potential 🌍:
The project's next phase involves fine-tuning the platform for increased traffic, and engagement. Attract investors to invest. Hire developers, creators...
With market size analysis we identified Total Addressable Market (TAM), Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM)and Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM).
🎯 RouRou Aims to capture 1% of sustainable pet purchases, a potential $40 million annual impact. 🚀 🐾 This showed a tremendous potential for RouRou's business growth and impact.
🌐 Website Traffic Analysis
📈 Reflection + Lessons
07 REFLECTION
🌐 More Than a Product:
In conclusion, RouRou isn't just a product; it embodies a journey dedicated to sustainability, user empowerment, growth, adaptability, and, ultimately, business success.
🔥 Triumph Over Challenges:
The journey wasn't without its share of challenges: Shifting focus, roles, engaging artists, and tight time constraints forced us to adapt and innovate.
🎓 Lessons in the Journey:
With challenges conquered, lessons learned, and professional growth have taught me the UX skills and value of reframing, MVP, versatility, business strategies, adaptability, and efficient time management 🚀💡
Upclycing market Past & Present:
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Upcycled pet products have a decade-long history. Not enough exposure.
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People crave upcycled products and creators leverage social media for sales.
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UK Pet companies have specific lines for upcycled products but Australia doesn't have it. Shows opportunity.
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Creators showcase their work on social media, creating a thriving community.
Collaboration Opportunities:
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Partnering with Pet Cafes to promote our brand and sell our products.
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Opportunity to help RSPCA and people who can’t afford pet products.
DIY Movement:
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DIY pet toy tutorials and innovative ideas flood social platforms, emphasizing a hands-on community.
User Expectations:
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Users eagerly anticipated a platform connecting donators, creators, and the upcycling community.
Potential Buyers + Pet Owners
Interest:
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Strong interest in purchasing upcycled products driven by sustainability commitments.
Desire:
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Transparency, quality, durability, and a connection with the creators.
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Prefer products aligning with lifestyle choices and affordability.
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Desire transparency in material origin and making processes.
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Demand for high-quality, durable pet products.
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Willingness to engage in DIY and upcycling if easy.
Painpoint:
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Hard to find and buy upcycled products
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Issues with existing pet products, including durability limited sizes longevity
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Issues with disposing damaged pet products.
Upcycling Artists - The Creators
Interest:
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A hunger for zero or minimal expenses on materials.
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A mission to actively reduce landfills.
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Contributing to the circular economy sustainably.
Desire:
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They prioritize the ethical and sustainable sourcing of materials.
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Crave a platform to sell and promote creations.
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Yearning for community and awareness building.
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Desire to produce both human- and pet-enjoyable products.
Pain point:
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Face storage issues and anticipate challenges in sourcing materials.
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Don't have a platform to sell and promote their creations.
🔍 Key Insights from Ethnography:
Donators
Interest:
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A commitment to the Earth by recycling/donating.
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Eager to ensure their donations are valuable.
Desire:
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Assurance that donations make a difference.
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Want to see how their donations are used
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Desire for transparency in the donation process.
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Seek better solutions than typical donation channels.
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Want engagement in the upcycling community.
Pain point:
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Face difficulties in recycling and donating, not everything is accepted.
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Lack of information and convenience in the donation process.
📌 Insights from Questionnaires & Interviews:
💡 Insightful Quotes:
"I recycle and donate to help the environment."
"I would pay more for stuff that's natural and sustainable."
"I want to feel involved in the up-cycling process."
"Pet products are expensive."
"I would go out of my way to look for up-cycled products."
📊 Insights from Competitor Analysis
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Market Gap: No existing comprehensive online platform for sustainable pet products, creating a distinct market opportunity for RouRou.
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Limited Sustainability Focus: Current competitors offer a limited selection of sustainable pet products, they primarily sell non-sustainable options.
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Universal Emphasis on Quality: All brands universally prioritize quality, sustainability, and durability in their offerings.
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Transparency Gap: While brands educate customers on sustainability, a transparency gap exists regarding the detailed production processes of their products.
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After-Sales Services Gap: None of the existing brands prioritize after-sales services for damaged pet products, highlighting an unaddressed niche.
👐 There is a huge need & market for RouRou that focuses on sustainability, innovation, & transparency.
02 DEFINE | SYNTHESIS RESEARCH INSIGHTS
🧠 Affinity Diagramming — Key Insights, Challenges & Business Opportunities
🌐 Insights from Online Ethnography, Questionnaires, and User Interviews into a rich qualitative pool.
🎨 We utilized affinity diagramming to analyse the large amount of data collected to paint a vivid picture, revealing patterns and diverse needs, desires, and pain points. across our 3 key user groups.
🚀 With this canvas, we set out to craft a solution bridging creators, donors, and buyers into a circular upcycling resolution. 🎨✨