The Daily Wag

People seeking efficient and reliable pet care - whether they are busy professionals or owners facing physical and financial barriers-require a versatile and trustworthy platform that integrates paid, on-demand services with consistent, compassionate community support, ensuring the continuous well-being of their pets.

“How might we create a Hybrid Social Commerce app that uses commercial revenue to sustainably fund a volunteer-based Social Good Tier, offering verified service hours as compensation and optimizing reliable, equitable access to daily pet care for all?”

Project Background and Personal Journey

Driven by a commitment to animal welfare, I created The Daily Wag to solve a critical market failure where reliable, paid services for busy professionals were lacking, and affordable, consistent care for mobility-constrained owners was non-existent. My strategic solution was the Hybrid Social Commerce platform. This innovative model uses revenue generated by the Paid Tier to subsidize and organize the Social Good Tier, which strategically utilizes community volunteers who are compensated with verifiable service hours instead of cash.

The core UX challenge was uniting these two services into a seamless, trustworthy experience. I focused on designing for simplicity, incentive, and trust. The Daily Wag reflects my commitment to designing systems that foster both economic sustainability and social equity, ensuring every dog gets its daily wag.

Problem

There is a distinct, critical gap in the market for a single, comprehensive pet care platform that ethically and efficiently serves the entire spectrum of owner needs: from on-demand paid services to consistent, community-supported care.

Urban pet owners and those facing temporary or permanent constraints struggle to find a singular, trustworthy platform that handles their varied and time-sensitive dog walking requirements. The current market’s strict separation of high-cost commercial services and informal, unreliable favors leads to a disjointed and often anxiety-inducing user experience, failing to deliver the crucial peace of mind required for dependable pet management.

Furthermore, the existing, commercially driven models inherently neglect the high-need demographic. Owners facing mobility challenges or financial barriers are effectively excluded from securing the consistent, daily exercise their pets require. This commercial-only approach fails to address the ethical responsibility of providing equitable access to basic pet welfare, creating instability and guilt within the community.

Community members eager to contribute, contend with volunteer platforms that fail to validate their commitment. These systems lack the infrastructure to provide verifiable service documentation, diminishing the value of their time and preventing the creation of a stable, incentivized workforce. A unified app that offers a reliable paid tier to fund and organize a structured, service-hour compensated volunteer tier is conspicuously absent, highlighting a critical need for innovation in the ethical pet care space.

Research: Competitive & SWOT Analysis

User Surveys & Interviews

The simulated user research confirmed that The Daily Wag must function as a Hybrid Value Network built on two distinct priorities: Speed and Cost Justification for premium users, and Trust and Verifiable Incentive for the social good tier. Qualitative interviews revealed that Alex requires the paid service to justify its cost with engaging, premium updates, while Maria's primary concern is trust and consistency, demanding advanced vetting signals like a "Compassion Score." For the volunteer cohort, Chloe's core motivation is the verifiable logging of service hours, which the app must provide seamlessly to make their contribution worthwhile.

Quantitative data strongly validated the value of the new, intelligent features. A staggering 92% of surveyed volunteers stated that the LLM-powered Verification Letter Drafter was the single most valuable incentive the app could offer, proving it's essential for volunteer retention and acquisition. Furthermore, 65% of paid owners confirmed that enhanced, engaging walk reports would significantly increase their loyalty and willingness to pay a premium. This synthesis confirms that the Dual Flow design, which separates user journeys based on these validated needs, is the correct architectural foundation for the app.

Card Sorts & Affinity Mapping

Following the initial surveys and interviews, I conducted interactive card sorting and affinity mapping sessions. This exercise enabled a deep organization of essential app features and offerings by grouping raw user feedback into three cohesive categories: Pain Points, Desires, and Behaviors. This process was fundamental in validating the need for the Hybrid Social Commerce model and prioritizing the design elements that foster Trust, Simplicity, and Incentive.

Pain Points   Desires       Behaviors

Meet the Personas:

The insights I gathered helped me to develop 3 personas

Alex: A Junior Marketing Manager

Chloe: A University Student

Maria: A Retired Owner

Exploration, Ideation and Wireframes

In the ideation phase for The Daily Wag, my focus centered on a non-trivial challenge: designing a Hybrid Social Commerce platform that seamlessly accommodates two opposing service models: high-speed commercial transactions and compassionate, low-cost volunteer matching, while successfully incentivizing the supply side.

To ensure a frictionless experience for all, I mapped three distinct, simultaneous user journeys that rely on shared infrastructure but separated flows: Alex where his primary goal is Efficiency and Quality, Maria expects Affordability and Trust and Chloe needs a verifiable Incentive which is verifiable service hours.

Acknowledging these disparate needs, the initial single-service wireframe was deemed inadequate, necessitating a complete structural evolution.I progressed from initial sketches to initial wireframes, guiding the user to the correct tier immediately.

User Interface Design 

The Daily Wag emerged from a need to provide swift and reliable pet care, initially focusing on transactional clarity for its premium customers. However, user feedback quickly necessitated a shift to a more inclusive, dual-dashboard design. This evolution was critical to accommodate the Hybrid Value Network, ensuring high-efficiency booking for paid services while simultaneously building a system based on trust and community reciprocity for the volunteer tier.

The pivotal design transformation centered on balancing these two competing models. The core mission became achieving unwavering user trust and providing verifiable incentive across the platform. This required moving beyond basic logistics to create distinct UI pathways: one focused on low-friction scheduling and cost justification, and the other prioritizing transparent service hour tracking and accountability for volunteers.

Daily Wag Taught Me

The Daily Wag has been a rewarding journey, expanding from just scheduling walks to building a strong Hybrid Value Network. The app's development was completely focused on understanding our two main user groups: the paid customers who need quick, professional help and the volunteers who want tangible, documented credit for their time. Their real-world needs became the compass for our design, making The Daily Wag a leader in connecting pet care with genuine community good.

My design philosophy is straightforward: users first. I devoted myself to truly understanding the daily challenges of every person involved - from the owner who pays a premium to the student giving their time. This commitment didn't just make the app look better; it ensured every feature works. The satisfaction comes from building a service that perfectly aligns the needs of pet owners with the strong incentives of volunteers, proving that focusing on the user is the best way to achieve real-world impact.