SOS Pet Rescue — Pet Rescue Organization
A volunteer-run pet rescue had a website full of heart but short on clarity. I worked with two other designers to rebuild the experience from the ground up, turning scattered information into a clear, emotionally grounded platform that helps people adopt, donate, and volunteer with confidence.
Brand
SOS Lost Pet Rescue NW
Used Tools
Team
Aleksandra Beiner
Cavanaugh Lefor
Avery Sullivan
Timeline
1 Month
The Problem
"I wanted to help, but I had no idea where to start."
That line came from a user interview early in the project, and it became the lens for everything we designed.
SOS Lost Pet Rescue NW is a volunteer-powered nonprofit in Beaverton, Oregon, focused on rescuing vulnerable cats, including seniors, ferals, and animals needing urgent medical care. They provide emergency rescue, full veterinary support, and place pets into screened, responsible homes. Their work also includes TNR (trap-neuter-return), public education, and outreach to reduce overpopulation.
People arrived ready to act. They wanted to adopt, donate, or volunteer. But the site made each of those paths harder than it needed to be. Donation pages offered no visibility into where money went. The adoption flow led with fees before showing any animals. Volunteer signups left people unsure what to expect or how to begin. The intent to help was there. The experience did not support it.
Our heuristic evaluation confirmed what users were telling us. Each team member audited the site independently and surfaced overlapping issues: the payment form looked poorly designed, which undercut trust. The site relied on stock imagery instead of real photos of rescued animals, draining the emotional weight the mission depends on. Volunteer role descriptions were vague. Important content was buried under oversized elements and redundant links. The overall structure felt disjointed, and that disorganization weakened the credibility of an organization doing critical work.
The audit showed us what was broken. We needed to understand why users experienced it this way, and what would actually move them to act.
My Role
I was one of three designers on this project across a five-week timeline. We collaborated closely on research, UX strategy, and presentation, but each of us took ownership of specific areas.
Industry Research: I sourced the data that framed why this project mattered: the 6.3M+ animals entering U.S. shelters annually, the 920k euthanized, and the 4.1M who find homes. These numbers grounded our pitch to stakeholders and set the emotional stakes for the redesign.
Interview Preparation: I helped develop the interview questions, shaping the structure around adoption, donation, volunteering, and website usability so we could surface patterns across all four areas.
User Struggles and Opportunities: I participated in identifying the core friction points users faced on the existing site, and in defining the four key opportunities that became our design pillars: detailed pet info and search filters, showing what donations really do, easy and clear volunteer sign-up, and real stories that build trust.
Information Architecture: I led the restructuring of the site's IA, redesigning the sitemap to collapse duplicate flows, rename pages to match user language, and align the entire structure around user goals rather than organizational categories.
Wireframing and UI Design: I contributed to the wireframes and participated in developing the site's visual design system within the team.
Post-Bootcamp Iteration: After the team project concluded, I independently redesigned all wireframes and rebuilt the component library, refining the experience based on validation feedback and my own assessment of what the design still needed.
Research
Interviews
We interviewed four pet owners: Kei, Brooke, Tyler, and Kayleigh. All had experience with animals and varying levels of involvement with shelters and nonprofits. We organized their responses by theme rather than by person, because the same tensions kept surfacing across every conversation.
On trust and transparency: Users consistently wanted to know where their money was going and whether the organization could be trusted. One participant noted she avoids donating to organizations involved in scandals or political activism, and prefers charities that align with her personal values. Another said that concerns about shelter transparency and care for animals made her want clearer information before committing.
On adoption readiness: Every participant said they needed health conditions, temperament, and medical history before feeling comfortable adopting. One participant prefers local shelters over large platforms like Petfinder specifically because of poor location-based search. Another mentioned she would avoid high-maintenance pets like FIV+ cats if she felt unprepared for the care demands. The pattern was clear: people are not opposed to adopting animals with needs, but they need enough information to make that call confidently.
On donation hesitation: Financial limitations came up in every interview. Multiple participants said they would donate if they had disposable income but currently cannot prioritize it. When asked what would help, one user said that being able to pick a donation amount would be nice. Another said that pictures of animals would "warm her heart" and encourage giving. The barrier was not willingness; it was a lack of context that would make even a small contribution feel meaningful.
On volunteering barriers: Time was the dominant factor. Several participants had never volunteered at a shelter. One had been turned away from volunteering initially because of age restrictions. Another said she had thought about it but life got in the way. Those who were interested wanted clear schedules, role descriptions, and a welcoming atmosphere. One participant specifically said she wants volunteering to feel like being part of a community, not just work.
The same three things kept coming up: people needed transparency to trust, structure to decide, and emotional connection to act.
We also ran a MoSCoW prioritization exercise to decide what to build now versus later. Success stories, updated page content, more photos, and better donation page layout were "must haves." Donation tiers, tier descriptions, cleaner graphics, and social media integration were "should haves." We deliberately deprioritized features like donation incentives (merch or gifts), a name-the-animal option, and highly specific donor personalization, as they were either niche or too complex for the initial redesign.
Persona
Ruth Beck represents the most common pattern we heard in research: someone genuinely motivated to help but needing more context and clarity to follow through. She is a 44-year-old office worker and single mother of three in Portland, Oregon, who recently adopted a cat and wants to give back to her community through donations and volunteering. She has limited time and money, so any friction in the process causes her to leave and look elsewhere. Ruth's journey became our primary design lens: if the site works for someone juggling competing priorities and limited trust, it works for most visitors.
The Redesign
Architecture and structure
The original sitemap had five top-level sections: Home, About Us, Donate & Support, Adoption Payment, and Volunteer. The naming was inconsistent, and the structure confused users. "Donate & Support" contained team bios, board members, videos, and an "Adopted" page alongside payment forms. "Adoption Payment" led directly to a payment form with no way to browse animals first. The Volunteer section was just a standalone form with no context.
I restructured the IA into five clearer sections: Home, About Us, Adoptions, Donate, and Volunteer. Each section now maps to a single user goal. Adoptions leads with available animals and includes a simplified payment form downstream. Donate is its own section with tiered giving and impact context. Volunteer includes role descriptions, scheduling, and a form with options to apply for different positions. I collapsed duplicate flows, removed buried content, and renamed pages to match the language users actually use.
Final Design
Clear, action-oriented pages built for people ready to help
The redesigned site includes six core pages: Home, About Us, Available Pets (Adoptions), Donate, Volunteer, and Success Stories. We delivered a high-fidelity prototype in Figma covering both desktop and mobile breakpoints. The mobile version adapts to a 6-column grid with a sticky hamburger menu, adjusted carousels showing two animals per slide instead of four, and stacked layouts for content that sits side-by-side on desktop.
Main Screens
Validation
✅ Validated wins
Clear layout and CTA made users feel confident and ready to engage
Visuals felt trustworthy and welcoming
Form flow encouraged action (donate, volunteer)
🟠 Needs improvement
Add clarity around adoption vs. payment
Expand volunteer role descriptions
Make filters more visible and labeled
Let users click cards for deeper info
Early Signals of Success
100%
understood paths
Participants said they now clearly understood how to donate or volunteer
2x
filter usage
Everyone explored the new filter feature — calling it “helpful,” “time-saving,” and “easy to use”
3x
more time on rescue stories
Users spent significantly more time reading animal stories — often citing them as the reason they’d want to help
Reflection
I would narrow the interview questions around donation intent earlier. Our interviews covered adoption, donation, volunteering, and usability across every participant. That breadth was useful for understanding the full picture, but in hindsight, the donation-related findings were the thinnest because we asked broad questions about giving habits rather than probing specifically into what information would make someone donate on the spot. If I ran this again, I would include a scenario-based question where participants walk through the donation page and narrate their decision in real time.
The heuristic evaluation was more actionable than I expected. I initially thought the interviews would drive most of our design decisions. In practice, the independent site audits each team member ran were what gave us the sharpest, most specific problems to solve: the payment form design undercutting trust, stock imagery draining emotional impact, volunteer descriptions being too vague. The interviews confirmed and added nuance, but the evaluation gave us a concrete list of fixes from day one.
Rebuilding the IA was the highest-leverage decision I made. Collapsing "Donate & Support" and "Adoption Payment" into distinct, goal-oriented sections (Adoptions, Donate, Volunteer) changed how every page functioned. It was tempting to focus on visual polish first, but restructuring the sitemap before touching any screens meant every design decision downstream had a clear home. I would make that same call again.
Redesigning everything post-bootcamp taught me more than the bootcamp itself. Going back to rebuild all the wireframes and components alone, without the pace of a team sprint, forced me to question every layout choice on its own merits. Some decisions I had agreed with during the group project turned out to be compromises rather than solutions. Having the space to revisit them made the final product significantly stronger, and it changed how I evaluate my own work in progress.
