Bubble & Bark

2026

Client Work

Role: UX/UI Designer

Length: 2 Months

Team: Solo Project

Introduction

For this project, I worked with a dog grooming company based in Boston to redesign their website. The client’s main goals were to increase new client acquisition and improve usability for existing users.

To start, I wanted to understand 1) what the industry standard for grooming websites was, and 2) what parts of the website I should prioritize updating (i.e. what aspects were the least user friendly). I researched the problem space and then conducted a competitive analysis in order to understand what my client’s website was missing in comparison to their peers. I also conducted usability testing to identify the existing pain points, and had all of the users complete the System Usability Scale questionnaire.

Within a two month timeline, I took all of the information I had gleaned from my research in order to create Bubble & Bark a better, more intuitive website that the client felt confident represented their brand values.

Introduction

Research

In order to make sure I was improving the website based off of tangible data, I employed the following methodologies:

Competitive Analysis

I researched three popular grooming websites and noted what they did/didn’t do: 1) Barkbus, 2) Petco, and 3) Dashing Dog Grooming. I compared their mission statements, their target markets, their strengths, and their weaknesses. I also was careful to pay attention to if there were any features that were common among competitors that were absent on my client’s site, or vice versa.

Usability Testing and The System Usability Scale Questionnaire

I conducted usability testing with five different users by asking them to complete a series of tasks that were noted to be of high importance to the client, and then asked them to complete the System Usability Scale Questionnaire.

The client listed their main goals for users to be as follows:

Users can easily navigate the home page without confusion or frustration.
Users can easily find out information about the offered services.
Users can successfully book an appointment.
Users can successfully find the cancellation/no show policy.

After conducting the usability testing, these were the key findings:

80% of users mentioned that there was no pricing listed anywhere on the site.
80% of users mentioned that it took too long to find the “book an appointment” button, or that its location was confusing.
60% of users commented on the top block of the website being “busy” (or something similar).
60% of users didn’t look at the cancellation policy before I directed them to.
40% of users thought that two phone numbers being listed was confusing.
20% of users thought it was difficult to understand what was and wasn’t clickable (i.e. things that are underlined are not clickable, while things that are not underlined are sometimes clickable).

The average SUS rating for the website from the users was a 61.5, which has the Qualitative label of “Ok”, and the grade level of “D”.

These interviews and my research gave me a clear direction for how I could improve the usability of the site moving forward.

Opportunities and Prioritization

Make a cleaner, less busy interface.
Put a “book appointment” option in the header and generally refine the website’s informational hierarchy (including the cancellation policy).
Make it easier for users to identify what they can and can’t interact with.
Make sure the website generally aligns with industry standards that were discovered during competitive analysis.

Ideation

Now that I had identified the opportunities for improvement, it was time to set some goals and ensure the client and I were aligned on potential solutions.

Research Report and Requirements List

I started by presenting them with my research report, so that they could familiarize themselves with the problem space. I also presented them with my first attempt at a requirement list based on not only my research, but also my understanding of their user goals, business goals, and the existing technical considerations.

Once they approved of the requirement list, I put together a prioritized feature list and an updated style guide for their review.

They had a pre-existing logo, but were using various colors and fonts across different platforms and promotional materials. Using their brand values, I put together a cohesive style guide for their website that they could also apply to all future materials and marketing.

Wireframing and Prototyping

In order to help the product materialize, I built a low-fidelity mockup to get initial stakeholder buy-in before I started any major design work to the actual site.

Once the client was happy with the skeleton, I built the mid-fidelity version of the updated site.

Usability Testing 2.0

I conducted usability testing again with the same five users, and asked them to complete the System Usability Scale Questionnaire for the second time.

The goals for the users were the same:

Users can easily navigate the home page without confusion or frustration.
Users can easily find out information about the offered services.
Users can successfully book an appointment.
Users can successfully find the cancellation/no show policy.

The average SUS rating for the website from the users this round was a 91.5, which has the Qualitative label of “Excellent”, and the grade level of “A”.

While this rating was excellent, and a huge improvement from round 1, there was still some room for enhancements.

Opportunities and Prioritization

Add a way for users to easily view other google reviews (60% of users tried to click on the review cards to see more reviews).
Make the “services” section of the website more visually similar to the other sections (20% of users said the “services” section of the website looked disjointed from the other sections (specifically citing the white background)).
Add more gap spacing to the sections with a lot of text (20% of users said the “FAQ” section looked too crowded).

Final Design

Now all there was left to do was make the final alterations!

Versioning

Conclusion

Bubble & Bark is a wonderful company with wonderful reviews, and I am so happy to have been able to help them create a website that is on par with their excellent service. I hope that with this new and improved site, they are able to serve many more dogs and reach many more owners!