Madra's Playground
Dog adventure park website & training app — UX research, IA and product direction
Dog adventure park website & training app — UX research, IA and product direction
Overview
Madra’s Playground is a start-up creating a secure outdoor adventure space where dogs can explore, socialise and learn new skills, alongside training classes and supporting digital tools. The website and mobile app were intended to support bookings, information and ongoing training tips for owners between classes.
This was our largest project to date. We contributed UX research and assisted with idea generation to help shape both the physical offering and the digital products, and worked closely with an external designer/developer — including helping him understand how research could strengthen design and development decisions.
The challenge
The team needed clarity on what dog owners actually wanted from a local adventure park and digital support experience, before investing further in features and development.
Key questions included:
What kind of space and activities would feel genuinely useful?
Was there demand for training classes and digital follow-up support?
Was a dog-walking service worth including?
How should the website and app be structured so owners could find what they needed easily?
There was a risk of building around internal assumptions rather than real owner behaviour and demand.
What we did
We led a focused research and early product definition phase that included:
User interviews in local parks with dog owners, offering a free drink or complimentary training class in exchange for their time
An in-depth discussion with the in-house dog trainer to understand service requirements
Creation of two personas to represent the main user groups that emerged
A competitive audit of similar services, including Dogwood Adventure Park and local training providers
Support defining information architecture and site maps for both the website and app
Remote tree testing with 30 participants recruited through dog-related social media groups, using Maze
Key findings from the interviews:
90% wanted a space similar to a children’s soft-play centre, with structures to stimulate minds, muscles and noses
55% were interested in a small on-site café for owners
80% responded positively to obedience classes combined with an app offering training tips for home use
Only 30% were interested in a dog-walking service; 70% said the local market was already saturated
Tree testing showed the website structure was clear, while the app structure was more complex and needed further simplification.
Outcome
The research directly shaped product direction. The team prioritised adventure play, training classes and digital support tools, and de-emphasised a walking service.
Personas helped keep decisions grounded in real owner needs. Competitive review highlighted limited accessibility across similar services and positioned Dogwood Adventure Park as the main competitive threat. Information architecture and tree testing gave the developer a clearer structure to build from, with specific guidance on where the app needed simplification.
The project is still ongoing. We continue to contribute UX guidance as the website and app develop.
What we learned
This project reinforced the value of putting research in front of feature decisions. Without the interviews, it would have been easy to include a dog-walking service that the local market did not need, or to underplay the demand for training support and on-site social space for owners.
It also showed the benefit of involving the developer directly in research. Seeing the conversations first-hand made the findings more tangible and strengthened collaboration through later design and build decisions.
Working across research, product direction and information architecture gave me practical insight into the constraints of building a real service — and confirmed that even a strong idea becomes clearer when tested against real user behaviour early.
