From Legacy Chaos to Public Trust: Revamping the National Pet Registration System

A comprehensive UX overhaul achieving a 47% increase in System Usability Scores (SUS) by aligning government, developers, and public needs.

My Role

UX Researcher & Designer

Team

1 Project Manager, 3 UX Researchers (Me)

Company

DITLDESIGN (Client: Ministry of Agriculture)

Tools

Figma, Google Analytics, Remote Testing Tools

Introduction

When Usability Broke Public Policy: Redesigning Taiwan’s Pet Registration System

The Pet Registration Information System (PRIS) is the digital backbone of animal welfare in Taiwan, housing critical data on pets, owners, and strays. However, the system suffered from years of unstructured patch updates, rendering it nearly unusable.

Stakeholder and Problem Statement

The system was generating unusable data for policy decisions.

Process

We shifted from feature accumulation to data reliability as the core product metric.

To tackle the system's complexity, we employed a rigorous research phase:

# 1

Stakeholder Interviews

We mapped the conflicting needs of government officials versus frontline workers (shelters/vets).

# 2

Heuristic Evaluation

We audited every page to identify technical usability flaws.

# 3

Validated redesign decisions across 100+ real-world scenarios before engineering commitment.

We conducted over 100+ remote usability tests and 30+ in-depth interviews.

# 4

Reconstructed the system architecture to reflect real user workflows rather than administrative silos.

# 5

Delivered a scalable IA framework that now governs future system updates.

Solution and Implementation

A Tiered Strategy for Engineering Handoff

We recognized that we couldn't fix everything at once. To ensure the engineering team remained motivated, I categorized the 126 identified issues into a "Three-Tier Priority System":

Tier 1

Critical

Showstoppers that prevented task completion.

Tier 2

Friction

Tasks were possible but painful.

Tier 3

Optimization

Efficiency improvements.

Testing and Iteration

Validating the Redesign with Diverse User Groups

Results and Impact

Measurable Success: Turning Detractors into Promoters

Conclusion

Design as a Communication Tool

This project reinforced that in complex government projects, a designer's most powerful tool is data. By presenting the development vendor with clear video evidence of user struggles and quantitative metrics, we shifted their mindset from "feature completion" to "user success." The project not only fixed the immediate interface issues but established a new standard for how the agency approaches digital product development.

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