ROO — Veterinary Staffing Platform

Project Description

As part of the design team at Roo, I helped shape a platform that connects relief veterinarians with animal hospitals in need of flexible staffing. By understanding the unique needs of this evolving niche, we created a system that simplifies and streamlines placements.

Collaborating with developers and stakeholders, I designed Roo’s responsive landing page and contributed to the platform’s user experience—from booking workflows to profile creation—ensuring both vets and clinics could find the right match, fast.

DESIGN PROCESS

Business Problem

The veterinary industry is undergoing a significant shift—fewer vets are owning practices, and more are seeking flexible, short-term work opportunities. At the same time, the field’s growing female majority has introduced new career dynamics, such as extended leaves of absence. Together, these trends have accelerated demand for relief veterinarians—clinicians who step in on a temporary or part-time basis across multiple hospitals.

Roo set out to modernize the fragmented relief vet placement process. Existing platforms were outdated, slow, and difficult to navigate. To address this, we designed a responsive, easy-to-use platform that streamlines the matching process between hospitals and qualified vets. Through close collaboration with Roo’s stakeholders, we uncovered pain points in onboarding, scheduling, and trust-building—insights that informed the user flows and interface for both the landing page and the product itself.

 
 
 

Competitive Analysis

To start, I created an outline of relief shift sites that already exist, the features they have, what fees they charge, and noted how much manual effort was needed to use the site. Findings included:

  1. Many sites put the power in hospitals' hands: there seemed to be no penalty if hospitals took a long time to respond to shift booking requests.

  2. Long onboarding process: most companies required vets to go through interviews with hiring reps prior to even getting on the platform.

  3. Poor user experience across the board: little attention paid to making the process easy for vets and hospitals.

 
 
 

User Research

As part of our client kick-off meeting, I was able to visit an animal hospital where I talked to vets and vet techs about their workflows and experience with finding relief shifts. Findings were:

  1. The vet techs in charge of scheduling would create a color coded calendar with each doctor's shifts for that month, noting if the workload was expected to be heavy for each day.

  2. Vets talked about how current scheduling and shift software is really old and difficult to use.

  3. Vets expressed concern over not having enough information about a hospital or shift prior to filling in as a relief vet.

 

APPLICATION INTERFACES

1. Hospital Admin Dashboard

As a hospital administrator, users should be able to see an overview of shifts they've added, as well as the vets who have booked them.

Pulling from my animal hospital visit, I designed a color-coded schedule to be featured on the main dashboard.

Users can see at a glance if a shift is pending, requested, booked, or expired. As shift requests come in, admins can view the vet's profile or confirm them right from this screen. A countdown has also been introduced–hospitals have a certain timeframe in which they need to confirm a vet's request.

 

2. Creating Shifts

With each shift they add to the platform, users can easily input if a shift is a full or half day, how many appointments are expected, and what kinds of procedures a vet may need to do.

Throughout user testing, I received feedback as to what information vets would need or want to know prior to booking a shift. Using that feedback, I added specific fields in regards to surgery and when breaks could be expected.

Vets are able to see a quick list of these details on their version of the site, and hospitals can later see summaries of all shifts so they can spot trends in hospital needs.

 

3. User Profiles

When users sign up to the platform–vets or administrators–they answer a series of questions about their experience, personality, and work habits.

Prior to booking a vet, admins can view a user profile that surfaces details like the vet's core competencies, animal types they regularly treat, and what kind of teams they prefer to work on.

One of Roo's core pillars is bringing transparency to a process that, in the past, had been largely left to hiring agencies and middlemen.

Hospitals are very attuned to vets' bedside manners. In a business where people can visit just once a year, if an appointment goes unpleasantly, that pet and owner may not return to that hospital.

By capturing and surfacing a snapshot of each vet, Roo wants to alleviate the stress and concern that surrounds bringing a new person onboard.

 

4. Vet Shift Search

Vets can search for shifts based on their location, as well as a specific date range. With each group of results, vets can get a run-down of each shift along with the payout amount.

In testing, vets stressed the desire to see surgery information, so I made sure to surface that right on the results page.

Testing also helped validate the card UI pattern used on this page. Users found it was easy to scan and that high-level details quickly stood out to them.

 

4. Ratings

Once a shift is complete, vets and admins are asked to rate their experiences. This feedback is kept anonymous, so users can feel a bit freer in being honest with their reviews.

MOVING FORWARD

Roo.vet has rapidly scaled to become a go-to platform for relief veterinary staffing, with over 6,500 veterinarians and 3,000 clinics actively using the platform across the U.S. Since launch, Roo has facilitated more than 250,000 shifts and helped generate over $45 million in earnings for relief professionals.

Our focus on reducing friction in the scheduling and credentialing process has not only improved fill rates but also strengthened long-term engagement from clinics and vets alike. These outcomes validate our belief in the need for flexible, tech-enabled staffing solutions within veterinary care.

Looking ahead, we see strong potential in evolving Roo into a broader SaaS workforce management tool—capable of supporting other healthcare verticals such as dental, behavioral health, and urgent care. By expanding our feature set and investing in integrations, Roo can play a vital role in addressing workforce shortages across the healthcare ecosystem.