Shelter Soul: Bridging Shelters and Adopters Through Technology

Abstract

Pet adoption processes often face inefficiencies, including limited accessibility, lack of real-time information, and mismatched expectations between shelters and adopters. To address these challenges, this study presents Shelter Soul, a technology-based solution designed to streamline pet adoption through an integrated, web-based platform. Developed using the MERN stack and GraphQL, Shelter Soul is a prototype system built to improve pet matching accuracy, shelter management efficiency, and secure online donations. The system includes modules for intelligent pet matching, shelter administration, donation processing, volunteer coordination, and analytics. Prototype testing (performance load tests, usability studies, and security assessments) demonstrated that the system meets its design goals: it handled 500 concurrent users with a 99.2% transaction success rate and an average response time of 250 ms, and usability feedback rated the interface highly (4.5/5). These results indicate Shelter Soul's potential as a practical solution to enhance animal shelter operations and adoption outcomes.