ABOUT MEOW
MEOW is a smart system that combine mobile application with physical tracking sets. Cat-owners are able to set up the tracking products to get daily activities of cats’ eating, drinking and litter box behaviors. In addition, MEOW is also a platform for cat-owners to be engaged in the pet community and get ratings about the multi-pets’ relationship.
| Date: | Jan-April, 2018 |
| Project: | Individual Final Project for MA in Interactive Design/Game Development at Savannah College of Art and Design |
Design challenge
Cats are coded to be good at hiding illness signs. The behavior change of the ill cat is difficult to be noticed by cat owners. Cats owners start to care more about prolonging the longevity of their cats. Few of the product or service in the market pay attention to the health for the senior pets.
DESIGN QUESTIONS: How Might Cat-Owners Help Cat Live A Long And Healthy Life By Using Technology?
Sollution
Design process
I utillize Human-centered Design process and the methods from Contextual Research. The project starts from learning the context and human beings, generating lots of ideas based on the insights from the inspiration, to the Hifi-prototype. It is not a liner process but a process with constant iteration to meet the needs of human.
Inspiration
The purpose for this step is to learn from my target users by using qualitative and quantitative research methods. The insights provide a foundation to generate ideas for the future step.
Secondary Research
Design for cat is an unfamiliar topic for me, find a solid foundation from online and previous research resources will help me to design valuable questions for the field research.
Publication Research
INSIGHTS
Cats, like people, are living longer.
The pets-owning demographics is Millenials in the US. The age range from 23 to 40 years old.
The percentage of house cats aged 6 and above has doubled over the last 25 years.
Diseases that are more common in older cats, for example, Dental Disease, Chronic Kidney Disease, Hyperthyroidism, Diabetes Mellitus, etc.
The abnormal litter box behavior, the attitude to cat food and the frequency of eating food will indicate health issues.
Common mistakes of first-time cat people, like no parasite control, clean the litter box for a long time, or ignoring illness.
Define Audience
The purpose of defining audience is to learn who will be my target audience and who will be affected by my design decisions. It not limits to users, but also consider business, government and non-profit organization.
Activity Analysis
I create a scenario of a cat get sick at home in order to tell a real-word story. Before conducting the in-depth interview with people, activity analysis helps me to narrow down to the key stakeholders for further research.
Five Whys
The main stakeholders are cat owner, receptionist, veterinary, and animal shelter. Five Whys is a research method to help me think about the information I want to get from them and remind me to ask follow-up questions to get the participate talk underlying meaning.
Level 1 Basic Information
Can you tell me a little about yourself? (name, age and occupation)?
Tell me some basic information about your pet(like name, age, when and where you got your cat)
Why did you decide to own a cat?
Can you describe a typical day of you and your cat? (When you feed your cat? clean litter box? when to play)
Can you describe your daily routine with your cat?
What kind of food you will feed your cat?
(several pets) Will you feed them together or seperate?
Level 2 Ask for current health status
What you like most about having a cat?
What you dislike about having a cat?
Can you tell me a time when you feel so sorry for your cat?
When is the latest time you bring your cat to animal hospital? Why?
How can you tell if your cat is sick or not?
When you start to care more about the health issues of your cat? Why?
Level 3 Ask for opportunity
What challenge or problem you have when you own a cat?
If you can use technology to help your cat live a long and healthy life, what will you do?
Do you know the daily eating habits or litter box habits or your pet? If not, Would you like to know that?
Is there anything you want ask me?
Can you tell me your name, age and occupation?
What tasks or responsibility you usually do?
How many cat patients you will have per day or per week?
What kind of cat owners will visit medical center more frequent than others?
What are the common symbols that cat owner identified for their cats and decided to come to veterinary?
Which ages of cat always come to the animal hospital? Why?
The challenge you mentioned before, if you can improve the process, what you will do?
Can you tell me your name, age and occupation?
What are the common illnesses for cats? Why?
What kind of knowledge that you want cat-owner know before they come to you? Why? What common mistakes cat owner may have?
What challenge you have at hand?
When cat-owner should do if they want to keep their cat live long and healthy? Why?
Do you think cat’s eating habit and litter box habit will indicate their health issue?
Is there any change happened when cat become an senior cat or over 7 years old?
Objectives:
Health issue for cats in the Shelter.
Adopter’s common problem or mistakes.
Lifespan for cat.
What will harm the health issue for cat.
How technology can help the health of cat.
Can you tell me a little about yourself? (your name, age, and occupation)?
Can you tell me the basic information of the cats in the shelter? (Where they come from? how old are they? Why they are here?)
What are the most common health issue the cat will have in the shelter? why?
What kind of cats are more popular?What kind of cats are not? Why?
What is the most memorable adoption during your work at the shelter? Why?
What is the problem or challenge you had at hand?
If you can use technology to help you solve this problem, what you will do?
How cat-owner can help cat live a long and healthy life?
Online Survey
Online survey aims to answer easy questions and the quickest way to gather first-hand data. It also provides valuable information before I talk to my target stakeholders.
Screening Criteria
Interview
"
"One cat is dominant. For me is the biggest challenge, I want both cat to be happy so I have to oversee and make sure that the dominant cat doesn’t mistreat the other cat."
— Beth, Two-Cats Owner
"My challenge is to intoduce a new cat to my old cat. Peddy always want to play with Fluffy. She don't want to hurt Fluffy, she just want to be friends."
— Danyelle, Cats Owner
"Everytime Gomie come back. It come back several times. Since everytime he goes is very memorable becasue I want him to stay . So far, Gomie didn't come back again."
— Arren, Humane Society
"We see all ages(cat patients), the most we see are kittens when they start their shots and then a lot we see older ones, when they start having issues."
— Sarah, Veterinary Technician
Affinity Diagramming
Affinity Diagramming is the process of making sense of amount of data. The process helps me find key issues and design opportunities related to cat health problem. It also emerges key stories that comes out from the previous research.
Insight Themes
1. Cat Weight
Most cat-owners care about their cats’ health issue just by purchasing expensive and good
quality food but experts also suggest to buy maze-like feeder and wall-mounted shelves for the health of the domestic cats.
Cat-owners changed their feeding behavior when they think their cat is getting fat just base
on the shape of their cat but they don’t know the right weight for their cat.
2. Multi-cats Issues
Cat-owners want to adopt more cats from the street or shelter but they can’t adopt too much at the same time.
Most cat-owners have challenge to introduce kittens for their existing cat but when they looking for new pet, they just care about theage and breed of their second cat.
3. Technology
Cat-owners think technology is helpful to feed food or water when their cats are in a higher demand of food and can’t control the eating and drinking amount.
Some cat-owners will use technology when it is affordable and functional but they prefer to feed by themselves in order to build more intimate relationship with their cats.
want to use auto-feeder to feed their cat but they also want the auto-feeder will feed canned food and keep the left wet food fresh.
4. Illness Symbols
Some cat-owners think their cat is sick when they change the litter box behavior but most of them only clean the litter box when they think it is stain.
Cat-owners will notice their cat is sick when they trying to play with their cat and find out
that their cat don’t have energy to play.
Some cat-owners think when cats stop eating food means they are sick, whereas they justfill out the bowl and leave it for their cat to eat.
5. Companionship
Most cat-owners hope their cat live as long as possible because cat is an important companion for owners.
Cat-owners will own a cat and let cat grow up with their kids but they don’t have knowledge
about how to choose a right pet for their kids or existing pet.
Personas
Ideation
Ideation is the process to generate solutions for the design issues from the user research.
Crazy 8s
WireFrame
Implementation
