Karin Örn Andersson

PawPal A Smart Home solution focusing on dog health tracking, blending technology with personalized pet-care.

Scope: 7 Weeks Software: Figma Team: 5 people

Task During the course Interaction Design Project, the task was to create a Smart Home solution with focus on IoT, automation, and accessibility. The term Smart Home was critically reflected on and the goal was to create a solution for a problem identified for a specific target group.

Process

Brainwriting

Benchmarking

Interviews

Survey

Analysis

Evaluation

Prototyping

Wireframing

Brainstorming

Brainwriting Brainwriting was used to find areas of interests within the group, where each person wrote down ideas, problems and areas they wanted to explore.

Benchmarking After picking the broad topic of “dogs and dog owners”, benchmarking was done by reviewing similar concepts and products to gain an understanding of what is currently on the market and what is missing.

Interviews The group conducted three semi-structured interviews with dog psychologists with the purpose to gather information about dogs’ behavior, health, well-being, and common problems. One interview was also conducted with a dog owner to understand problems that can occur and to gather ideas and wishes to meet.

Survey The purpose of the survey was to gain insights from dog owners and their perspective. The goal was to gather information about common challenges, separation anxiety, and stress. The survey resulted in insights from 500 dog owners.

Analysis - Affinity Mapping The interviews and survey was analyzed with affinity mapping and resulted in ten identified problem areas:

Separation anxiety Time Management and Daily Routine Behavior Management

Environmental impact Social Interaction and Behavior Physical Health Challenges

Health Monitoring Emotional Stimulation Stress Indicators Dog Owner Knowledge

Brainstorming & Wireframing The group used crazy-8 to explore many solutions in an affective way. After choosing a well-being app tracking dogs’ stress levels, active minutes, sleep, and location, wireframes were created to explore different layouts and components.

Final Design PawPal is a health assistant for dog owners to track their dog’s well-being by monitoring stress, behavioral patterns, and activity levels. Sensors integrated into a harness detect the dog's heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV), and this data, along with GPS tracking information, is sent to the app and visualized with statistics. The app also features both recommended guides based on your dog’s statistics and general guides to help with training and eliminating behavioral problems. These features contribute to improving your dog’s well-being and, in turn, strengthen the bond between owner and dog. The concept and app were evaluated with follow-up interviews with the dog psychologists.

Homepage with overview

Statistics page

Detailed statistics page

Recommended and categorized guides

Map view with location