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Where’s Woofy? Mobile App

Skills
User Research, User Experience, User Interface Design, Team Work, Photoshop, Sketch, Illustrator, Invision
Introduction

Ongoing personal project, creating a mobile application to work in conjunction with a wearable GPS for dogs, to enable tracking, remote communication and behaviour training. This idea spawned in the early days of being a new dog owner and the sheer terror that I experienced when my dog Douglas bolted off into the distance, or started eating something unsavoury, whilst being too far away for me to stop him!

Data Collection

Research questionnaires in a variety of local dog walking spots were well received, and I managed to obtain 150 completed surveys over the space of a week. I combined this with further online surveys conducted through my extended social media networks to gather an array of data to validate my assumption that a tool such as this would carry value to pet owners.

Data Analysis

The questionnaire sought to clarify if the idea in general would be something that pet owners would be interested in, but to also gather further information about other potential extended features in an attempt to better understand what shape the first version would take.

Other data could be gleaned from the correlations between the age of the dogs and the features that were selected.

For example, the data showed quite conclusively that those with puppies aged approx 4mths – 6mths overwhelmingly support the idea of having a GPS tracker. The owners of dogs however aged around 6mths -1yr showed a distinct interest in the use of the device to assist with training and recall.

The feature with the lowest interest (34%) was the ability to record audio in-app and play the audio remotely through the collar. It was therefore decided that this would not form part of V1, which was a very important decision, as this feature would have posed the most technical challenges and would have increased the production costs quite significantly as well as impacted heavily on the timeline for production.

Early Stages

Using the available data from the research phase, I could now look at establishing the key user stories to associate them with the core functions that would form version 1. At this stage the proprietary technology required to create this product was being investigated by a close friend who is an engineering specialist.

Pushing Pixels

Having gathered and analysed data, established core functionality and user stories, I progressed onto to developing basic user flows for the main user goals and actions and began work to conceptualise the first iteration of the user interface design.

The main aim for the UI design is to create a very simplistic and neutral aesthetic that emphasises the core functions, which would namely be the locations of the user and their pet(s).  Flat use of colours and a pastel toned palette work well. Simplicity in the included design elements also allows for the seamless scaled down transition of the design to display on a wearable such as an apple watch – which would be a vital consideration for users and the conditions under which they would be using this product.