Algo Case Study
By: Jamaal Baki
Tags: UX Design, Prototyping, Design Sprint, Uw Mhcid, UX Research

Designing a smart collar that transcends the relationship between you and your dog… in 5 days.

3D Render of collar created by Chloe Liang

The Team

Our team consisted of Chloe Liang, Jamaal Baki, and Joan Williams.

Context

Before my journey at the University of Washington’s MHCI+D program began, I had the opportunity to participate in a pre-autumn 5-day virtual sprint via Immersion Studio. During these 5 days, my team and I were immersed in content regarding: problem setting, research, ideation, prototyping, and presenting. It was an exciting start to a fun-filled year at UW!

Challenge

In our teams of 3, we were challenged to explore the idea of harmonious cohabitation. In specific, we were tasked to explore ways of using technology to think about harmonious cohabitation between human and nonhuman agents. It was up to us to decide who our users will be and to what end. However, one must be nonhuman.

“As designers are now faced with developing technology that exists within these complex socio-technical networks, new challenges have arisen that require a shift in thinking from traditional design practices that focus on human wellbeing, to more inclusive practices that emphasize a multiplicity of perspectives.” — Smith et al., 2017

As a team, we agreed that we wanted to focus on the pet to be our nonhuman agent. In addressing ambiguity about the relationship between pets and humans, we conducted formative research.

Formative Research

Primary Research

As a team, we conducted 4 unstructured interviews with people that owned pets and, in specific, dogs. These conversations helped our team gain familiarity with pet owners and their individual connections with their pets. We learned why they had a pet, how they interact with their pet, and what tools/technology they currently use with their pet.

Secondary Research

Through multiple literature reviews from scholarly articles found through the UW library, we learned a lot of useful information that represented the nonhuman agent in this scenario. In our primary research, we were only able to hear from the human, not the pet. Through secondary research, we were able to read and empathize with the pet’s perspective. Although, in a perfect world, we’d have our own conversation with the pet (lol).

Competitive Analysis

I shifted my focus toward a competitive analysis. I surfed through the web for current technology and products that foster a connection between pets and humans. I was able to find a few different products that included phone apps, location trackers, pet toys, etc.

We created an affinity diagram compiling all of our primary research, secondary research, and our competitive analysis.

Research Insights

After affinity diagraming our research findings, we synthesized our findings into 4 key insights.

Pets suffer from mental health issues such as anxiety

issues such as anxiety Pet owners must trust the safety and well-being of their pet

the safety and well-being of their pet Pet owners feel more like a pet parent than a pet owner

than a pet owner Pet owners want to translate their lifestyle to their pet

After discussing our research insights and drafting different versions of “how might we” statements, we decided we wanted to focus our ideation on:

How might we facilitate trust of the pet to caregivers?

Ideation

In response to our “how might we” statement, we drafted 30 sketches of potential design concepts. This was important so that we didn’t narrow our options. Through these sketches, we were able to discover new paths for our project.

Our 30 sketches affinity diagramed.

Through this, we were able to down-select to our 4 most feasible, viable, and desirable concepts. We conducted our down-selection by voting on our favorite sketches based on the previously listed criteria.

4 Down-Selected Concepts

These were our 4 down-selected concepts and the background behind them.

After group critiques of concepts with our fellow teams, we decided to follow through with a refined concept 1.

This was Algo, a smart collar for your dog.

We decided that this was the best choice moving forward based on the scope of our project. Had our project been longer than 5 days, we would’ve considered some of the other concepts further.

Prototyping

After settling on our ideation concept, it was time to start making it a reality. As a team, we brainstormed and curated a design response in the form of a video describing our product and its features.

Finally, we were able to convert our design response to a higher fidelity model in preparation for our final presentation on Day 5. Based on feedback given from our peers, we constantly iterated our design to best serve our users (dog & human).

3D model created by Chloe along with key physical features of the product.

A closer look at the specific design and hardware of the product.

Along with our physical component, we included a virtual experience via phone app’s UI. This app fostered the connection between the human and the pet.

Next Steps

I think we all aligned on the idea that if we had more time, there was so much more that we wanted to explore out of this project. This ranged from research, ideation, and prototyping. We truly believe that this would’ve been an impactful product in the real marketplace today.

Key Takeaways

Don’t jump to solutions

Not every iteration will be perfect

Embracing ambiguity

These were our 3 main takeaways from this project. It was amazing to see that we were capable of achieving such a feat in just 5 days. This was a huge learning experience.

Perfection is something that we all strive for, but we can’t let it consume us. In the real world of UX.. a design is never perfect. There is always an underrepresented user base and insights may change over time. It was important to realize that perfection always attainable and that’s completely okay.

Through this project, there were a lot of moments where we didn’t know what the exact requirements were. We didn’t know if what we had was good enough, or if we were doing too much. That ambiguity was scary at first, but through this project I now found comfort in it. Simply, I put my best foot forward in addressing ambiguity and rather embraced it.