Pluto.
Case study, UI/UX, Product
Summary
Pluto is a smart device that can be attached to your pet’s collar easily. Pluto enables owners to monitor their pet's health, behavior, activity, and location, learn more about them, and improve their health with informed decisions.
Role
Research, Ideation, UI/UX, Branding, Design, Iconography
Tools
Figma, Illustrator, Photoshop, Adobe XD, Adobe After Effects
Duration
Oct - Dec
Fall 2020
Team
Rachael Ng
Samantha Lam
Victor Wong
Problem
There is a 60% increase in pet adoption due to Covid-19. During the pandemic, pet owners are constantly at home and can oversee their pets' health. Once Covid-19 ends, pet owners will have to go back to work or school and will be unable to spend as much time with their pets. Even before covid-19, most pet owners lack time to spend time or care for their pet's health.
Design Challenge
How can we design a product that will be convenient for pet owners when it comes to tracking their pet’s health?
Solution
Pluto makes your pet’s health easy. Pluto enables owners to monitor their pet's health, behavior, activity, location, and improve their health with informed decisions through the companion Pluto application. This pet smart device can be easily attachable to any pet collar. The product can also be customized into different sizes, enabling Pluto to be suitable for a diversity of pet breeds and sizes. Pluto offers a sleek design to ensure a perfect unbreakable fit, along with advanced technology that would enable every necessary function for pet owners.
Development
With the help of competitive analysis, research, and personas we developed a smart device and app prototype that would solve those challenges.
The Technology
The device can be connected to any phone, tablet, or device with Bluetooth. The 70% recycled, stress-tested materials used make sure Pluto won’t get damaged from rough play or liquids. Within the device itself, it has sensors that tell you your pets heart rate and location. The built-in LED lasts a lifetime, and the gorilla grip silicon, plus slide and click technology makes sure Pluto stays put on your pet's collar. Our seamless snag-free design features a bevelled edge and comes in different sizes and colours for different collars. The 3D accelerometer tells you your pets activities, health, and behaviour patterns, the pulse oximeter indicates oxygen levels and vitals, and the temperature sensor indicates if your pet is too cold or overheating. Strong magnets ensure Pluto stays on, no matter how rough the play. Once you want to take Pluto off, there's a click to release button at the back. All buttons featured on Pluto are seamlessly integrated, to ensure your pet doesn't accidentally turn Pluto off, and for easier cleanup.
Conceptual Product
We aim to be an eco-friendly company with recyclable packaging. The packaging is designed to be reusable where the user can charge their device from the box. The smart device itself is 70% recycled, made from stress-tested materials.
Pluto Walkthrough
A user manual that guides users on how to set up their smart device. The manual gives a clear walk-through on Pluto.
Charging
The smart device will also come with wireless charging. However, pet owners don’t need to worry too much about battery life, since our advanced technology would allow a fully charged Pluto to last for months.
Onboarding
A simple and straight forward user experience for first-time users when pairing their Pluto with the app. After users finish creating their pet's profile, the application will direct them to the dashboard.
Location
Pluto tracks your pet's location effortlessly. The application also enables users to add and edit their pet's safe zones.
Health
Discover weekly progress and cycles when it comes to your pet's health and activity. All the statistics are summarized within the day. Data can also be displayed weekly, monthly, and yearly.
Settings
Edit your pet's profile easily. Enable or disable features that come with the Pluto smart device.
PROCESS
Competitive Analysis
We started off the project by compiling a bunch of competitive research. We also made a PACT analysis and had user personas. Our competitive analysis includes Whistle Go, FitBark, PawPrint, & Fitbit. We’ve realized that there are many smart devices on the market for pets that allow owners to track health and location. But there is a lack of breadth for pet species able to use them, as they only focus on dogs. This type of device would be particularly useful for outdoor cat owners to monitor their whereabouts. On top of this lack of breadth, many of these products have a bad collar attachment system and easily come off, lack comprehensive health data, and have unreliable location tracking.
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User Persona
After conducting user personas we began to question what we need to create a user-focused and effective product for pet owners.
How might we build a device that is simple, reliable, and easy to use?
How do we help pet owners better manage and understand their pet(s)?
How might we use Pluto to alert owners of concerning behavior?
VISUAL DESIGN
UX DESIGN
Pluto's companion app is made to collect and organize data for pet owners. The app naturally guides the user with a clear and organized interface, making it easy for users to navigate all the data and statistics of their pets. The application can be broken down into four sections: User onboarding, health, location, and settings. Here are the breakdowns for the user flows.
User Flows
REFLECTION
Reflection
I have realized that teamwork really does make the dream work. I cannot imagine creating this whole project alone. It was an awesome experience overall working within a team filled with bright-minded individuals. Although there may be slight disagreements from time to time, everyone communicated well and had quick conflict resolutions. All my team members had amazing ideas that helped this project fall into place. Everyone's strengths were critical to completing a final product.
We pushed through and worked within a team effortlessly to complete all the phases of the project. From the beginning of the ideation and research phase to the final companion application phase. Due to our countless amount of team meetings and discussions, I've realized that communication was the key to creating a successful project. Meeting deadlines and putting something on the table before team discussions on time were everyone's strengths.
Aside from our teamwork, I think everyone on my team can agree that the best part of this project was to design something we all have in common. Our love for pets! The research and ideation phase was no struggle since we all chose a subject we liked in common. I am really glad that we put our best efforts within a short amount of time into creating a project with a topic that we all love.