Milestone 2

After the preliminary research we did in Milestone 1, we decided to focus our project on how we could ease the separation anxiety between cats and cat owners as people slowly return to more things in-person. The preliminary research done through reading articles helped us better understand the effects return to in-person may have on worried cat owners and ideate on what could help alleviate that.

As we completed more in-depth research for this milestone, we aimed to better under these key questions:

• How do people feel when they are away from their cats?

• What do cat owners want to change about their current remote cat care routine?

• What are cat owners’ biggest concerns about cat care?

In order to get a deeper understanding about some of our questions and also to learn more in-depth about cat owners' thought and actions, we decided to pursue user interviews as our second research method. Since we felt that we still had a lot to learn in this space and also not only rely on the team members that were also cat owners, we felt the interviews could give us really good, detailed and granular insights that might be missed in surveys where we can't always half the questions be detailed or follow-up on certain responses right away.

For our interviews we focused a lot on understanding the cat owner's perspective rather than just the what they think the cat is feeling. The questions gave us insight into the cat owner perspective on being away from their cats, but also their thoughts on products they have already tried. We broke our questions down into three categories as seen below.

1. Products

• What products have you purchased for your pet in the past?

• What are the products that your pet uses the most often?

• In your opinion, what makes good pet products?

• What's your pet's favorite product? Why do you think so?

• Is there anything you wish the products could do differently?

2. Cat health/socialness

• How do your pets react to being left alone for long periods of time?

  • • What do you do in situations where you have to leave your pet alone for long periods of time?

    • Is there anything that you think would help you in these situations?

3. Cat owner habits/behaviors/preferences

• What are some ways that you have tracked your pets?

  • • What did you like about them?

    • What did you dislike?

• Do you use anything with a camera to keep track of your pet?

  • • If yes, do you like/dislike it?

    • If not, is it something you would consider?

We conducted a total of 4 interviews with each lasting approximately 30-45 minutes each with any follow-up questions we felt we needed accordingly. This method gave us a lot of control over the process compared to a survey in which we can't always follow up or direct the conversation. We also got more detailed answers in our interviews than diary study.

Initially, we were aiming to see if cat owners were suffering from separation anxiety and if cats were distressed being on their own as more people return to in-person work and activities. We were hoping to see results similar to what our background research had been saying. But our diary study and user interviews actually showed us the opposite. It seemed that cat owners were not really feeling separation anxiety, however, they were constantly worried about the cat's safety and potential emergencies. This key insight allowed us to pivot our project from focusing on something to help with separation anxiety to focusing on a cat monitoring device so that cat owners could have peace of mind about their cat's safety.

Here are a few key takeaways we were able to identify:

1. Owners are curious about cats' behaviors when they are alone

" I was wondering what she does while I'm away"

" I’d like to know if he was annoying my roommate"

" I was wondering if was he meowing a lot"

2. Owners are worried about cats safety

"She accidentally swallow down the hand sanitizer and then she died because of that. It happened when I was out and I didn't have a chance to find out about this before she died."

"The weather has gotten colder recently and I'm worried that she'll feel cold at home, but I can't turn on the heat when I'm not home because of safety factors."

"Sometimes worries about choking hazards on toys that have things like string"

3. Owners want to detect cats' health condition

"I would worry about what she eats, how much she eats, her emotions if possible; if she feels good/ill, does she feel painful"

"If I'm not home for a long time, her cat will rarely eat or drink water"

4. Owners have concerns about their cats' negative emotions

"I just worry they have separation anxiety and hope they don't!"

"I had a long day out and forgot to turn on the lights. It was already night when I got home and the room was dark I was worried she would feel upset."

"How she acted throughout the house. Did she seem anxious? Hard to guess when I'm away."

"I wish she could be less lonely when I'm not home."

5. Interest in monitoring and talking with the cats and having some alert to notify the owners

"I wish it could monitor my cat's health metrics and send me the alert when she was in danger or she was ill."

"I wish I could have a tool that I can talk with her remotely."

"A monitor with an alarm would be helpful."

"It is possible to observe your pet's daily behavior and to talk to her."

See full size diagram at: https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_lu2BV5w=/?moveToWidget=3074457366700918008&cot=14

Criteria

These are the criteria out of the list given to us for this course. We used the ones we felt were most relevant in our discussion about each idea.

• Acceptability

  • • Is the solution intrusive?

    • Will there be privacy concerns around the solution?

• Usefulness

  • • How would the solution help users?

    • Will this solution fulfill all the user needs?

    • Does it provide additional capability or a new way of doing something that cat owners already do?

• Values, goals, and desires?

  • • Does the solution present meaningful outcomes for its expected users?

• Practical

  • • How easy is it to implement?

    • Is this practical to finish the high-level conceptual products as a student project within several weeks?

• Non-Disruptiveness

  • • Will the cat owner have to remember to ‘activate’ the product?

    • Will they have to be attentive to the product?

• Large Possibility Space

  • • Does the product offer multiple possibilities with respect to its applications?

• Learnability

  • • Will the device be easy to learn?

    • Will it be immediately usable or will there be a learning period?

• Plausibility

  • • Is it plausible to create with current technology

Our initial goal for this project was to design something that could help ease separation anxiety a cat and a cat owner may be facing with a large return to in-person classes, work, etc. However, our research study has indicated across the board that more cat owners are simply worried about their cat's wellbeing. They're very concerned about the cat's physical health. For example, one of our interviewees had a cat that died since she swallowed hand sanitizer when the owner was not home. It's emergencies and accidents like this that owners are really concerned about. Along with this concern and their curiosities about their cat's general wellbeing, we feel that a monitoring system would be a much better fit. The cat owner should be able to check-in and see the cat through a monitoring system that reports back to their smartphone. We feel that our brainstormed concepts below will be much more applicable for monitoring and addressing user needs compared to creating something for soothing separation anxiety.

• Acceptability: Medium, there might be some privacy concerns since the camera is involved.

• Usefulness: High, this would satisfy most of the user needs, such as monitoring how the cat's doing, and interacting with the cat remotely.

• Values, goals, & desires: High, this solution is much better than the conventional static camera that's less interactive, and it monitors views that a normal camera can't

• Practical: Medium, it's practical for us to develop a high-level prototype

• Non-Disruptiveness: High, everything will be automated once the owner configured the setting for the moving camera

• Large Possibility Space: High, as camera technology evolves, more advanced featured will be added to the moving camera

• Learnability: High, since everything is automated, the pet owner don't need to worry about controlling the moving camera at all

• Plausibility: Medium, since the moving camera will perform some completed tasks, advanced algorithms and AI are required to make it work.

• Acceptability: Medium. This solution may be Intrusive from the cat's perspective because the collar Is meant to sit around the cat'

• Usefulness: High. The solution tracks many factors related to the cat's wellbeing and users will be able to have peace of mind knowing that they check their app to know if their cat has any Issues.

• Values, goals, & desires: High. The solution has meaningful outcomes for the user because the user will be able to speak to their cat while they are away, which would normally be impossible

• Practical: Low. The solution is not practical to implement because there are many different types of sensors needed to track medical issues. Having a microphone may use up battery life.

• Non-Disruptiveness: Medium. The cat owner will need to make sure the collar is turned on and that their phone is connected to the collar.

• Large Possibility Space: High. The smart collar is very versatile and has a lot of different possibilities given the number of factors it tracks.

• Learnability: Medium. The device may require a window of adjustment so that the collar sensors calibrate to the cat's Individual behaviors and tendencies. It may be a learning curve for the owner.

• Plausibility: Low. Designing these advanced features for a small collar that is comfortable for the cat will be a sizable challenge.

• Acceptability: High, this solution is easily integrated into the home and many automated feeders currently exist and are used by pet owners everywhere.

• Usefulness: Low, The auto feeder has limited usages, as it can only track limited data and only works when the cat is eating

• Values, goals, & desires: Medium, It meets user needs by providing a way to monitor a cat's physical health and their eating/drinking habits

• Practical: High, It does not require any other devices installed at home, embedded in the feeder

• Non-Disruptiveness: High, can be located in one place only so it should not cause a disruption

• Large Possibility Space: Low, the feeder can only monitor food and water intake.

• Learnability: High, Pet owners are familiar with cat feeders as there are many existing cat feeder products, the learning curve is quite low

• Plausibility: High, many different kinds of feeders ready exist

Overall, conducting our research study really allowed us to learn more in-depth about the area that we are focusing on. They also helped us generate really important insights that pushed us in the right direction in terms of scope and lead us to ideate concepts that are grounded in our users' true needs. We learned a lot about the importance of monitoring for cat owners and believe that our ideated concepts are acceptable, useful, and well-scoped. While we experienced some challenges in the research process in terms of catering to user needs, we decided to focus on the user needs that IoT solutions can best address.

We hope to further iterate on our concepts based on feedback from our peers, teaching team, and other cat owners. We also are beginning to think more in-depth about feasibility, prototyping, and refining our concepts are we move towards milestone 3.