Role
Individual Passion Project

Toolkit
Figma | Photoshop | Illustrator | Procreate | Unity

Pets Data
The number of dogs and cats in cities and towns nationwide exceeds 100 million in 2020, with 62.94 million pet owners. Dogs account for 51% of all pets, cats for 46%. *

Stray Animal Data
China has 40 million stray dogs – 20% of the global total – according to data from the World Health Organisation. That’s because urban strays are rarely sterilised. It was estimated that in 2017 there were over 200,000 stray cats in Beijing alone, and even more stray dogs.

_{*Data from 2020 China Pet Industry White Paper}

To investigate how people view their pets and what they have experienced with their pets (giving up raising, wanting to have one, etc.), 6 people were interviewed. 4 of them currently have (a) pets, 1 of them had a pet before, 1 of them want a cat in the future.

“I only knew that I needed to walk the dog at first, didn't think the little teddy would be so noisy, so then I had to give it away.”

-- Jingwen

Through my dog I have expanded my social circle and met many people I would not normally meet. But when we take the dog out to dinner together we often don't know where we can go.

-- Chenle

Since the respondents have (had) different experiences with their pets, we can summarize a journey variation from their engagement. This journey can be segmented into four stages: as shown in the figure below, at each stage the user's emotions, motivations and actions differed significantly. During the interviews, each interviewee also talked about their existing and potential confusion, and needs, which were divided into three stages based on the user's relationship with their pet at this moment.

There are a few key gaps founded during different people’s journey in having a pet.

Needs

• Understand the estimated cost of raising a dog
  
• Understand where and how to pick up a healthy, non-aggressive dog
  
• What it takes to build relationship with a dog at the initial stage
  
• What to do if she still found herself not having enough time to raise the dog.

Story Behind
    Jasmine is a 24-year-old student living in Shanghai. She loves dogs and has always been wanting one. During her spare time, she loves watching pets video on different social medias and would also help adopt stray dogs. However, when she tried to keep them, her parents think it will cost too much time to take care of, also will make home messy. 
    Jasmine considers adopting or buying a dog when she settles down and lives on her own. As she is going to PhD program and becoming independent, she is already looking for knowledge on how to correctly raising a dog. She prefers Dachshund the most, but also open to other species. “Chinese local dogs are cute as well!”

To find the optimal solution among all the possibilities, the final interaction comprises two perspectives: the application itself and the augmented reality program embedded in it. This combination aims to bring a more accurate and complete experience to the user.

After experimenting in Unity, the two basic logics that shape the interaction can hold true. Due to time limitation, the whole interaction/UI is not developed in the engine.

To verify the reasonableness and immersiveness of the interaction, three users tested the wireframe through figma prototype. The prototype contains basic mobile UI and AR demo. All users are in age range 20 - 25, two of the three users don’t have a pet while one has a dog.