SYDNEY SWANSON


Smart Pet Feeder App



Mobile App
UX Design



OVERVIEW



Pawsync is a mobile app designed to pair with an automatic pet feeder, helping pet owners monitor their pets' food consumption habits and overall health.



MY ROLE



As the lead UX designer, I was responsible for creating an intuitive and feature-rich app to pair with our smart pet feeder.


My role encompassed the entire UX process, from analyzing user research and defining the app's architecture to designing key features and collaborating with PMs, engineers, UI designers, and software developers to bring the vision to life.



What do we want to accomplish?





In order to create an app that would effectively pair with a pet feeder, we had to define our top goals:

  1. Health Monitoring: Provide pet owners with tools to track and monitor their pets' eating habits and overall health, potentially leading to early detection of health issues.

  2. IoT Integration: Seamlessly connect the app with the smart feeder device, allowing users to control and monitor the device remotely.

  3. User Engagement: Create a platform that encourages regular interaction between pet owners and their pets' feeding habits, promoting empowerment around taking charge of your pet's health.


Process Overview



My design journey began with a thorough analysis of existing user research, which helped me identify core themes and user needs. These insights guided me to establish the app's information architecture and feature set, which I then refined through iterative wireframing, prototyping, and usability testing.



What does user research tell us?





The project began with a comprehensive analysis of user research conducted by our UX research team. This research included in-home field studies and focus groups with pet owners, covering everything from general pet care to feeding, drinking, and grooming.



Source: Dovetail



After analyzing the research data around user needs, pain points, and behaviors, I identified four core themes that would drive our app's value proposition:​



1. Peace of Mind



Knowing pets are fed when owners are away



2. Wellness



Ensuring pets eat the proper amount for their dietary needs



3. Individualization



Conveniently feeding multiple pets separately



4. Education



Sharing pet needs and stories with a community of like-minded owners.



How do we create an app that addresses user needs?





After a thorough analysis of user interview data, I connected these insights with the key themes in a way that directly informed the app's feature set, ensuring that Pawsync addressed real user needs and pain points in pet care.



1. Peace of Mind



One pet owner expressed how checking on her cat's well-being would provide peace of mind, especially regarding health-related concerns. To address this need, I designed the following elements for the homepage, allowing users to quickly access crucial information about their pet's activity and the device's performance from anywhere.



" ... you know, maybe something that I can tap into at random intervals and just see if the cat happens to be in that area or whatnot. "



Female (39, NY, 2 cats)



  • Real-time Feeding Log: The Home screen's log section provides a timeline of feeding events, allowing owners to monitor their pet's eating habits even when away.


  • Device Status Updates: Quick access to feeder status (online/offline, battery level, food level) ensures owners are always informed about their pet's feeding situation.


2. Wellness



A pet owner's story about discovering health issues in both cats—one through observed lack of appetite and another with an unrelated skin condition—highlighted the importance of comprehensive pet monitoring. This insight inspired the creation of the following features, which enable owners to provide veterinarians with a detailed timeline of their pet's behaviors and symptoms.


For instance, the tagging feature allows users to add contextual information to feeding events. By combining the device's logged data with user-added tags, the app creates a more holistic view of their pet's health.



" So my black cat had some digestive issues not too long ago and as soon as I noticed it and saw that he was not eating, I immediately took him to our family vet. "



Male (37, PA, 2 cats)



  • Health Trends Visualization: The My Pets screen displays key health metrics and trends, enabling owners to track their pet's wellness over time.


  • Daily Feeding Progress: A visual representation of the pet's food intake against daily goals helps owners ensure proper nutrition.​


  • Contextual Tagging: Users can add tags to feeding events, providing valuable context for health monitoring and vet visits.


3. Individualization



One pet owner's challenge of separating their dogs during mealtimes highlighted the crucial theme of individualization in multi-pet households. This insight drove the development of the following features which ensure that each pet's unique needs are accurately tracked and managed within the app, providing a tailored experience for every animal in the household.



" I have to keep one of them outside of the little room and let one eat and then let the other one in. "



Tyrone (53, M, TX, 2 dogs)



  • Multi-Pet Profiles: Caters to households with multiple pets.
    • Pet Tagging Feature: Users can manually tag which pet ate during each feeding event, addressing the need for individual monitoring in multi-pet homes.​


  • Personalized Onboarding: A comprehensive profile setup process allows users to input detailed information and photos for each pet, ensuring accurate and personalized health metrics throughout the app.


4. Education



One pet owner's wish for training to understand their dog's communication cues inspired the development of educational features within the app that aim to increase owners' understanding of their pets' wellness.


One of the features is a community platform where pet owners can share experiences and ask questions about their pets' behaviors. By providing these resources, the hope is that owners can provide better care for and potentially prevent future health issues through early recognition.



" You know how they have training for dogs, like obedience training like that and it might be out here who knows, but a training for owners of how do we react to dog moves? "



Male (40, MI, 1 dog)



  • Community Screen: A social media-like feed where pet owners can share experiences and seek advice, fostering a supportive community.​


  • Quick Links to Health Information: Easy access to vet information and health reports promotes ongoing pet health education.


What do these user needs look like in an app?





With these key features identified, the next challenge was to organize them into a coherent and intuitive app structure. My process began with a comprehensive mapping of all desired features. This systematic approach allowed me to identify natural groupings and hierarchies, which ultimately informed the final app architecture.



1. Information Mapping



To create a logical connection between the features informed by research and those requested by Product Managers, I employed an information mapping technique which analyzes how each feature related to three core elements: the pet(s), the owner, and the device(s).



2. App Architecture



Seeing the connections mapped in this way allowed me to envision a coherent and intuitive app layout. ​The final app architecture focuses on four main screens: Home, My Pets, Devices, and Community.



3. Main Navigation



With the key features identified and mapped, I focused on creating a navigation structure that would provide intuitive access to the app's core functionalities.


I recognized that users often need to perform context-specific actions without leaving their current page. To address this need, I implemented a floating 'quick actions' button on each screen, which reduces cognitive load.



Wireframes





My wireframing process for Pawsync was comprehensive, involving multiple stages to ensure a user-centered design that also met stakeholder expectations. This multi-step wireframing process ensured that our final design was rooted in user needs, aligned with business goals, and informed by industry best practices.



1. Competitive Analysis and Cross-Industry Inspiration



To inform our design decisions, I conducted an extensive review of apps across various relevant domains. I drew inspiration from: IoT pet device apps, smart home management interfaces, community-based Q&A platforms, pet health tracking apps, and veterinary office applications.



2. Stakeholder Prioritization Matrix



To balance user needs with business goals, I facilitated a prioritization matrix exercise with key stakeholders. This collaborative process helped:

  • Identify must-have features versus nice-to-haves
  • Inform the information hierarchy for each screen
  • Recognize key differentiators such as multi-pet features and health insights


3. Low-Fidelity Wireframes



With a clear understanding of priorities, I created low-fidelity wireframes to establish the basic structure of each screen. I blocked out key information areas to establish a preliminary layout for each page.



4. Mid-Fidelity Wireframes



To prepare for user testing, I developed mid-fidelity wireframes that encompassed the key flows within the app. The interactive prototypes were crucial for conducting meaningful user testing, allowing us to validate our design decisions before moving to high-fidelity designs.



Stakeholder Management



The development process required significant negotiation and compromise with PMs and developers due to hardware limitations and software development constraints. This experience highlighted the importance of balancing user needs with technical feasibility and business goals.



I successfully convinced stakeholders to retain the tagging feature, emphasizing its importance for user engagement and long-term health monitoring.



One crucial feature I advocated strongly for was the ability to add tags to food events. This decision was rooted in our UX research, which revealed that users found health data more meaningful when provided with context. Additionally, this feature offered practical value by allowing users to compile a comprehensive timeline of events for veterinary consultations.



Usability Testing





I conducted usability testing on the onboarding process and overall app organization.



1. Onboarding



Users wanted more upfront information about the app's capabilities during onboarding. Based on these insights, I made several iterations to the design, including:

  • Revamping the onboarding flow to set clearer expectations
  • Allowing users to enter in more pet profile information before being launched into the app


Information in the original onboarding design wasn't easily retained by users, which was shown through their reactions to the devices section on the homepage. While some users remembered the smart pet devices highlighted in the informational cards, others were confused about what those devices might be since they only passively read that information during onboarding.



" Below that we can add a device to connect to the pet feeders and the water fountains that we saw mentioned in the onboarding process. "


Non-binary (33, NC, 9 cats)


" Can add a device, I guess that's like a pet related device. Um, so like if I have a pet cam or something like that, or if this app is on multiple phones. Not a hundred percent sure what those devices are. "


Male (42, ME, 2 cats)



  • From passive to active onboarding: In my first versions of the onboarding screens, users were told about the capabilities of the app through swipeable information cards.


  • From passive to active onboarding: Based on user feedback, I changed the onboarding design to give users an active choice in how they wished to use the app.

    By providing the app offerings in a question with answer options to select, users:
  1. Better understood the app features
  2. Could provide detailed pet information before being launched into the app


2. Schedule Navigation



Critical functions like the schedule setting needed to be more accessible. The software developers on this project decided to change the interaction design of how users accessed the scheduling feature. However, with research data, I was able to convince stakeholders to keep my original design of the scheduling feature within the 'quick actions' button.



" But I don't see it here, I don't think. All right. Where would you next go? I think since it's not in her profile, it would maybe be in this. "


Male (CA, 2 cats)


" I would expect somewhere here on the plus sign, like as a menu -- also here would be helpful -- but I think on a home page it's the plus sign menu. Ok. Why is that? I would expect that there to be like options for the actual products to pop up here. "​

​

Female (CA, 2 dogs)



  • Interaction design that better matches user expectations: Compared to the developer's design, my design better utilized the principles of information hierarchy, and catered to design patterns that users were accustomed to.


  • Interaction design that better matches user expectations: Compared to the developer's design, my design better utilized the principles of information hierarchy, and catered to design patterns that users were accustomed to.


Final Design





My final design of the pet app blends stakeholder goals with user needs in a clearly organized app experience.



The information pet owners care most about is readily accessible on the homepage.



Pet owners can seamlessly monitor their pet's health with data on their eating and drinking habits.



The calendar view lets pet owners see health data alongside relevant contextual details that provides a complete picture of their pet's health.



Reflection






Catering to Pet Health Monitoring:

One of the most rewarding aspects of this project was diving deep into the nuances of pet health monitoring and what that means for pet owners in their daily lives.


Navigating Development Challenges:

One of the most significant challenges was collaborating with a development team that often sought to modify designs to suit their own preferences or technical constraints. To address this, I:

  • Conducted extensive research to back up my design decisions
  • Created secondary business perspective documents to articulate the value of user-centered design
  • Engaged in ongoing dialogue to find solutions that balanced user needs with technical feasibility


Overall, despite the challenges, this project was immensely satisfying. It allowed me to create a product that not only met business needs but also helped improved the lives of pet owners by addressing their core concerns about pet health and wellbeing.



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