Pawssistant
AI-Powered pet health care platform
AI-Powered Pet Health Care for
Confident Decision-Making and Community Support
Overview
Pawssistant is an advanced pet care platform leveraging Generative AI to provide real-time support and transform complex health data into actionable insights. It guarantees a seamless experience for pet caregivers by collaborating with vet professionals for trustworthy guidance.
Team Project
Eunji, Vanessa, Sunmin
Role
Research, UX UI design, Interface design, Interaction design
Timeline
Sep - Dec 2023 (4 months)
Problem
Finding a balance between financial considerations and prioritizing the well-being of pets requires thoughtful decision-making, often leading to stress.
Balancing the costs of veterinary care and essentials against pet well-being requires thoughtful decision-making, resourcefulness, and a commitment to providing the best possible care within one's means, often leading to feelings of isolation.
Solution - Final Design
A pet healthcare platform provides users
with a seamless, multimodal experience across various devices.
01
Consultation
When users face accidental situations with their pets, they can seek decision-making assistance through AI technology, which analyzes images or videos to assess severity and provides recommendations based on calculated percentages.
02
Long-term Care
The wearable device alerts users to check their pet's condition and seamlessly connects to a chronic disease long-term pet's condition dashboard, offering actionable insights and storing data for synthesis.
03
Community
Based on location, users can find similar situations of pets and connect with them.
This allows users have access to advice and get emotional support
04
Life-long Care
Users can overview lifelong pet well-being, assess consequences, costs, and compare actions for informed and personalized decisions.
Problem Discovery
When I notice abnormal behavior in my dog, I'm unsure whether I should take him to the vet or monitor him at home. It raises the question- Why am I even worrying about this?
Secondary Research
There is a significant barrier of pet health care
from financial constraints.
Here’s how much Americans are spending on their pets in 2023—How do you compare. (2023, November 3). Yahoo Finance. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/much-americans-spending-pets-2023-190023470.html
Parker-Pope, T. (1276106585). How much would you spend on a sick pet? Well. https://archive.nytimes.com/well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/how-much-would-you-spend-on-a-sick-pet/
Pets are part of the family. That makes it harder when veterinary care is out of reach. (2023, March 20). PBS NewsHour. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/pets-are-part-of-the-family-that-makes-it-harder-when-veterinary-care-is-out-of-reach
User Interview
Beyond financial constraints,
caregivers still confront challenges...
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Interviewing five pet caregivers and two veterinarians revealed additional problem areas.
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Uncertain Situations: Caregivers are often caught off guard by surprising incidents where their pet's behavior suddenly changes, sparking concern.
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Chronic Disease: Pets may suffer from chronic diseases that demand prolonged monitoring and consistent care.
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Source Unreliability: Despite receiving guidance from a single vet visit or consulting Google, caregivers yearn for real-life case scenarios to ensure the most dependable advice.
Research Insights
Ultimately, achieving a balance between financial considerations and prioritizing the well-being of pets demands careful decision-making, which can lead to stress.
The uncertainty surrounding their pet's well-being, along with the multitude of decision-making points, leaves caregivers feeling confused and stressed. Eventually, caregivers strive to provide the best possible care while navigating financial and time constraints.
Ideation
A pet healthcare platform crafted to alleviate decision-making burdens, offering clarity on situations with recommended actions, and providing peace of mind.
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We seek a pet care product that ensures the overall well-being of our pets, instills confidence in user decisions regarding pet health, and delivers real-time feedback.
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We generated 30 quick Prankenstein ideation sketches and narrowed down to 16,
organized into 4 distinct feature groups.
1) Consultation with AI
2) Long-term Care Dashboard Connecting with Monitoring Device
3) Community based on Location
4) Life-long Care Planning
Design - Prototyping
Wireframe
To deliver a comprehensive multimodal experience, we aimed to develop four key features:
1) Consultation with AI: Share media of your pet's condition for guidance on the next steps and receive personalized recommendations.
2) Long-term Care Dashboard: Connect your pet with a monitoring device for chronic diseases, providing valuable insights and health monitoring for ongoing care.
3) Community: Discover neighbors facing similar pet health situations based on location and connect with them for support and shared experiences. Life-long
4) Life-long Care Planning with AI: Evaluate the costs and care required for your pet's lifetime, anticipate potential future issues, and develop strategies to minimize risks and ensure ongoing well-being.
Usability Testing
In order to gain insight into developing our features in dashboard and life-long care plan, we conducted 4 usability tests involving both two tasks.
Here are the key findings:
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Users seek actionable insights immediately. They want ANSWERS: "In the dashboard, showcase the statistics of a 1.3% blood spike? What does it mean? I want to understand its implications and the next steps for me."
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Users are interested in comparing the trade-offs between cost and consequences: "I want to compare the actions I take and their impact on my pet's health with the associated costs."
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Users desire access to both our product's offerings and veterinary expertise: "I also want to hear a veterinarian's opinion and want to show all of my pet's data when I see a vet."
Iteration
Through usability testing insights, we made major changes to the next steps and insights on the dashboard. The life-long plan has been transformed into a space where users can find assurance that they are on the right track, balancing cost and care for the long term.
Reflection
Throughout this project, our team dedicated significant time to iteration, receiving weekly feedback from pet caregivers, AI engineers, and current designers from Salesforce. Although it may sound cliché, this process was invaluable in understanding what users truly want to see.
We also learned that users may not always explicitly state their needs; instead, we had to uncover what they truly required, which was undoubtedly a journey!
Additionally, it's important to note that our goal with Pawssistant is not to replace veterinarians but to serve as a collaboration tool. This is why we focused on implementing numerous small features that facilitate connections with real vets.
On a personal note, as Teddy's mom, I am eager for Pawssistant to be available worldwide soon!