A Pandemic Pet and You
An explorable explainer that works to demonstrate the benefits of having a pet during a time of intense isolation
I. The Research That Inspired Our Problem Statement
During our initial exploration, we worked to define our problem space through interviewing people about their experience with pets and researching the benefits of pet ownership. We interviewed pet owners to learn more about their experience of caring for a pet. We also explored secondary research in the form of online articles and research papers. We were able to find longitudinal studies of pet ownership and scientific support for well-being. After conducting our initial research, our team worked to group our findings in various ways in order to uncover patterns:
For deeper analysis, we then created models to understand the problem space more clearly. Each team member worked to depict an aspect of our problem space.
I created the following model that depicts the factors that influence feelings of closeness to pets:
My teammates created models that focused on factors of pet ownership that influence well-being. Since the team created each model independently, we were able to model the same topic in different ways:
From our research and models, we were able to uncover common themes such as the pet becoming a family member, feelings of purpose as a result of caretaking, and the experience of unconditional love. We decided to focus on the influence of well-being and pets. To create a more effective explainer, we decided to narrow our problem space from pets and well-being to pets and well-being during the pandemic. Considering the unique circumstance of isolation and more time at home, we were excited to explore pet-owning benefits in this new context. We did some quick research and found that in the year 2020 alone, pet adoption rates increased by fifteen percent. Knowing that there must be more to discover, we conducted follow-up research with our refined topic. During my next literature review and second round of interviews, I focused on three guiding questions to better understand the topic:
1. What is it like to own a pet during the pandemic?
Our team was able to talk with a range of pet owners, including those who adopted a pet during the pandemic. In an interview I conducted with someone who currently has a “pandemic puppy”, I had her walk me through a day in the life of having a pet during quarantine. She mentioned spending more time outside, receiving consistent love and attention from the puppy, and feeling a sense of purpose through caring for another living thing.
2. Why does pet ownership promote well-being?
At the same time, we explored secondary resources that confirmed the scientific benefits of each of these examples. For example, being outside more consistently leads to an increase in serotonin, improves sleep cycles, and decreases anxiety (source).
We also found other surprising insights: people often feel happiness when they spend money on their animal in the form of toys, food, or other items that might bring happiness to their pet(source). Pet ownership directly falls into multiple categories of Dr. Seligman’s PERMA theory of happiness that focuses on five components for what makes up a happy life (positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment) (source). Meaning through the process of taking care of something outside of yourself and experiencing a reciprocal and loving relationship with a pet all contribute to life satisfaction.
3. How can insights from pet ownership be applied to those who do not own a pet?
We researched the powerful connections that people have with virtual pets. An experience coined the “Tamagotchi effect” is when people become emotionally attached to virtual objects (Source). We were excited to use this information to explore how we could create a virtual application that could share the insights and benefits with both pet owners and non-pet owners. We hoped to create an explainer that could inform the user of the benefits of pet ownership through text-based information and promote feelings of well-being through a simulated experience of owning a pet.
Summary of Problem Statement:
- What is it like to own a pet during the pandemic?
- Why does pet ownership promote well-being?
- How can insights from pet ownership be applied to those who do not own a pet?
II. Prototype and Usability Testing
We went through a brainstorming session to ideate different forms of prototypes that we could create. During this time, we also thought of “dark horse” ideas that focus on daring or extreme ideas which consisted of caring for a physical stuffed animal and putting a go pro on a dog’s collar to create a day-in-the-life. Through this useful process, we decided prototype to focus on creating a simulation of owning a pet during the pandemic. We each drew different low-fidelity prototype ideas to get started.
After sketching out some ideas, our team decided to implement our designs in Figma, a platform that we were all familiar with. We created a flow of scenes that simulated owning a dog during the pandemic and inserted research-based information and learning opportunities throughout the story. After the adoption choice, users had the option to take their dog on a walk, which displayed a gif of a dog walking while different facts about being outside popped up on the screen. After the walk, the user would decide if they were going to keep their dog or not. We knew that we wanted to design more paths for the user to explore, but due to limitations on timing, we stuck with our initial prototype and focused on user feedback so we could better inform our future developments. Due to the quick turnaround in deliverables and the fact that we would be doing additional usability tests with our classmates, we conducted an initial usability test with three external friends:
From our initial tests we synthesized the feedback into three major findings:
- User is confused by buttons (the heart, learning opportunity)
- User does not understand the point of the explainer because it lacks a more robust story
- User could not easily navigate forward or back
From these findings, we worked to clarify various buttons by animating the heart icon and including an explanation of its purpose. We also unified our text and style as well as simplified our buttons by using the same icon and moving them to more intuitive places on the screen. Finally, to address the purpose of the explainer, we added more pages to explain the story, created a “home” screen for the avatar that includes many different options of activities to do with the dog, and created an ending sequence that serves as the closing moments to a broader story arc. With these changes, we were able to develop our final prototype.
Feel free to explore our explorable explainer here!
