Part 1: Research
My client:
Tony Dai: owning a 4-month kitten called Flame
I assume that:
- Tony does not understand Flame’s meows, thus failing to know what Flame needs.
- Flame does not understand Tony’s talking.
- Tony does not understand some specific behaviors of Flame despite there being some general analysis of cats’ actions online.
- All pet owners want to fluently communicate with their pets.
- All pet owners aim to take good care of their pets through phonetic communications.
The problem Tony wants to solve:
From the interview, Tony describes the problem as that he thinks Flame does not understand human language. Flame is usually timid and sensitive. He sometimes does not allow Tony to pet him.
- Without the constant physical contact with Flame, Tony finds it difficult to take good care of Flame’s mental and physical health.
- He often feels helpless because as a new cat owner, he does not know how to deal with the problems.
The obstacles preventing Tony to solve the problem:
- Even though there is cat-keeping information online, Tony finds them cannot apply to Flame as individual cats behave differently. They are too generalized.
- Some current applications of cat meow translators require a subscription or VPN, which Tony finds inefficient and inconvenient to use.
Tony’s need can be solved with:
- A human-pet language translator that analyzes pets’ reactions through both voice input and camera motion detections.
- A pet community that pet owners and professionals, such as vets and animal behavior scientists, can share their pet-keeping experiences.
- Specialized userspace that keeps the data of the pet, and analyzes individual pet’s personality and mood. The platform would also provide specialized advice for pet owners.
Changes in Tony’s life I want to make:
- Tony can use the voice translation function to calm Flame down when he is scared.
- Tony can gain specialized advice on taking care of Flame according to the past translation history and the analysis of Flame’s personality.
- Tony can communicate with other pet owners and professionals about specific problems and cases.
Part 2: Design
PetTalk is a human-pet language inter-translator. The database includes translations of cat meows and dog barks. It helps the communication between pets and pet owners to become more efficient.
Part 3: Presentation
I presented my prototype to Tony. Since the translation is not entirely scientific, Tony was quite skeptical towards this translation result. He was quite clear on the application interface. He said the button that can play the translated human language into cat meow is too small that he almost did not get it. In the iteration phase, I want to expand the other available interactive spaces to “Me”, “Community”, and “Pets”. Also, I want to improve the application interface as Tony pointed out.