Smart Teddy

Smart Teddy is designed for college students who miss their pets back home, offering them a way to interact and connect virtually for the same sense of comfort and companionship they’d experience in person.

The project was divided into multiple phases, emphasizing the value of each step in the design process.

Group Count: 4 (including myself)

Step 1: Identifying project topic and user group

Brainstorming various problems and solutions. The group had to come to a consensus for the topic.

Problem Space

College is an extremely stressful time, but most students don’t have pets during college. Despite it being helpful, it’s difficult for Cornell students to seek animal companionship when they’re stressed or sad.

User Group

Stressed out students who miss their pets at home.

Step 2: Interview plan and protocol

Conducting eight 30-minute contextual interviews focusing on participants within the specified user group.

Interview Goal: To gather information about the students’ general experiences with pets, both with their own, and with pets they may or may not have been able to interact with on a college campus.

Step 3: Data Analysis

Based on the data collected from the interviews, we created an affinity diagram to group the information collected into synthesized themes and insights. We then used these insights to analyze an in-depth understanding of any common behaviors, challenges and attitudes throughout the user group.

Screenshots of the afinity diagram on a Miro Board:

Some insights and observations:

Insight 1: Users tend to look at pictures of their pet or talk about their pet with family and friends when they miss their pet.
Insight 2: Users tend to feel a personal connection to their specific pet that cannot be replaced.
Insight 3: Users tend to have busy schedules with school work that hinders their ability to have a pet at school, especially due to the attention demanded by pets such as dogs.

We also developed a persona based on the user data and requirements that our product will need to fufill to meet these user needs. This is all shown here:

Step 4: Brainstorming

As a group, we considered multiple product ideas and discussed which product would be unique, creative and sufficient for our users.

We sketched out the idea of our product:

Our Design: A customizable stuffed animal that comes with a treat dispenser to set up back at home. The stuffed animal allows you to see and interact with your pet live through it’s built in LCD touch screen. Giving treats to your pet on command, taking snapshots, and updating your family on the dispenser status all make a memorable experience for you and your loved one!

We then connected our user goals to a specific task that can be found in the design. We stated the task, a scenerio, and a story board showing how the user will complete the task using the product.

Step 5: Prototyping

Created a mid to high-fidelity prototype after receiving feedback for mutiple prototypes from each member of the group. This prototype would represent the application on the stuffed animals screen since there is no app connected with this product.

Our Figma Prototype

We explained our prototyping and design descisions more in depth, stating any tradeoffs or alternatives, UX principles and common UI patters.