Catland App
My Role
UX/UI Designer & Researcher
Durition
2021.08 - 2021.10
Key Word
App Design, Game Design, WatchOS Design
Tools
Overview
As a cat owner for a year, I'm still not a “cat expert”. Many times he has behaviors I don't understand, I regard these behaviors as if he wants to eat cat food. So I give him the food, but sadly, he runs away. Obviously, I don't understand my cat that well. Whenever he runs away like this, I feel lost in my heart. I wished I could have a cat expert that is able to tell me what to do at this moment, so I could understand my cat and not feel lost.
Design Process
The Problem
In 2018, Canadian shelters took in more than 81,000 cats. Behind this staggering figure lies the helplessness of how many cat owners felt at that time due to their inability to solve the problem of cat ownership. So, what exactly is the difficulty in raising cats?
1. Cat owners will easily lose patience while raising cats.
Even though many cat owners do spend a lot of time and energy on their cats, and their cats are still not very close to them, and that's when some of them start to become tired. They even start to doubt whether they are suitable to own a cat or not, and lose interest in getting along well with their cats. But in reality, many cat owners just don't treat their cats in a correct way, so the cats will naturally not be happy and hate their owner.
2. But those cat owners still desire a close relationship with their cats.
Although the relationship between these cat owners and cats is not so great, paradoxically, whenever they see other cat owners and their cats in a very close relationship. For example, when they see the cute cat videos on TikTok, they start to envy these cat's owners. That means, those cat owners still desire to establish an equal and deep emotional relationship with their cats, but they just don't have that ability to get on well with cats.
A design challenge emerged...
How might we change a troublesome cat ownership experience into a fun and interesting process to reduce the abandonment rate and increase the adoption rate?
Research
Part 1. Primary Research
70% of the participants think that it is difficult for them to understand the cat's behavior.
The 2 cat problems they are most concerned about are the cat's health and supplies.
I began looking at this problem by conducting a survey as the primary research, and there are 51 participants who have experience with raising cats. Here are some main points I found:
91% of the participants think the answer online doesn't really help.
50% of the participants used to have thoughts of abandonment.
Part 2. Secondary Research
However, what is the nature of the abandonment mentality? After the primary research, I began searching psychology articles, YouTube videos, and social media posts in order to better understand how the deep relationship between people and cats is established. Here is the psychology that explains why some people don't abandon or give up.
People tend to love what they have put a lot of effort into.
"Effort justification" is the idea that when people make sacrifices to pursue a goal, the effort is often rationalized by elevating the attractiveness of the goal. In other words, we can conclude that people tend to love what they put a lot of effort into. Therefore, the more efforts cat owners made, the more they should love their cats, and the less abandonment should happen.
But in fact, I have seen on social media that many people regret abandoning their cats. Many cat owners are more emotional than rational when they are facing a cat problem. They might forget that they have given a lot of effort to their cats, and forget how much they love their cats. If they had realized these, they probably would not have abandoned the cat.
How might we not only encourage cat owners to keep making efforts so that they can love their cats more? But also, more importantly, how might we make cat owners keep aware they have put a lot of effort, and make them unwilling to give up when the cat owners are facing challenges?
The Solution
Introducing Catland, an app that motivates and guides cat owners to actively interact with their cats in a proper and correct way. The app incorporates a reward mechanism, as long as the users use any functions on the app, such as Shopping Feature, Online Assistant, Games, Voice Recognition, etc, then the user will get the XP points and level up. This can not only rewards users' activities but also make the user keep aware of how much effort they put into their cats.
Persona
Rose Smith is a student based in Toronto. She has one year of experience in raising a cat. She hopes that she could understand her cat's behaviors and gain a good relationship with her cat.
Rose Smith
Age
20
Job Title
Location
Student
Toronto
Introvert
Extrovert
Busy
Time Rich
Independent
Team Player
Thinking
Feeling
Goals
-
Understand her cat's behavior quickly.
-
Have a great affection for her cat.
Needs
-
A guide that helps her understand her cat's vocalization, body language, etc quickly.
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Increase the fun of interacting with her cat.
Frustrations
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Hard to identify the reason for her cat's behaviors.
-
Unable to know how to make her cat love her.
-
Use so much time searching for un-useful information.
Interests
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Personalized recommendation on cat supplies.
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Shopping on the app.
Ideation
1. Accomplishments
We need to clearly mark the cat owner's current achievements in the app so they can not only feel a sense of achievement but also realize how much effort they are putting in. If the cat owners always know how much effort they have made, then they can reduce the thought of abandonment.
2. Reward Mechanism
Reward Mechanism in video games means that the player needs to achieve certain conditions to get the reward, which can be a task, an achievement, or a certain condition. It has been proven to be effective in stimulating people to secrete dopamine, thus making people happy and get pleasure.
In the app, we give the cat owner a reward each time they use any functions on the app. This is also another function that stimulates the users in order to let them keep making effort on their cats.
Functions
After I decided that the reward mechanism would be the mode of operation for the entire app, I spent a lot of time deciding the functionalities of the App before ideation began. It was important that make sure that the user experience was cohesive across each touchpoint.
User Flow
App Map
Wireframe
Click to see details...
Prototype
Core Features
I have implemented a number of core features in order to make the experience of cat ownership a motivating, playful, and personalized one.
1. Accomplishments
Visualize your achievements every time you log in.
The user's main achievements and milestones are listed on the home page, and all achievements are displayed when you click on the profile info. This is to give users a sense of achievement and remind them of their efforts for their cats.
2. Reward Mechanism
Open any game and let the user's cats play it, so the users can get XP points.
Every action on the app counts as XP
This can stimulate users to keep making efforts that increase the interaction between cat owners and their cats, thus reducing the abandonment rate.
The users can also get XP points for booking a vet, and they can level up if they reach a certain amount of XP points.
Side Features
I want to make the user experience a even more convenient one, so I added some side functions in order to make the app an all in one platform.
1. Personalized Services
The first step to personalization: getting to know your cat from user onboarding.
After logging in, the user will be asked to finish a screening test. The question includes species, age and medical histories, etc. This information will be added to the user's profile and better help the app to provide more accurate and relevant help and recommendations to the user.
2. AI Agent Assistant
Applies the NLP method to determine the user's need from the user's words first before providing the help and answer.
By applying the NLP (Natural language processing) method, AI will let users select their consulting intention and analyze the keywords from the user, which allows the agent to understand the user's need to help them efficiently. The user will choose an answer from the 3 categories of cat problems (Habit, Cat Supplies, Health) we summarized from the research result. Then, the agent will give the users advice based on the screening questions that the users fill out.
3. Task list
Freely operate your plan from multiple devices
The users can not only set and finish tasks on cellphones but also finish tasks on the smartwatch, which is more convenient and faster.
4. Voice Recognition
Understanding your cat starts with understanding its language
Meow Talk is a function that can translate the language of cats at any time. After the microphone receives the sound, the translation corresponding to it will appear on your screen instantly.
1
Access Voice Recognition Function.
2
Put the smartwatch or cellphone microphone close to the cat.
3
Interpret cat language for the user and let them understand their cats.
5. Shopping Recommendations
Shop the recommendations and target precisely
There is also a personalized recommendation section on the shopping page that is based on the screening questions.
Reflection
The reality behind the app made the project profound: the experience required a very specific understanding of the user's psychologies. I spent a long time refining the questions in the questionnaire to make sure I could effectively understand the user's needs and feelings. I also reviewed a lot of psychological articles to understand how people's motivation works before designing the solution, and it was a great learning experience to go all the way from research to ideation to the final solution.
A big thing I learned in this project was to pay special attention to the details when designing digital experiences. Before this project, my screens often wouldn't follow specific guidelines, but I quickly learned in order to work on a complex product, guidelines must be followed rigorously. A product can quickly become disjointed with so many moving parts around such as development, budgetary constraints, etc. That is crucial that these flows are ready for hand-off to developers.