YiWei He.
Let's Raise Cats
Mobile Application for helping beginners to learn how to keep cats
Role: UI Designer, UX Researcher
Timeline: 3 Months (Fed 2022 - April 2022)
Tools: Figma, Sketchboard, Lucid
Key Contributions
User Research
Competitor Analysis
User Research
Wireframe
Prototype
User testing
Overview
Currently, there are no existing mobile applications on the market for beginning cat owners to learn about how to raise a cat in a structured way. It has been difficult for potential cat keepers to take the first step of the journey. So our team decided to build an AR-based training application to teach users how to raise a cat.
The application features 4 key features: interaction with the virtual cat, cat body language review, hardware selection and cost estimator to prepare user to become a successful cat owner.
Context
Let's Raise Cat is a mobile application that I developed, from Conception to prototype, for my Human-Computer Interaction course project at Virginia Tech. The goal of this project was to design and prototype an application following the UX design process while incorporating Mix-reality technology.
Process
Data Elicitation
User Research
Background Research
Competitor Analysis
Data Analysis
User Activity Notes
WAAD
Design
Storyboard
Task Sequence Model
Prototype
Wireframe
Initial Prototype
Evaluation
Prototype Testing
User Testing
Data Elicitation
The first step of my design process is user research. I recruited and interviewed students from Virginia tech who are interested in adopting a cat or recently adopted their cat to understand their goals and challenges better. I used the quantitative and qualitative data from interviews and survey results, I defined the two target group profiles Caroline (looking to adopt a cat) and Andy ( recently adopted his first cat) to better empathize with my main user groups and prioritize goals according to their needs.
User Personas
SUMMARY
Caroline C is a Graduate student at Virginia Tech. She is 23 years old. She has always loved watching cat videos online in her free time, and it warms her heart. But she never had a chance to keep a cat before so now she is looking to adopt a cat. Most of her normal day consists of class work, reading scholar papers, and writing reflections on them. She currently lives in a 2b1b apartment with a roommate. Because she is already doing a lot of reading and researching for her school work, She is looking for some way other than searching and reading online to learn about how to raise a cat.
GOALS
-
Understand the cost of rising the cat
-
Understand the cat's body language.
-
Understand the cost of keeping a cat.
FRUSTRACTIONS
-
Too many sources of information
-
Difficult to remember all the knowledge about keeping a cat
-
Difficult to determine what furniture to get for the cat.
" I already have done plenty of research and reading for my school work, I wish there can be some different way to learn about how to take care of a cat other than reading articles and blogs online."
SUMMARY
Andy S is an undergraduate student at Virginia Tech. He is 20 years old and is currently in his junior year. He recently visited a local shelter with his friends and ended up adopting his cat Leo from the shelter. He does not know much about how to raise a cat and has to go through different ways to learn about what type of food he should get and what accessories he needs to buy for Leo. He isn’t a fan of reading, so it has been difficult for him to dive into the blog posts and articles online yet. He always tries to spend more time with Leo, but sometimes he will get some bad attitude toward Leo and maybe even scratches for some reason he is not aware of.
GOALS
-
Grow closer with cat.
-
Learn how to spend time with the cat
-
Learn about how to keep the cat healthy.
FRUSTRACTIONS
-
Difficult to determine which type of food to get.
-
No personalized plan or application
" I want to stay up to date with the health condition of my cat, and be able to easily get direct contact with the veterinarian."
SME Interview
After collecting initial user data, I identified and interviewed the following two subject matter experts on their opinion for what is required to become a successful cat owner.
Name:
Montgomery County Animal Care and Adoption Center
Role:
Local Shelter
Focus area:
The Adoption Process, Daily Care, Cost
Interview method:
On-site Visit
Name:
Yixuan Wang
Role:
Professional Ragdoll Breeder
Focus area:
Cat's Behavior, Hardware Selection, Food
Interview method:
Online Interview
Compititor Analysis
Web-based Articles
Strength
Sufficient information
Easily accessible across platforms
variety of information sources, updated frequently
Weakness
Mostly made up of declarative knowledge, can be difficult to recall in long-term and in emergencies.
Mostly made up of declarative knowledge.
Opportunities
Cooperative partial procedural knowledge to help users better prepare for cat ownership.
My Pocket Pet Kitty
Strength
Sufficient interaction options.
Entertaining to use, easy to attract users.
Good artwork, attract users.
Weakness
Lack of educational purposes, does not provide accurate information regarding cat caring.
animation and avatar are unrealistic, difficult for users to transfer knowledge to real-life situations.
Opportunities
Change the avatar and avatar's interaction to be more realistic.
Add additional information on cost, hardware, etc.
Data Analysis & Modeling
Based on the initial data collected through user interviews and SME interviews, I developed the following Work Activity Notes and Minimum Viable Products. These two diagrams provide valuable guidelines for the early design process.
Figure.1 Snapshot of the WAAD
Figure.2 List of Minimum requirements
MVP Needs:
MVP Needs #1: Adoption instruction which walks the user through the adoption process & requirements, helps users to get an understanding of how the adoption process works.
MVP Needs #2: Clinical instruction which shows the user what are the cat's regular clinical needs, and what the signs of a kitty need clinical care.
MVP Needs #3: Cat Gesture change. The app should show different gestures of the cat and the means behind different cat gestures.
MVP Needs #4: Hardware introduction. The app should help user to get a basic understanding of the hardware needed for cat care.
MVP Needs #5: Interactive cat model which reaction should teach the user about different pet zone of the cat
MVP Needs #6: Cost estimator. Provide a general cost for cat care, the cost should change depending on the options the user made in-app.
We created the following flow model to help us understand the current workplace of the user's process of learning how to raise a cat, and the model indicates there are a variety of processes and they all provide different aspects of the knowledge such as adoption, clinic, hardware, etc.
Figure.3 Usage Flow Model
Design
The main frustration we've found from the users is that there is a large amount of knowledge that needs to be learned. But this knowledge is all scattered around different sources, making it difficult to learn and comprehend as a whole. We have also realized that many incidents during the cat caring process require the user to react quickly, if the user does not understand the process well, it can be difficult to act on the spot causing injury to the cat or the cat owner themselves.
Solution
As the product is aimed to train users on how to raise cats. We decided to utilize the concept of knowledge transfer as the main foundation of our design. Timon ten Berge and Rene van Hezewijk separated the knowledge into two types: Declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge.
Declarative Knowledge
Involves descriptive terms about something or knowledge with a linguistic form that can be encoded into our long-term memory through repeated learning. In order to utilize declarative knowledge, it requires the user to retrieve it from long-term memory for working memory to process and consciously make a decision, which can be time-consuming.
Procedural Knowledge
How to perform a certain cognitive activity which can be difficult to explain verbally, and it also requires repetitive training for us to encode into our memory. However, the study has found that procedural knowledge often is “automated” without any apparent conscious attention. Indicating that it would take less time for people to act when applying procedural knowledge.
Based on the data collection, we found that the current user's main method for learning cat care is mostly composed of declarative knowledge. Even though it can grant the user a quick and general understanding for the user on what is needed to raise a cat, Certain tasks in the cat care process may require the cat owner to react through instinct instead of conscious decisions. If the knowledge is encoded into the owner's long-term memory, cat owners might occur before their brain can retrieve this knowledge and make a conscious decision. So I think it is important that this type of knowledge be learned
Wireframe & Prototype
After collecting the necessary data and requirements, I started the design process by building a task sequence model. The task sequence model represents a narrative story of what users do or can do. It helps me to organize and match the design aspects with the requirement.
Figure.4 Task Sequence Model
Preview:
Usability Testing
Upon completion of my prototype, I recruited 6 participants from the HCI class for conducting three rounds of usability testing for the design.
For the first two rounds, participants were first provided with an introduction to the prototype, then they were given the following tasks to accomplish. I recorded the critical incidents where the participants faced difficulty while using the app. At the end of the test session, we did a short interview with the participants on their opinion and suggestion for the prototype and asked them to fill out a system usability scale survey.
Usability Test Tasks
Task 1: Create an account and select a cat breed
Task 2: Pet the cat in the main UI
Task 3: Navigate to the adoption documents page
Task 4: Select and place a hardware
During the first rounds of usability testing, I found that the participants had difficulty locating the add button on the hardware selection page. The Participants also expressed the need to actively switch the cat's gesture which can help them review the gesture after seeing them instead of passively waiting for the same gesture to appear. The SUS questionnaire resulted in a low intuitive score. Based on the feedback, the following change was implemented.
First Iteration
Change 1: Enlarge the Add button, and reduced its transparency.
Change 2: Add a gesture menu.
Change 3: Add an additional text signifier for function, shown when the icon is pressed.
Second Iteration
The second round of usability testing followed the same process as the first round. Two main takeaways from the second evaluation are that people adopt cats of different ages, the cost is likely different to keep cats in different age groups, and users are also more likely to build an emotional bond with the virtual cat if they have the option to choose the age of cat and give their virtual pet a name. Another takeaway is that participants are interested in knowing how to choose the cat food they should be buying for their cat.
However, the low intuitive score persists after the implementation of the first iteration, which lead to a change on how I did the third usability test.
Change 1: Add the feature for age selection and naming the virtual cat after cat selection
Change 2: Add food-related documents, accessible through both menu and main UI.
Third Iteration
In order to figure out the low intuitive problem shown in the first two usability tests, I skipped the walk-through demo in the third usability test and handed the prototype to the participant for hands-on experience and tasks directly. I observed that as soon as the user enters the main UI, they try to directly interact with the virtual cat, without selecting the interaction tool.
Also, it seems the icons on the main UI do not pass through enough information for the user to know what they represent, and the user is unlikely to press on the icon if they do not know what the icon means. So the press-triggered text signifier implemented in the first iteration wasn't effective. Based on the result, I implemented the following changes in an attempt to resolve the issue.
Change 1: Touching the virtual cat triggers the pet mode directly.
Change 2: Adding a tutorial process after the registration process.
Future Plan & Takeaways
For the future evaluation plan, I'd recommend hiring at least 30 participants with a pre-requisite of no pet caring experience. The session should follow the procedure as follows. However, redesigning or implementing a new feature would only be considered if it is reflected in more than 5% of the data.
Step 1: Brief introduction of the prototype and the testing process.
Step 2: Instruct the participants to accomplish pre-defined tasks with no additional instruction.
Step 3: Provide a walk-through demo of the prototype.
Step 4: Additional hands-on experience with no further instruction
Step 5: Ask participants to fill out a SUS survey, cat-care quiz and survey.
Some Key takeaways from this project:
-
User testing is key: Design is a constant iteration of improving the experience for the end users, it is important to always find a way to collect and listen to user's feedback.
-
Don't just ask questions, also observe: During user testing, I noticed how much information I am able to gather just by observing people using the application. Sometimes the action speaks louder than words.
-
The best design comes from collaboration: it is inspiring to see how each teammate contributes to the project based on different perspectives. Non-technical people provide unlimited ideas and technical people help ground these ideas with the understanding of technical limitations.