‘Sup Pup?

Research and design for Huge, Inc.
Jun 2019

INTRO

You consider your pet a part of the family. But sometimes it’s hard to understand your best friend.

With voice assistive technology on the rise, and all major tech players wanting their slice, how come we still generally don’t see much use of it? The applications of this tech are still relatively limited and adoption has a steep curve. So how can we broaden the use of it? Our goal was to build voice assistance into any object to meet an unmet need. Enter: pet technology.

So the question we want to ask is: What if your dog could talk back?

MARKET RESEARCH

Smart collars on the market today

“Smart” dog collars are not a new product. Before getting started on Sup Pup, we took a wide look at what was out there on the market currently and what each of these products were doing right or wrong. Some common features were:

1. GPS Tracking
The most common use case for a smart collar was tracking. The capabilities throughout the collars on the market ranged from simply seeing where your dog is currently, to tracking their movements throughout an entire span of time, to even setting up “invisible fence” to alert you of wandering.

2. Activity tracking
Some collars claim to be able to track calories, sleep quality, and anxiety from heart-rate monitoring. By connecting with data from other dogs, they are able to recommend customized activity levels.

By creating this quadrant chart of our competitors, we were able to see where most brands sat and what areas of the space lacked products. We want to more collar focused and not need to rely on an app to do the heavy lifting. And by being very focused in our features that we build, we can deliver the best possible experience.

A bit of user research also proved our theories that location and activity were some of the top things that owners cared about. At the end of the workday, they just want to make sure that when they come home to their dog that it’s been taken care of.

FEATURES

How can we use voice?

While our market and user research revealed a lot about what information pet owners would want to know about their dogs, we also needed to figure out the best ways to integrate voice assistance into the product to truly create a new and unique experience. The features listed above were mapped to figure out what was reliant on an app versus could be a voice-only feature.

The most important and unique trait of our product is the ability to give your pet a verbal personality, and we wanted that to come through with whatever prompt/answer it’s been given.

Some ways to integrate personality:

1. Verbal feedback to simple prompts
   An owner asking their dog ”Who’s a good boy?” could bring back of range of responses, from the energetic “Me, me, me!” to the sarcastic “I’m the greatest.”

2. Reminders
   With tracking information like activity or integration with smart products (i.e. food bowls), the collar could offer up reminders like “Hey, I haven’t eaten today, can you feed me?”

3. Notifications
   With data from the dog’s past activity and overall behavior, the collar could make conclusions about the health and mood of your dog and notify you of any changes. “I was not very active today, I might need a walk” is an example of the collar notifying an owner of overall less activity or fatigue of their pet.

4. Lost/found information
   If your pup gets lost, the collar would hold information like owner address, phone number, allergies, nearest vet, etc and offer that information verbally to the finder.