- Project Requirement:
Your final ‘signature’ work that reflects your relationship with the ideas of sustainability.
- Concept Development & Project Statement:
I decided to start my idea development from imitating the perspective of a non-human being. Since I have a dog at home, I tried documenting his way of viewing the world. I recorded my perception with my phone while squatting down low as the dog’s height, and wandering at home as his habit.
Below is what I have recorded.
By imaging being the dog, I found throwing toys into humans’ sights the fastest way to ask them to play with. But as a dog owner, there have been so many times when a toy was suddenly put in front of me when I was holding a pot of hot soup, a kettle of hot water or a huge and full laundry basket. Often I didn’t see the toy and almost tripped over it. These two perspective from the dog and the owner inspired me a solution for this project.
- Project Description & Finalized Project:
To prevent owners’ feet from catching the dog’s toys or even itself, which may cause accidents, I came up with an app informing the dog if its owner is busy or available to play with. I chose doing an app because our phones are absolutely something still always with us even at home.
Below is the app design. I named it “Play with Me.”
The square image on the left is the icon of Play with Me.
At the bottom, the blue, band-aid-like sticker on a baseball is the detector connected to the app.
The rectangle in screen shape next to the app icon is the homepage users will see after clicking the app. When a pet dog wants to play with humans, it approaches a toy with the detector on, and this triggers the bell on the homepage to turn from blue to yellow with sounds ringing or phone vibrating. Also, a banner of notification appears under the bell. At this time, the pet owner can choose between two bottoms–the orange “not available to play right now” and the green “fine to play.” If the former is clicked, the detector attached to the toy starts buzzing, which annoyingly bothers the dog, making it give up the play. If the green button is clicked, nothing will happen to the detector, so the dog will not be interrupted.
On the very right, it shows another feature of Play with Me. The detector also has a camera on, enabling it to “livestream” the dog in front of the toy on the connected phone.
