Bark Mobile App
Bark is an IoT mobile application designed to let pet owners know the exact location of their pets, and won't send a notification unless there is an actually escape.
Results and Takeaways
I was impressed by the way our team worked together in this high pressure situation. If I were able to do this again I would spend more time on our presentation. Our team preferred to spend more time in the research phase, but with a tight deadline we had to stream-line our process.
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Inconsistent design. CTA are in both sentence case and all caps and type hierarchy is off.
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More dynamic presentation. Focusing on story telling to engage the audience and don't read slide deck word for word.
Together we were able to accomplish this hackathon in 13 hours. Overall we worked well together and I was able to learn how to work simultaneously in XD with other designers.
Understanding the Problem
Our product exist in the market and we are interested in exploring how users' interact with our app and what pain points they experience. We wanted to know:
[Needs] What is essential for a tracking app?
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What are the downfalls of gps tracking?
[Behaviors] How users' are using the app to track their pets information?
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What information do they what to be notified about?
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How do they interact with the current platform?
Key Findings
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1 min. lag between GPS updates presented accuracy issues once an escaped dog is detected.
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Too many false notifications that a dog has escaped due to disconnection force users to turn off alerts.
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Users complained of too many notifications with not enough value.
"I live in an urban area with good cellular and internet reception, still the collar is constantly sending notifications to my phone because the unit is offline."
- Google Store Review
Defining the MVP
"As a dog owner, I want to be sure that my dogs are safe, healthy, and active. I want to make sure that they aren't getting loose when I can't be there."
We relied on competitor analysis, crazy 8s, and user flows to establish our onboarding process and home page:
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App. Users are directed to download the app to begin connecting their Smart Collar.
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Base. Users are prompted to plug in charging base and sync it with their wifi through the app.
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Collar. Collar blinks green 3 times and syncs to base.
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Prompts. Users are then prompted to create their account so their access their information.
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Track. Users can manually refresh GPS tracking info so they can view real-time location of their pups so they can get them home faster
