Here are the mindmaps we created for the subject : "Rethink walking experience for pet owners based on artificial intelligence".
Each one of us emphasized the importance of security and safety aspects when it comes to pet walking. Indeed, pet escapes are not rare and are more frequent than what we can imagine. Pets are often recovered by their owner, but sometimes they go missing forever, which is stressful and painful for the owner. Thus, it is more than necessary to ensure pet owners that they can find their pet back no matter what happens.
It is on the basis of these considerations that we imagined Pet Recognizer, an AI-powered app designed for pet owners who lost their pets. It first started as an idea that was quite spontaneous and commonly shared by our team, as underlined by our brainstorming process just below.
Charlotte Hazotte
Werner Hemery
Damien Hardy
Thibault Ramino Manantoa
It all started from this concern : have you ever been heartbroken after having lost a pet? With Pet Recognizer, we want to provide pet owners an AI tracking system using pet recognition to find missing pets as quickly as possible, and avoid all the pain it may cause to the owner.
We want to provide a highly efficient service, making the most of the opportunity given by the application of artificial intelligence to the field of facial recognition. We live in a technology-driven world where AI has become part and parcel of our daily lives. Our app will use an AI-powered technology, pet facial recognition, which has made huge strides lately, and we are convinced of its great usefulness.
Did you know that 1 in 3 pets will get lost in their lifetime and that 80% of lost pets never make it home ? According to the the National Council on Pet Population Study and Policy, only 2% of lost cats and 15% of lost dogs make it back home to their families. We strongly believe these worrying figures can change thanks to our application : Pet Recognizer is the game-changing app pet owners need !
Pet owners who have lost their pets during a walk are our main target. Indeed, it is usually during a walk that a pet is more likely to be lost, for many different reasons and unfortunate events : no leash, a scary noise, an aggressive pet, or just a desire to escape. This is why Pet Recognizer targets desperate pet owners willing to find back their lost ones with effective means.
However, the user of the app will not be the pet owner who lost his or her pet, but the person who found the missing pet on the street for instance. The pet owner will be reached by this person via a phone call as soon as the app identifies the pet.
Our goal is to help pet owners who have lost their pets during a walk. It could be a dog which has escaped because it was scared of a big noise or another dog, or even a cat which is not coming back home. If someone find a pet and think it is lost or missing, Pet Recognizer would enable this person to take a picture of the pet. Thanks to artificial intelligence, the facial recognition software would identify the pet and the name of its owner. Quick, simple and reassuring for the owner who can immediately go find his or her bestfriend.
When finding a lost pet, the user opens Pet Recognizer, selects the kind of pet (dog, cat, rabbit), gives the location, and takes a picture of the pet's face with a smart camera. The facial recognition system will use artificial intelligence to analyze the image and compare this image to a large database containing all pets and their information (like ID cards for pets). Thanks to the location given by the user, the research can be faster and more efficient. Finally, Pet Recognizer provides to the person who found the pet the name and the age of the pet, as well as the name and the phone number of the owner. At this point, the pet is a phone call away to be reunited with its owner.
In a word, the functioning of the app is simple : say where you are, take a pic of the pet, let the AI system do its work and reach the owner !
Visualizing the universe and the identity of the app
Analyzing the competition
- PiP : An app that uses facial recognition technology to reunite lost pets with their families. Photos of found pets uploaded to PiP app are analyzed and matched with photos of pets identified as lost.
- Finding Rover : Its functioning is pretty similar to that of PiP but they work with shelters and rescues.
- MEGVII : A Chinese-based startup that uses AI-facial recognition system for humans, but recently they started using it for finding pets.
Thus, what is the competitive advantage of Pet Recognizer to stand out from the competition ?
What distinguishes our project from these concurrents is that Pet Recognizer uses publicly available data to identify pets. Indeed, the owner doesn't have to upload a picture of his or her pet on the app and wait for it to be matched with another one. All the information needed is available in a database : the AI system just has to find the profile which corresponds to the picture.
We worked on Figma to design the wireframe of our project. Then we turned our wireframe into the mockup down below.
We developed the User Interface (UI) and the User EXperience (UX) of Pet Recognizer to construct a real user path. We tried to make it as clear, intuitive and user-friendly as possible, through a coherent process and aesthetic. The user just has to follow the instructions on the screen in order to reach the step where the AI system provides the identity of the pet as well as the one of its owner, who can be reached through his or her phone number. The design remains simple, but we think that "less is more" and that it just enough for the app to be really efficient.
Testing the app among users
We conducted 3 user tests of our mockup to collect feedbacks from real users that fit our target. It was very interesting and useful because it gave us the opportunity to perceive the strengths as well as the weaknesses of our mockup.
As a whole, the opinions and viewpoints about Pet Recognizer were very positive. However, the tests enabled us to discover one main drawback. At the beginning, we only proposed 2 types of pets (cats and dogs), but what came out of the tests was that it wasn't enough. This is why we chose to add a third kind of pets, rabbits, because they are the most popular pets after cats and dogs and have an important ownership rate.
Delivering references