Where are you meow?
2024 | Pet Recovery Mobile App
Summary
Where are you meow? is a mobile app that pairs a social media feed with short-range Bluetooth tracking to reunite owners with lost pets. The app provides a centralized community feed during critical search windows.
Role: Solo Designer (Concept Development, Interaction Design, Prototyping)
Timeline: 6 weeks
Platform: Mobile App (iOS)
Outcome: Designed a high-urgency recovery workflow that enables pet owners to broadcast a lost pet alert in under 60 seconds.
The Problem
When a pet goes missing, owners face extreme panic and are forced to rely on fragmented tools like neighborhood social media groups and physical flyers. Good Samaritans who spot missing pets lack a direct, immediate channel to notify owners.
Fragmented Communication: Owners waste critical time managing unorganized threads across multiple social platforms.
Communication Gaps: Neighbors may not know a pet is missing nearby or have a direct way to reach the owner if a sighting occurs.
Research & Insights
I mapped out emergency recovery workflows to identify how data should flow between community spotters and searching owners.
Time Sensitivity: The first 60 minutes after a pet escapes are the most critical for successful recovery.
Cluttered Interfaces: Existing pet platforms prioritize social feeds over high-urgency map tracking and direct alerts.
Design Pivot: Prioritized alerting nearby users through a map-first workspace that highlights where the pet was last seen.
The Solution
The app combines crowdsourced location pins with short-range hardware tracking to help owners locate their pets faster.
Crowdsourced Sighting Feed: Enables neighbors to drop location-pinned sightings onto active pet cards for instant map updates.
Bluetooth Proximity Integration: Displays real-time signal indicators as owners approach their pet's physical location.
High-Urgency Dashboard: Prioritizes instant alerts and proximity feedback over secondary features.
Impact & Retrospective
Sub-60-Second Alert Setup
Streamlined emergency broadcast creation down to under a minute for rapid neighborhood deployment.
Unified Emergency Search
Successfully combined community sighting feeds and hardware proximity tracking into a single utility app.
Dual-Sided Community Engagement
Engaged non-pet owners in local sighting feeds to build an active neighborhood search network.