https://github.com/deco3500-2017/Team-WeChat/blob/master/Documents/Final%20Document.pdf
https://s4443483-deco7180.uqcloud.net/deco7350/login_carer.html
Week 12 Standup:
Week 10 Standup:
PDF File in Github: https://github.com/deco3500-2017/Team-WeChat/blob/master/Proposal.pdf
Pets are friends of human. The number of families keeps pets in their house, pets accompany them as an important family member. The companions of pets could reduce the negative emotions, such as anxiety, loneliness, and sadness, and provide happiness for people. This companionship is typically meaningful for those who live alone, like aging people, singles. They might emotionally dependent on pets like their children or closest friends. There is a trend that the development of the city with the fast pace. As a consequence, the increasing number of urban dwellers live in the apartment. The apartment policies restrict residents to keep their own pets for reasons like sanitation and noise. It could not be ignored that the requirements of keeping pets of apartment residents still remain. Especially, the apartment is a valuable choice for people who live alone, due to the housing area. In addition, the pets keeping is a current requirement for pets owners when they could not take care their pets in the period like travel and work overtime.
In order to address this social issue, we generate a mobile application named “WePet”. The purpose of this project is to provide a platform for both pet owners and “pet volunteers” (the people who are willing to have their own pets but be limited by problems like apartment policies or other personal reasons). Several “pet volunteers” will be formed into a group basing on their preferences, backgrounds, and experiences. These groups will accept tasks from pet owners to help them solve various of problems, such as walking their dogs, feed their cats and take care their pets when they are traveling etc. (The concept and scenario are described in section 3.) During the volunteer activities, the pet volunteers could meet people who with common interests and work with them. This is a great opportunity to make friends, they could share the experience of taking care animals, the anecdotes of pets via this application. On the other hand, the requirements of pet owners will be met with high-quality services and low price. In the next sections, we will introduce the background research of establishing our concept, the comprehensive description of this project, the work break down and the project plan.
According to PETA and the Sydney Morning Herald, there are more than 20,000 cats and dogs be euthanized and destroyed every year because there are not enough resources to take care of them before they could get adopted. Therefore, the situation we found in the background research is that: on the one hand, many good hearted people want to take care of little animals but cannot have pets for some external reasons. On the other hand, there are even more cats and dogs dead or unfairly treated because of a lack of resources.
The companionship of both physical and mental value of pets is immeasurable. If you own a pet, you’ll understand the joy, support and companionship your pet can give. When you suffer a bad day, a walk with your dog, or a hug with you cat can greatly help you get out of trouble. Also, they are engaging more people to live a united community. They inspire people to build up a broader community to help homeless people who deserve love and healthcare.
As for particular policy for pet housing in apartment, most of the communities requires their residents to sign forms to gather all information of their pets including breed, weight, situation of inoculations and so on. Some of the community require the pets be spayed. Meanwhile, some apartment forbids to raise specific breeds pets such as pit bulls and constraint weight restriction. In this case, communities may need to hold owner-oriented addendum and complete with a well-drafted pet lease policy, in which policy violation penalties, in-unit and clean-up guidelines, the principles of noise generation, the presence location of animal are all need to be well elaborated. Sometimes, the pet owner may ask their tenants remove their pets without the permission. Under these circumstance, it may cause inconvenience for both apartment owners and their tenants. As such, pet owners may need to be responsible for clean-up and protection so as to prevent smell, damage or diseases. Therefore, it’s important to create new ways to better house the pets and enhance the social relationship and avoid conflict.
Petcloud is a web platform, which aims to help pet owners find a trustworthy pet sitter to take care of their pets. It will build a one-to-one relationship between pet owner and pet sitter. Usually, it’s a short-term relationship.
Pet owners create profiles for them and their pets. There are two different ways for them to find a pet sitter. One is search for sitters nearby and the other is post a job.
Pet owners and sitters should meet before the Pet Stay to ensure they are matching well for both of them.
Pet owners can confirm service and prepay fees to Petcloud. If they are not happy with the pet sitter, they can get their money back from Petcloud.
Pet owners wait for sitters to pick their pets up or drop them at the sitters’ home.
Pet owners pick up their pets when the service ends.
Pet Owners & Pet Sitters
Petcloud is the Australian Pet Care built in collaboration with RSPCA Vets. It runs well in most Australian cities. Therefore, we think it’s legal to provide this kind of service to public and it does have a huge potential market. However, Petcloud doesn’t focus on build relationship between pet owners and pet sitters. As for a pet owner, it’s infrequent for them to ask other people to take care of their pets, which means it’s unnecessary to build long-term relationship with pet sitters.
To improve social connection, we are going to form a team rather than a person to be the role of pet sitter in our project. Pet sitters will work in a group, which requires them to communicate with team members. Also, team members can supervise each other, which can help provide a better treatment to pets. If they cooperate well with team members, they may build a long-term relationship with each other.
We received 21 responses in the first round. In this round, the majority of interviewees are students around 81%. The age of all interviewees between 18 to 34. For the accommodation type, 76% of them are living in the apartment. However, less than half interviewees are allowed to keep a pet at home. It could be used to explain why only 10% of them are currently having a pet. In this questionnaire, we divide interviewees based on the question whether having a pet. In the section “Not Having a Pet”, most of the interviewees show the modest attitude about having a pet. The three main reasons that they provide of why they could not have a pet include accommodation limitations (58%), leisure time limitations (42%), and personal preference (26%). For social requirements, we notice that over 60% interviewees are willing to meet other pet lovers. More than half participants express that they want to join in a pet keeping group like “WePet”.
There is an obvious problem of the first round that the majority of interviewees are people who are not having a pet. Consequently, the response rate of “Having a pet” section is too low and cannot be used as a credible resource. Therefore, we invited 11 interviewees who currently feed a pet to participate in the second round. Finally, we gathered 13 responses in the section “Having a pet”. The result shows that all of them have experiences of not able to take care of their pets. Most of them do not mind others to keep their pets. (The result of the questionnaire is available in the appendix.)
In the next stage, we will launch another survey which separates participants into “Pet keepers” and “Pet volunteers” to fill two questionnaires. The questions of these questionnaires are designed based on our concept and specific on testing whether the functionality of our concept could match the expectations of our target users. (The questionnaires for “Pet keepers” and “Pet volunteers” are available in the appendix.)
WePet is a mobile application that providing a platform for pet owners to seek assistance from pet care group for taking care of their pets and presenting an opportunity for apartment residents who are not allowed to keep pet at home to bond with pets as well. Because of time limitation for pet care, pet owners probably requires to invite other pet carers to participate in the activities of looking after their pets in order to ensure the health condition of the pets. Through the application, pet lovers who living in an apartment can be the role of the pet carers to find out and participate in a pet caring group in order to provide assistance for pet owners. In terms of the specific requirements from pet owners, pet care group can be employed through the WePet and pet carers can complete the tasks by collaborating with other group members. They also could choose to provide volunteering services for RSPCA and integrate their care experiences. Consequently, the requirements of pet owners can be achieved and pet carers could provide more opportunities to interact and bond with pets as well. Furthermore, despite increasing the chance to take care of pets, pet carers are provided an approach to build friendships with pet owners and other pet carers. It would facilitate further cooperations and collaborations afterwards and provide potential benefits in promoting social connection and communication as well.
The aim of the project is to create a dedicated social platform for pet lovers and owners so that they could support each other in terms of taking care of their beloved animals. Moreover, forming pet care group can strengthen the association between group members and provide an approach for them to exchange experiences and conduct activities together. It would provide more opportunities for pet lovers to meet and recognize each other so as to enhance and bond their relationships. Consequently, achieving the goal of enhancing social connection and communication by offering assistance for pet owners.
Based on the background research and intended requirements, we defines the two types of the product’s target users as follow:
Pet owners are the group of users that own one or more pets but are seeking help for taking care of their pets. The help could be temporary pet frosting, daily walking, training and seeing vet.
A new user who is a pet guardian and from the Pet Owners group can sign up the WePet with his/her email and password. After signing up, they will be provided with the current and nearby information about invitation requirements from pet care groups on the main page. Pet owners are able to choose an existing group to employ in terms of the description of help providings under the invitation requirements. If they have tendency to participate in one particular group, they are able to leave comments like asking further information about the group under the invitation.
Once pet owners have employed a pet care group, they can obtain the contact information of other pet carers in the group. Ensuring that pet owner is able to contact and receive assistance from pet carers in time. For some particular period of time, such as pet owner does not have available time or go away from home, pet carers can take the responsibility to take care of the pet instead of the pet owner. During the care process, pet owners have the right to be told and recognize the current situation of their pets, such as requiring activity locations, photos or short videos. In addition, they are able to check the messages within the message board of group members and leads to recognize task process clearly and directly.
At the end of employments, pet owners has the ability to leave review with the performance of the pet care group, like the degree and efficiency of task completion or any improvement suggestions for that group. Employment history would be recorded in the information page of pet owners, so it might facilitate the stages for next employment.
Name: Jayden
Age: 26
Occupation: Salesman
Status: Pet Owner, Pet Guardian
Accommodation: Townhouse
Jayden is a 26 year-old employee and his occupation is a salesman that working in BNE city. As a pet lover, he has adopted the dog ‘Nick’ from RSPCA before and really enjoyed the activities with Nick. However, he felt distressed these days because there would be a sale event in the employed store so that he has to working late for the next week. It means that he cannot provide time for taking care of Nick at night. He complained the tough situation with his friends and fortunately they recommended a mobile application ‘WePet’ to help him employ a pet care group through the App.
Jayden downloaded the WePet on his mobile and created an account by filling out some basic information. When he entered to the main page, he found that there was a pet care group list and ready for offering helps for pet guardians. He was able to check their available care services and times to explore further information. After browsing and selection, he identified one pet care group and it indicates that they are able to provide assistance at night for next week. Through leaving comments and then communicating with the group, Jayden eventually employed them because they can meet his particular requirements. Then he received the contact information of group members and was invited to participate in the group’s message board.
Before Jayden went to work, a couple of the group members came to his place and took the responsibility to take care of Nick. During working hours, Jayden received much more information about Nick the group offered through the message board, such as site location and photos of the behaviors of Nick they took during feeding and walking. Jayden felt pretty satisfied and pleasant because Nick was being taken care of appropriately and comfortably. After all of the tasks were completed, Jayden wrote down an experience review to complement the performance of the care group and also invited them to participate in the party he hold at his home to thank their assistance and enhance their friendships as well.
Pet carers are the type of target users who generally do not own any pets for many reasons (such as , but they wish they could overcome the problems and build connection with small animals.
A new user who is from the Pet Carers group can sign up to the WePet with his/her email and password. After signing up, they will be presented with the information about available existing pet carers groups around him/her or other individual new users. Then, the user could choose to either join an existing group by sending applications to the groups or form a new group with other new users. A group of users should have multiple resources that they could share with other members, such as space for animals, time for pet caring, and cars for transportation. These resources would be shown on a public group information page and accessed by pet owners.
After a group is formed, they could choose to do volunteering work for RSPCA or other nonprofit organization for animals to earn more credits so that they would have more chances to get accessed by nearby pet owners. Once there is any pet owners have any requests for the group, the group will be contacted by the owner as a group. There, they could form a deal with the owners and agree on terms and conditions pointed out by the owner and the pet carers group. Before starting the pet caring tasks, the group members could share duties among them, for example, who is responsible for the walking and who will provide accommodation. While the group is doing the tasks, they could choose to send the owners the location, pictures, and short video filmed of the pet to earn more credit. There will be an instant message board provided for the group member to coordinate their work. Meanwhile, they could leave notes for other team members and send a direct message to a group member. After the tasks or frosting period is done, both ends (Pet carers and pet owners) can write a review for each other or decide whether to give perks to the other side.
After each task, a group member could choose whether to keep staying in their group or to find a new group. A record of his/her previous experience would record in his/her profile.
Name: Jana
Age: 19
Occupation: International Student
Status: Pet Lover / Pet Carer
Accommodation: Student Apartment
Jana is an international student who is currently studying at the University of Queensland. She has a dog at her home before she came to Brisbane. However, now she lives in a student accommodation which does not allow residents to keep pets. So she misses her dog and feels lonely and empty because she thinks no one needs her any more. She really wants to adopt a dog or cat, but her situation would not allow her to do so.
She heard that there is a mobile App that could help her solve the problem, so she downloaded the app from the app store. She signed up to the service and uploaded her personal information. She selected that she has Monday and Friday free and she has experience of taking care of a dog. Then, she got access to a list of nearby groups that she could join. She applied to a team and got accepted. She communicates with her team members knowing that they are currently collaborating on walking dogs for a pet owner, Kevin. She undertook the Monday session. Her group mates introduced her to the owner. After that whenever she walks with the dog and play with them she opens up the location based service on the WePet mobile app and collects virtual coins for every kilometer she walked with the dogs. Sometimes, if she is too busy with her school work, she would talk to her group mates and Kevin on WePet to figure out a solution together. Meanwhile, the team also undertook some volunteering work at RSPCA, so Jana has the opportunity to travel to the kennel with her team together and hang out sometimes after the activities.
Jana was pretty satisfied that she can obtain much more experiences of taking care of pets and build new friendships with pet lovers as well. She was willing to recommend the WePet to her friends who also wants to bond with pets and allow them to catch the chance for meeting other pet lovers.
The project scope includes design, building prototypes and evaluations for a social media platform for the target audiences described above to facilitate communications and support for people who have interests in pet keeping. The prototypes include paper prototype, digital prototype at different design phases. The structure of the platform includes a homepage for application introduction, login and signup pages, personal dashboard for different type of users, and a communication channel for locations, pictures and videos sharing. The evaluations includes cognitive walkthroughs, usability testing and user experience testing which respectively involve UX experts and target users.
The connection can be created between pet owners & pet carers and within pet carers group. The Wepet can be an alternative strategy for pet owners to deal with their troubles with their pets and for pet carers to bond with pets as well. Other than that, the interconnection between pet lovers could be conducted. During the process of implementing pet tasks, the relationship between pet owner and pet carers would be emerged correspondingly. Additionally, the relationships between pet carers can be built in terms of cooperations. As a result, the dispensable social interactions would be led in order to take care of pets properly.
Within a pet care team, each pet carers are able to offer diverse aspects of assistance for pet owner in terms of their property and ability. Before implement the required tasks, the tasks would be evaluated and divided into individual depends on specific requests and situations. For some particular situations, it requires the collaboration between team mates. For example, the pet carers who providing guardianship and offering transportation tools can be collaborated when taking pets to do regular physical examination or join activities outside. Through the collaboration between team mates, the care task can be completed successfully or probably implementation directly and effectively.
In terms of the task type, each team members can be distributed specific tasks to implement. It might be a matter of particularly abilities and timetables that each team members can offer and they would coordinate their available times in order to fit the group timetables for completing all the tasks from the pet owner. Moreover, when the target carers cannot attend the intended task on time, it means that other carers in the group who are available would take the responsibility to implement the task instead of the original carers. The pet care group dedicates to complete the tasks from pet owners on time and efficiently by coordinating their group timetables.
Through the process of taking care of pets, we plan to build up a platform which will engage different users to share information they need. Pet owners are allowed to publish information they need in order to form the group they need. They are able to share the resources they have with different people in different forms. We aims to strengthen social connections and bond relationship with group in the community. Pet owners and people who wants to look after pets are able to build connections in order to enhance both physical and mental harmony and improve the quality of social community.
Based on our previous research, we aims to enhance social relationship with our target audience. We found computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) provides us with a noble method to engage different target audience into a united community. It’s a multidisciplinary field in which group members that work together asynchronously can be accessed to work and share information collaboratively, and information attached to social location, social relationship and other properties will greatly help all members eliminate “simultaneous plans” Meanwhile, CSCW is also helpful in terms of cost-saving and time-efficiency. Group members are allowed to share and work collaboratively from different areas in various timeline. During this process, the requirements of travel, space and other equipment are eliminated. At the same time, multiple threads will contribute to engaging people to join the community and improve participation. Moreover, CSCW has been equipped with multimedia sources, which allows users establish and maintain collaboration and communication in a long run through learning,participation and engagement. In the application WePet, it provides a platform for pet sitters to check existing pet care groups and to form teams depends on their requirements and expectations, which greatly enhances social relationship and intercommunication.
Alex (Sheng Jing) MIDs jingsheng20@gmail.com 44293749
Dee (Di Wang) MIDs wd171842@gmail.com 43714845
Jane (Jiajing Sun) MIDs sunjiajing0815@gmail.com 44434832
Tanya(Mengwei Lin) MIDs tanyalinlin@gmail.com 44169433
Shawn (Xiaoyu Shang) MIDs 5loverevoluion@gmail.com 44010311
Executed by team WeChat, this project aims to design, prototype and demonstrate an active community for both pet owner and caregiver to help them look after their pets. The system features social connection and supports multiple function at the same time.
We envisage a near future in which the caregiving of pet is brought to life through a dynamic, engaging and social product. As such, Team Webchat’s vision is to provide experiences for people who have intention to raise pet but can’t be allowed to keep a pet in their apartment, as well as people who are always been occupied with their business with a new way to share resources through social connection and information share to deal with the actual dilemma. To achieve this goal, we will dedicate to implement meaningful design, maintain high standards of work and offer effective innovation.
At the initial phase, all team members will contribute to all aspects of the project including background research and survey. Team roles and responsibilities of each member will be further specified and varied as long with the project ongoing in the next few weeks based on personal preference and skill-set.
Dee (Di Wang): Project Leader, Project Management, User Research, UI design, Prototyping
Alex (Sheng Jing): Programming, Research
Jane (Jiajing Sun): Prototyping, Programming, Graphic Design
Tanya (Mengwei Lin): Graphic Design, Prototyping, User research
Shawn (Xiaoyu Shang): Anthropology Field Work, Interview, General research, Web Programming, Graphic Design
The team leader will be responsible for logistics including physical equipment transportation, organize meetings, resolve conflicts, etc. All the other team members should commit to assist team leader to complete all milestones
As a team, we commit to:
- Use our best endeavors and effort at all times.
- Dedicate necessary time and effort as is required.
- Try to contribute to the project equally.
- Attend weekly meeting on time.
Decisions will be made collaboratively through the whole project. Our weekly meeting will be prioritized for major decision making and changing.
- Decisions about the project will be made by consensus across the whole team through discussion (consensus means everyone agreeing to all parts of the decision).
- We will work towards consensus by working through pros and cons for each decision to be made and making an assessment of what is best for the project.
- Where we cannot achieve consensus, decisions will be made by decisions will be put to a vote out of five people, which will not be failed.
- Once a decision has been made in accordance with these processes, all team members must agree to accept, support and commit to that decision fully.
- Our main method of communication within our team will be face-to-face meeting weekly.
- A private group community has been set-up on WeChat(similar to slack) for general communication when off campus. As we all come from China, we may feel more get used to using WeChat to share our ideas and opinions.
- Any issues that need to be dealt with quickly will be communicated either face to face or by WeChat
- A shared Google Drive folder has been set-up to work collaboratively on documents and reflect process. The name of each file should be clear for all the team members to recognize.
We will:
- Meet as a whole team every week during the practical session [Wednesday 1:00pm-3:00pm]. Absenteeism subject only to illness or other unavoidable personal commitments.
- Ensure that attendance at these meetings takes priority over other commitments.
- Not be late for meetings unless unavoidable.
- Ensure that we prepare appropriately for each meeting.
- Ensure that we properly participate in all meetings.
- Schedule additional meetings if needed.
- We will allocate work by discussion out from weekly meeting.
- When allocating work we will clearly define: a. Who is expected to complete the work. b. When the work is to be completed by. c. The deliverable(s) and work standard that we expect to be delivered
To ensure that we work effectively as a team we:
- Will always support each other.
- Not limit our efforts to our specified roles but will help each other as much as we possibly can.
- Ask group mates for help when we come across any difficulties.
- Advise the team if we are not able to meet any deadlines as soon and as early as possible.
- Openly share any resources that we find and ideas that we have.
- Be respectful of each other.
- Provide and receive feedback as constructive feedback.
- Try coming out with replaceable ideas or suggestions before we object other’s ideas.
If there are any disputes within the team relating to teamwork, we will:
- Admit that conflict is present and it needs to be resolved, by approaching the team members involved we will understand the problem from all perspectives.
- Reach for an agreement after understanding the problem as a team and move on if conflict is solved.
- If problem is still present, we will inform tutors and seek advice.
If a team member is not completing work allocated to them or their work is not being completed within the defined timeframe or to the agreed standard, we will:
Discuss with the whole group to re-evaluate the underperforming person’s role, responsibilities could be reallocated.
In the circumstance that members still do not participate equally after multiple discussions the course coordinator will be informed and grade may be reduced.
Further Research
Survey for target users, both Pet Owners and Pet Carers
Paper Prototype
First version prototype
Testing session
Test paper prototype
Iteration
Get feedback, analyse data, improve concept
Digital Prototype
Second version prototype, making changes based on first iteration result
Testing session
Test digital prototype
Iteration
Get feedback, analyse data, improve concept
Interactive Prototype
Third version prototype, make changes based on second iteration result
Testing session
Test Interactive Prototype
Final iteration
Get feedback, analyse data, improve concept
Final package
Improving product based on iteration result
Documentation
#Interconnection
#Collaboration
#Coordination
#Communication
#CSCW
PETA Australia. (2017). Animal Homelessness: The Crisis and the Cure | News | PETA Australia. [online] Available at: https://www.peta.org.au/news/animal-homelessness-the-crisis-and-the-cure/ [Accessed 31 Aug. 2017]. Browne, R. (2017). Truth about cats and dogs: 250,000 killed every year. [online] The Sydney Morning Herald. Available at: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/animals/truth-about-cats-and-dogs-250000-killed-every-year-20100605-xlr4.html [Accessed 31 Aug. 2017]. Pet policy particulars for apartment communities. (2010). Units, 34(11), S6. Petcloud.com.au. (2017). #1 Accredited Pet Sitting & Dog Boarding + Minding | PetCloud. [online] Available at: https://www.petcloud.com.au/ [Accessed 1 Sep. 2017].
Survey for Pet Keeping: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSddFCs-4k8vTKtlMukZjuMM7AGhHm1Wiq-qGPmkq_XsZs48yw/viewform Survey for Pet Keeper: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdxJqPSa7Uu7W-plJQVpK5YyhFjBmA_GvMdzCUd63_EwnlZHQ/viewform Survey for Pets Keeping Volunteers: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScFQGMAXGJ17K3dZMJpsJSqOApx9unSA43okYSRM9_H3XSDdg/viewform