Overview
Tail Tracker is an application we designed during our quarter-long group project for the CPSC 5220 UX Design course in our Masters in Computer Science program. This project is comprised of numerous milestones representing key phases of the UX Design process. This project provides an opportunity for students to apply theory to a real-world design using the same tools and techniques used for UX Design in industry.
This blog post describes our project, it’s inspiration, our target user groups, and a brief competivive analysis. Combined, this information represents the “Discover” phase of the UX Design double-diamond process. This is the ideation phase of the process where the initial brainstorming takes place. Stakeholders and target users are identified for future interviews and a competitive analysis is performed to ensure the idea is novel and that sufficient key differentiators exist to justify the project’s existence.
This is the first step in the UX Design process. After this information is captured, analyzed, and refined, we will proceed to interview our target user groups and created personas based on the results.
The Big Idea
Our project idea is like Waze for dog parks – it uses crowd-sourced information to
provide up to date information about traffic at local dog parks. This information can be
used to select the right dog park whether you’re looking for quiet and secluded, crowded
and rowdy, or anything in between!
Inspiration
Two of the most frustrating things about going to a dog park is coming to an empty park
or coming to a park that is overcrowded. Worse still, the dogs present may be hostile or
a breed that does not get along with your canine companion. This app aims to show dog
traffic at your local dog park while providing a rating system for other dogs and their
associated age and breed information. This information can be obtained directly from a
mobile app and integrations with whistle tracker (and other dog tracking services).
Target Users
- Dog owners
- People who own dogs and want them to socialize at a dog park
- Dog lovers
- People who enjoy seeing and playing with other dogs
- Cynophobes
- People who are afraid of dogs in general or afraid of a certain breed of dogs
Competitors & Key Differentiators
- Dog Park Finder
- App that displays on the map what dog parks are near your area. There is a convenient map as well as reviews for the dog park. Not much different from google maps. Our app is different because it identifies the current traffic in each dog park individually.
- Paw Parks
- App that rates and reviews dog parks in our area. This app focuses more on the reviews that park goers would have of them. Our app is different because it identifies the current traffic in each dog park individually.
- BringFido
- App that not only includes parks but also hotels and locations that allow dogs in their premises. Much like the previous apps, they focus on reviews whereas ours focus on current traffic present
CPSC 5220 - UX Design 