The ROVE interactive dog harness provides safe, comfortable, and engaging walks for people ages 55-65 with their dogs. The default bundle comes with two magnetic patches that display “pet me” or “don’t pet me”, so the users can choose to interact with people on their way or not. Customers could also choose patches from the patch library to display their interests or identities and promote social activities. This double-layered harness is made of sturdy leather and Oxford fabric and offers smooth contact for both the owner and the dog.
This is a collaborative project initiated in the course Integrated Product Development. My roles in the team include conducting research, making prototypes, designing patches, building and rendering model for the poster on the left.
Research
The topic of this project was to “encourage people over 40 to go outside more”. After several rounds of investigation and discussion with teammates and advisors, we decided to invest our time into the central question “How might we improve the dog walking experience for people over 40”.
Our secondary research showed that keeping pets is common in our target user group because they are typically financially capable of doing so, and their kids may not be living with them due to various reasons. We selected dogs as the specific type of pet because they need regular outdoor activities, and they are common choices. We divided this central question into several dimensions, like safety, health issues (carrying medicines), and engagement (how to motivate them to interact more with people they meet when they walk their dogs).
After analyzing potential options, out team narrowed down the topics and focused on facilitating the social engagement feature of the harness.
Competitive analysis showed that successful products usually have bigger contact area, more adjustable points, easy-to-wear features. One example even has self-glowing features to increase visibility. Bad products usually have size and strength (quality) issues, even changing the gait of the dogs.
Empathy building
Persona & Journey Map
Prototyping
We investigated existing products on the market and how people rated them. We also bought one of those and conducted empathy tests by using it and walking a dog as primary research. During this process, we realized several hidden problems that the users might face, like difficulty in using buckles while the dog is moving around and the position of the harness.
Based on the existing products, we made two low-fidelity prototypes, one focusing on carrying stuff (multiple pockets) and the other on social engagement (green light for promoting interaction and red light for rejecting interaction – survey suggested that people could usually understand the meaning of the light without textual or icon explanations).
Final Deliverable
After another round of discussion with the advisors, we narrowed down the feature to promote social engagement, which means showing information on the harness to attract other people to talk to the user. We combined the Velcro attachment design from the convenience harness and used it to display information through patches, like “welcome” or “pet me”.
To further improve the convenience of using these patches, we changed Velcro to magnetic, so they could be easily put on and off, and even switch sides. Based on the inspiration board we gathered, we used beige leather to make the harness, and easy-on-and-off buckles for the fixing strips.
Shopping page mockup
Exploded view
JIHONG ZHAO 