How can we help horse owners save their equines and evacuate in time?”
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Tracking
Your Horse
Anywhere, Anytime
ROLE
UX Designer
DATE
June 2021
- Present
PROJECT STATUS
🚀 Under Development
LAUNCH TEAM
April Zhao (PM), Hua Lo (Frontend), Shixin Qin (Backend)
Sponsored by: T-Mobile
Project Context
In 2017, 29 out of 60 horses living at a Californian ranch were killed when a brush fire consumed the area. The rancher had no time to evacuate their horses before they were forced to flee. Horrific scenes like this are becoming more common as wildfires, and natural disasters are gripping the world.
The sponsor of my Launch Project, T-Mobile, concerns this problem and hopes to play a role with their wide internet infrastructure. My team wants to dive deeper into this problem and figure out the possibilities behind it.
How can we
help horse owners save their equines
and evacuate in time?”
Based on this problem, we conducted user research and found that we can develop an IoT system to track and locate horses. Based on our team members’ skill sets and sponsors’ expectations, we plan to develop a system consisting of wearable devices for horses and a Mobile App for horse owners. My role is UX designer and 3D model maker.
Followed Human-Centered design process throughout 6 months
We followed the Human-Cantered Design process to investigate how to develop a whole new product from the ground up. Letting user research be our guide, we brainstormed and ideated multiple solutions. We then tested our ideas via usability tests and developed a high-fidelity interactive prototype based on our findings.
Discovery
Survey
To start with the research, we conducted two rounds of surveys. For the first one, we asked many basic and general questions and hoping to narrow down the key questions. Based on the responses, we did the second survey and asked some specific questions. Both surveys received tons of user responses.
Interview with horse owners and vets
We also did four user interviews with two horse owners and two vets to get more in-depth information and verify our survey findings. Interviewees A and B are of the two types of Target Audience (private owners and ranchers). For interviewees C and D, we were exploring the possibility of monitoring health-related data.
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Competitive Analysis
We analyzed the existing competitors for animal tracking. We found that there are currently no products focused on horse tracking but have several products aimed at the pet markets like dogs and cats.
We learned that:
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Their battery life is all less than 48 hours.
Besides the location feature, only 1 product(Fi Collar) has health-related features. -
There are no tracking products for big animals like horses yet.
Use Cases
“Let Releasing be the best backup
for horses in an emergency!”
Based on our research, we believe our product can help the horse owners when:
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an emergency happens (disasters/wild bears), while horse owners can not evacuate all of their horses
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their horses jump over the fence and run away from their houses or ranches
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they want to check the daily activity and know whether the horse is in good condition
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today's horse riding trail is fantastic, and they want to record the trail after the riding
While analyzing our research findings, we realized that trailer evacuation is always the best and first option, no matter how reliable and accurate our device is. So we believe that providing information to help horse owners act ahead is also a valuable feature.
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Design
Requirement
Prioritization
After consulting hardware and electric experts, we had to say there is an unsolvable conflict between long battery life and heart rate monitoring. Long battery life is the basis of all things, while we can also get some health info from the activity data. So we prioritized them and decided to discarded the heart rate monitoring feature.
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Solution
Ideation
We brainstormed the possible user experience for the mobile app. The users would have a wide range of ages, so the interactions should be easy to start and learn. Just as simple as when we use a map App to navigate home.
Info Architecture
Based on the design requirements and prioritization, I designed the information architecture of the mobile app. Tracking, Alert and My horses are make up the tab bar. They are the key functions.
Hi-Fi Prototype
I use Figma as my prototype tool, and because T-Mobile sponsors us, I need to use their design components and follow T-Mobile guidelines.
Usability Tests
A/B test
When I was designing the alert list page, I had different ideas with my teammates, who played the PM role on the style of the page. So we did an A/b Test for these two versions. The result supported my opinion — users don’t want to browse these alerts as ordinary newspapers. They want to know whether these are noteworthy things.
Workflow Evaluation
We recruited eight horse owners to test the task flows. We got many positive evaluations but also tons of suggestions to navigate our next iteration.
Iterations
Based on the results of our usability test, I had some important findings and made an iteration on my design.
Feedback:
Users need to know quickly whether an alert is of value to them
My Alert browsing page doesn’t provide users enough information about “do I need to see these one” good-looking photos are not valuable to them, compared to severity and distance
Solution:
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Replace the hero image with map view with the accident location
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Display distance and severity information
Feedback:
Unpairing may be more frequent than I thought.
I thought Unpairing must be a low-frequency behavior, so I put the unpair access to a very deep place. In contrast, it turned out to be wrong. Private owners may purchase one set and use it for two horses because they ride one horse every time.
Solution:
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Move the Unpairing access to the horse info page.
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To prevent mistouching, I moved it upward and set a double confirmation popover.
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Reflections
Some potential risks remain to be considered
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Horses have a natural resistance to things like tethers on their bodies. So mounting the device would be a chore for Horse owners. We needed to work out the easiest and fastest way to install it, and the initial idea was to use tools with solid magnets and embedded hooks.
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The solidity and reliability of the equipment on the horse will determine everything. All of our designs are based on the fact that "the equipment is on the horse." If it falls off while the horse is running, then everything means nothing.
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The timeliness and reliability of disaster alerts can determine whether it gains the trust of users. It requires dedicated staff to collect and review to maintain them, which will significantly increase the cost of operations and reflect in the final product's price.
Updates
T-Mobile highly endorsed our design.
In the Milestone three presentations, we were so excited to received appreciation from the T-Mobile team for most of our designs and ideas.
In the coming months, we will focus on hardware design and development, which will be the key to the success of the project.
