Bone-
Appétit!

Project Overview

Bone Appétit is a subscription service that sends dog owners a weekly, personalized recipe to suit them and their dog’s food preferences, enabling them to share the love language of food in a safe and efficient way to enhance their companionship. This product aims to minimize misunderstandings between dogs and their owners, and help develop a mutually enjoyable routine and experience.

Role:

Team:

Tools:

Timeline:

UX researcher, UI Designer

Collaborated with Chloe Chen, Kayla Chun, and Rose Hsiao

Figma, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Photoshop, and Procreate

2.5 months in Winter 2023

Problem:

^{Pets and humans have a complex and multifaceted relationship with each other. It can be difficult to understand one another when trying to find ways to bond with one another.}

_{Initial Research}

We compiled our insights to find the commonality that pet owners want to find ways to enjoy time properly with their pets. They want to understand how their pet wants to be loved. One participant stated:

“I feel like if my dog had a love language it would be quality time or words of affirmation because whenever she does something right, she loves when I tell her she’s doing good.”

^{Sorting interview notes on post-its}

From there, we decided that we were most interested in the question:

How might we help pet owners and their pets develop a mutually-understood love language to enhance their companionship?

With this question, we had an ideation session, coming up with 60 different ideas that responded with a design solution.

^{Grouping and narrowing down 60 idea sketches}

After racking our brains for everything we could possibly create, we needed to decide which idea was best. Though it was a difficult discussion (it was tough to eliminate people’s favorite ideas 🙁), we eventually put on the green hat of creativity, and decided on the ideas that had most room for growth.

To settle on our final idea, we decided upon the idea that fit with our participants’ needs the best:

Solution:

Bone-Appétit! : Acollection of recipes for pets and their owners that allows for mutually enjoyable bonding over food.

^{Initial Concept Drawing}

The next step in our process was reaching out to our participants again to test the practicality and desirability of our idea. Overall, while the interviews were initially awkward, we tried to conduct fun activities that helped participants become comfortable.

During the Process...

We faced challenges due to language barriers and translation, but we learned the key fact that dogs are more engaging and predictable, so we narrowed down our participant group.

One cat owner participant noted:

_{“I can’t see my cat actually wanting or enjoying the act of cooking with me, she just mess around and wouldn’t be that interested”}

We learned that as designers, we should never make assumptions about the user experience, because the users themselves are the experts of the way they live.

^{Collection of drawings we created for participants as gifts}

Iteration:

Back to the Research!

^{Participants dog during the on-site feedback session}

Eager to hear more from our participants, we conducted a zoom interview with a participant that provided the perspective of an avid chef, as well as an on-site interview with a less frequent kitchen-user. Although we did not have a very fleshed out prototype to show, we were able to gain amazing insight into which aspects of our aspects users would like to customize. One participant asked:

“I would be too lazy to use this once a week, can you make it so that I can choose how often I receive the recipes?”

These feedback sessions made us realize how powerful direct user feedback can be during any point of the design process.

Regarding the product’s form, participants stated that:

1. They want to be able to look at the recipe easily as they cook.

2. They are concerned about dirtying the recipe in the kitchen

We tested multiple forms to develop a way that the collection of recipes can be easily displayed, and laminated the recipe papers so that users can easily clean/preserve them.

We learned that the form of the product should follow how it is used in each step of the user journey, and should address the user’s needs and pain points.