Design Challenge

Create an interactive interface that promotes a current social justice issue

Overview

Adopt Don't Shop is a video prototype project for a physical interactive technology and phone application that would encourage animal adoption from shelters. The goal is to bring awareness to the animals that desperately need homes, and adding a social aspect to the process of adoption. The physical display would be installed in brick and mortar shelters, and would allow users to interact with it like a touch screen. The display would have the profile of whatever animal is in the cage next to it, which would include photos and a bio of the animal. The user could then share the animal's profile by sending it to a friend's phone. Users could also remotely look at available animals using the connected app.

My Role

During the course of this project, I got the opportunity to do comparative analysis research, interaction design, and filming and editing. My team and I worked collaboratively to deliver the best product possible over the course of the quarter. We all took on multiple roles, and helped each other push the project forward. I was excited to be able to work in an environment I feel passionately about, as this project allowed me to design something that might help animals.

Initial Research & Brainstorming

During the first stages of this project, we spent about a week and a half researching social justice issues that we could cover in our video prototype and technology solution. We decided on animal welfare, specifically adoption because there are so many preventable animal deaths that occur in shelters each year. This was an issue that touched everyone on the team closely, and we all wanted to see Adopt Don't Shop succeed. We began doing some comparative analysis with other animal rescue focused technologies or videos. We presented what we found to the class, and got feedback from our peers on where to take the idea next.

Sketches

After we had collected some feedback from our peers, we began sketching out what the interface experience might look like. We wanted to include a cat's profile and a dog's profile, as well as the navigational slider that allows users to go between different animals.

Storyboard

Once we had our sketches completed, we decided to create a storyboard using images we would create in Photoshop to represent the animal shelter and the screen interactions. These images were based on a storyline of a girl going to a shelter with our technology implemented, where she finds a cat she wants to adopt. She then sends the cat's profile to her friend, who comes to meet the animal as well. 

Storyboard Video

After creating the storyboard, we turned our story into a video to better portray our thought process. We narrated it with information about each scene and interaction that was taking place. 

After iterating upon our storyboards and receiving feedback from our peers, my team and I rented camera equipment and went to the local animal shelter to film our video prototype. We set up all of our shots before shooting based on our storyboard scenes. My team members both acted as the characters in the video, and I was in charge of most of the filming that day. After we were done filming, we edited our scenes using Final Cut Pro and After Effects. We also filmed more scenes of the hand gestures over a green screen, so that we could overlay our screen interactions of the animal profiles.

Reflections

Our prototype video for Adopt Don't Shop turned out well. We had some time constraints due to it being a class project, and we were limited in our knowledge of shooting and editing video. However, we worked together to create a nicely edited prototype that had a real basis in research. If I were to take this project further, I would ideally like to see it implemented in a shelter, and see the accompanying mobile application developed. While the technology for the interactive screens may not be fully available, a version of this technological solution could potentially be implemented. Overall, I think we achieved our goals to create a project that would raise awareness of animals in shelters who need homes, and offer a solution to the problem.