Addressing owners’ concerns while away by connecting them with carers and making care tasks and progress feedback traceable.
Contributed to interviews, needs analysis, and service-flow design, and led owner/carer interaction prototypes, user testing, and iteration.
PetaLife is a startup exploring products for pet-health observation. Its existing product combines AI-based analysis of pet stool images with health records, helping owners notice abnormalities and seek professional support in time rather than replacing veterinary care.
Image analysis and health records
Pet-health tools and an existing user base
Users struggle to build a lasting habit of proactive recording
Product trust and long-term service relationships remain to be established
In which real care scenarios could PetaLife’s health-observation capabilities provide more specific support?
In a public survey of 642 pet owners, 55.8% reported difficulty travelling alone, while 28.8% struggled to handle pet-health emergencies.
Across initial interviews with nine pet owners, care by friends and family, pet boarding, and leaving pets at home alone were also recurring experiences.
We focused the open business brief on “care while pet owners are away” and conducted in-depth interviews with nine pet owners:
We distilled the findings into research insightsand identified design opportunities.
We organized offline care into a shared service journey for owners, carers, and the platform. Both parties collaborate around the same tasks, while care records and reviews build a foundation of trust for future cooperation.
When owners cannot be with their pets, how can they find someone who meets their pet’s needs and feels trustworthy? Starting from the pet profile, PetaLife recommends carers based on time, location, and care needs. Carer profiles, community posts, and service reviews help both sides understand one another before beginning a service relationship.
Pet profiles, quick actions, and current services are brought together so owners can understand the care status and start looking for the right carer.
Reuse the existing pet profile and add time, location, service type, and special requirements to communicate a complete request.
Show matching reasons alongside reviews, distance, and availability to help owners find an appropriate carer.
Qualifications, service reviews, and daily posts reveal a carer’s experience and habits, offering more evidence before an invitation is sent.
Owners review the arrangement and special requirements so every important detail travels with the invitation.
Carers upload qualifications and share pet-care knowledge to communicate their professionalism and build credibility.
After receiving an invitation, the carer reviews the pet profile and service plan, then accepts, declines, or continues the conversation.
Everyday routines that feel familiar to an owner may still require clarification for a carer. PetaLife turns those details into scheduled care tasks with instructions and recording requirements, and keeps conversations tied to specific tasks so both parties share the same understanding before care begins.
Import existing care information and organize tasks by feeding, cleaning, companionship, and other categories so owners can refine the daily plan.
Set the time, instructions, and reference images for each task so details such as item locations and feeding methods are not lost.
Carers review tasks chronologically to understand the care rhythm and identify anything that needs clarification before confirming the plan.
Images, video demonstrations, step-by-step instructions, and completion records are brought together in each task detail.
Conversations launched from a task include its reference automatically, keeping both sides clear about the arrangement being discussed.
After a service is booked online, PetaLife brings equipment delivery and setup into the journey so owners and carers are ready before care begins, supporting remote viewing and task records later.
PetaLife sends a fixed home camera to the owner and a wearable chest camera to the carer.
The owner places the fixed camera in the agreed pet activity area, ready for remote viewing during the service.
Before the visit, the carer checks and wears the camera so the care tasks leave an execution record.
Once care begins, owners need to understand how their pet is doing while carers need to stay focused on the work itself. PetaLife connects progress, live footage, and observations through a task timeline, combining remote viewing and exception alerts so owners can check in when needed and review a complete record afterward.
The timeline highlights the current task and keeps instructions, completion criteria, and recording actions together so carers can work in order.
The chest camera records each task while the carer adds notes and photos and reports anything unusual when necessary.
Owners can view the scene through the fixed home camera, understand the current situation, and open detailed records when needed.
Task records and service footage are summarized with AI-assisted observations, follow-up prompts, and an invitation to rate the service.
We invited four pet owners and two in-home pet carers to take part in 30-minute semi-structured interviews and scenario walkthroughs, helping us identify potential risks in real service settings.
Due to the project timeline, detailed design and a second round of validation for these features were not completed.The feedback was organized into directions for the next product iteration, prioritizing safety handover and recording-privacy mechanisms.