Com-fi Cat

Far from your most loyal (cat) companion? Give them virtual pets!

About Com-fi Cat

When an owner is far, cats’ want for comfort does not end. The goal of this device is to bring cats comfort while their owner is away and to allow owners to interact with their cat from quarantine, school, work, or vacation. Socially distanced, both owner and cat can still interact through this device!

This product is for cats and their owners. The cat users will be wearing a harness that contains movement sensors and comfort technology. The owner will be interacting with the prototype’s mobile application, which will display sensor data and interaction inputs. Both the owner and cat can trigger a comforting response from the cats’ harness through various movements and gestures.

Features + Interactions

The harnesses that the cats will be wearing includes movement sensors, which tracks their movements, and comfort technology, which allows the harness to respond to either the interactions of the owner or the cat. With the feature description on the left and the gesture and movements on the right, the three main features are:

Rationale. Cats knead when they are happy or content. I chose to emit a comforting vibration when this action is done as a positive response to their happiness. Twisting the wrist back and forth almost replicates the motion of vibration, which makes it easy to remember this action.

Constraint. I was not able to implement the comfort technology that would allow the harness to emit comforting vibrations.

Send wave motion on back ← Cat rubbing against objects or person doing petting gesture

Rationale. Cats scent mark to let other cats know that they have been there and/or to lay claim. I chose to emulate a petting response from the harness as my cats only likes to rubs against my leg when they want to be petted. The owner can also activate this feature with a petting gesture via application.

Constraint. I was not able to implement the comfort technology that would allow the harness to send pulse waves.

Rationale. Cats are always looking for a warm spot to lay in. When there is no sun or warm spot, the owner can rub their shoulders and the harness will warm up 5º higher than the cat’s current body temperature. There is no cat gesture or movement that will trigger this as it can cause cats to overheat if accidentally triggered.

Constraint. I was not able to implement the comfort technology that would allow the harness to emit heat of a specific temperature.

Purpose of Investigation

The purpose of this evaluation is to measure the feasibility and desirability of the movements and gestures. For this prototype method, I am focusing on analyzing a combination of cat and owner gestures and movements to trigger its three main features. Are both users, the cat and the owner, able to correctly interact with the product? Do the users show interest in the product?

The cat was tested in an environment that they consider home, while the owner is tested in their office or apartment far from where the cat is. This is a typical situation where the owner has to travel or leave the house, leaving their cat at home. I am assuming that it is more likely that owners are the ones leaving their house and not the cats.

The owner will be interacting with the application, while the cat will be wearing the harness which contains the comfort technology. The following section is to provide brief context on what the product includes and what the users are interacting with — it is not a test of their physical and visual form.

Prototype

In order to test out this method of prototyping, I decided to allocate more time capturing videos of the test subjects. Rather than creating a new prototype, I re-iterated on my first version of a cat’s wearable IoT harness. Although, a second version of the wearable IoT harness has already been made, I did not have the materials needed to replicate it in real life. Instead, I combined and implemented both design features of both the first and second version, resulting in this:

For more details on the technology and form, refer back to the documentation for both the first and second version of the wearable IoT harness, which are linked above.

Analysis

Prototype

When measuring the desirability of the movements and gestures, I found that the owner gestures were easy to remember and two of three of the gestures matches real life expectations. For the owner, the prototype was easy to use and required little effort and maximum gains—they can simulate physical interactions with their cat and, at the same time, give them comfort. When measuring the feasibility, the owner’s movements are distinctive from one another, can be done with one hand, and does not use complicated movements. This is important when considering accessibility and limited motor skills.

In terms of desirability for the cats and feasibility, these two aspects were harder to gauge. It is currently unknown how well cats will react to a device that stimulates them in place of humans—will they get scared? Will they hate it? Additionally, the comfort device integrated into the harness was not fully fleshed out. Although this aspect of the prototype is not important, it is an important part of the prototype that can determine the appropriate stimulations of the harness.

Overall, while the desirability and feasibility of the product were high for the owners, there’s room for more investigation for the cat’s half. In the future, I would also spend more time iterating on the prototype to include the harness technology to better understand feasibility and interest.

Process

While most of the gestures for the owner matches real life expectations—i.e., petting is triggered by a petting motion— it was harder to translate non-human activities into gestures. For example, for feature 1, it was hard coming up with a motion or gesture that represent “purring” because humans do not purr. This mismatch of meaning and expectation can cause confusion for new or non-avid users.

Additionally, the same could be said for the cat’s movements. Taking feature 2 out of the context that it was designed for my cat specifically, it is hard to make the connection of how scent marking equates to getting petted. I need to further explore the intersection and translations between gestural language and cat actions.

Using movements and gestures to have a virtual interaction with pets can make it feel closer to the normal gestures. However, in the future, I would spend more time coming up with a criteria I can measure in a usability test with cats. I would also plan out a data collection method and list out all of the assumptions I have made about cat behavior, as my knowledge of cats is very limited to the two I live with.