A smart cat care app that tracks daily habits and health. It connects busy owners with their pets through real-time updates and video highlights, reducing anxiety when away from home.
TIMELINE
Sep - Dec 2025
Institution
University of Washington, HCDE
TEAM
3 Designer, 1 Product Manager
ROLE
UX Researcher & Product Designer
OVERVIEW
Whisker Trail is a pet-health monitoring solution designed for cat owners who experience uncertainty when away from home. It offers real-time and historical insights into activity, eating, drinking, and emotional well-being, helping owners feel reassured about their cat's daily routine.
The system integrates multiple care metrics into a unified dashboard, provides AI-curated daily highlights, and supports multi-cat households.
Its core purpose is to give owners emotional connection and peace of mind, not just data.
Feature #1
Smart Collar Integration & Unified Dashboard
The system integrates a conceptual smart collar equipped with location tracking and a POV camera to capture the cat's perspective. We designed a streamlined pairing process that syncs this hardware directly to the Homepage. This central dashboard aggregates real-time location data and video feeds, providing owners with an immediate, holistic view of their pet's status.
Feature #2
Spatial Activity Map & Timeline
Going beyond simple step counting, this feature utilizes Spatial Intelligence to map a cat's movement against the user's actual home floor plan. The Live Map and Chronological Timeline visualize exactly where and how cats interact with their environment. This helps owners understand specific behaviors, such as moving between floors for food, and allows them to optimize their home layout to promote physical activity and health.
Feature #3
Predictive Health Reports
This comprehensive analytics hub transforms raw data into actionable care insights. The system tracks long-term trends in critical metrics like hydration, mobility, and litter box usage, which is a key indicator for kidney health. By analyzing historical patterns, it proactively flags anomalies like decreased drinking or increased lethargy to enable the early detection of potential health issues.
Cat owners feel anxiety and lack of control when they are away, especially over eating, drinking, and overall routine. Existing smart devices operate in silos and produce notification fatigue, making it hard to interpret their cat's well-being. Owners want ways to check in emotionally, but current interaction methods risk stressing their pets.
Therefore, owners need a simple, emotionally supportive way to understand their cats' health trends and stay connected, without overwhelming information or fragmented systems.
Step 1: User Research
To understand the real needs of cat owners, we moved beyond simple assumptions. We used a mixed method approach that combined broad quantitative data with deep qualitative observations. This strategy helped us identify the specific emotional and functional gaps in current pet technology.
Step 2: Synthesis & Patterns
Before defining our final personas, our team conducted a rapid brainstorming session. We used sticky notes to map out every possible type of cat owner and their challenges. We looked at broad goals, daily activities, and specific frustrations without limiting ourselves. This wide exploration helped us visualize the diverse needs of cat owners and ensured we understood the full spectrum of behaviors before narrowing down our focus.
We describe users and situations, find patterns, clarify users' wants and needs, and look for their motivation.This wide exploration helped us visualize the diverse needs of cat owners and ensured we understood the full spectrum of behaviors before narrowing down our focus.
Step 3: Final Personas
Primary Persona
Secondary Persona
Sketches
From 100 bad ideas to 1 good one. The path to the final solution was not a straight line. We sketched, erased, and sketched again. We explored diverse concepts ranging from VR pet interaction to complex medical logs. Ultimately, we realized that "less is more." We stripped away the complexity to focus on what matters most: clarity and connection.
SOLUTIONS
Storyboard
Key User Flow
New user onboarding flow
Daily use of cat’s health checking flow
Wireframing
We initiated the prototyping process by low-fi sketching out key pages such as the homepage, Map page, and the Activity Timeline page.
Hifi-Prototype
Smart Collar
✓
Sensor module with biometrics
✓
Real-time location tracking
✓
Behavioral pattern detection
✓
Ultra-wide camera lens
Major Page
Alert System
The system filters out noise, notifying users only of critical anomalies (e.g., "Low water intake" or "Drastic activity drop") based on custom thresholds.
Highlight of the Day
An AI-curated video snapshot that captures positive moments like playing or resting, and provide emotional reassurance while avoiding stressful footage.
Health Goals
Aggregates critical data like hydration and litter usage into one view. Linear progress bars clearly visualize daily achievement against personalized goals.
Live Map
Visualizes movement patterns on the user's actual floor plan. It supports spatial routines where owners separate resources across floors to encourage exercise.
Activity Timeline
A chronological feed of specific behaviors like "First Meal" detected via sensor fusion. This helps owners notice gradual behavioral changes over time.
Safety Signals
Translates inactivity or missed routines into urgent health indicators. The system immediately flags critical issues such as "No Water" or "Long Inactivity" to prevent risks.
Daily Overview & Vitals
This section prioritizes critical alerts and a daily health summary above the fold. It displays core vitals directly to allow for an instant health check without scrolling
Litter Box Health
Tracks the number of completed visits as a key indicator for kidney health. This helps owners detect early signs of urinary issues or discomfort
Nutrition & Hydration
Tracks the exact amount of food and water consumed to address top owner anxieties. It focuses on quantity rather than just time to ensure daily nutritional goals are met.
Activity & Sleep Analysis
Distinguishes between deep sleep and awake stillness to reassure owners about overnight safety. Simple charts visualize active minutes and play bursts without overwhelming jargon.
Behavior & Location Insights
Tracks grooming patterns to identify potential stress or skin issues. Location analysis reveals favorite spots to help owners optimize home layouts for their cat's comfort.
Concept Evolution
To evaluate the effectiveness of the design solution, we conducted tests simulating the typical scanario of health checking flow.
Actions we took after receiving feedback
1. Include multi-cat profile to consider owners with multiple cats
2. Make it clearer the location of the cat in the floor plan
Usability Testing & Iteration
To validate our high-fidelity prototype, we conducted 1-on-1 moderated sessions with 4 participants. We simulated a specific scenario: "It’s Sunday afternoon, you are away on a weekend trip, and you need to check if your cats, Bubba and Nanna, are safe and healthy".
Testing tasks & Scenario
User Testing Findings & Iteration
Style guide
The style guide for this project was developed to ensure consistency in design elements, evoking feelings of health, happiness, trust, and calm.
