Project 4 Conscious consumption

Brief

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For the fourth project, I choose the topic of “Conscious Consumption” among the three topics, because we consume every day. First of all, I have carried on some expansion to the current consumption type through brainstorming. People’s daily expenses mainly include clothes, food and entertainment. Among them, when I collected data, I found that one of the current consumption is people’s spending on keeping pets.

Brainstorming

At the same time, I also found a phenomenon through news reports — because of COVID-19, people isolated at home, bored and in need of companionship, has led to a surge in the pet industry, especially those young people who live alone.
As the lockdown was lifted, people went back to work offline and found they no longer had much time to care for their pets, leaving them at home alone.

Next, I learned about the current growth trend of China’s pet industry. It is found that 70% of the pet owners are born in the 1990s, and there are more female pet owners than male pet owners.

Research

The current situation is that pet owners have no time to take care of their pets, and pets left alone at home will cause damage to the living environment, such as chewing up the sofa or headphones. This has forced pet owners to buy new furniture. According to the report, animals that are left alone for more than four hours on a regular basis are more likely to suffer from depression, and pet owners need to take their pets to the doctor. This also increases their economic pressure to a certain extent.

I decided to target people of this project who leave a pet at home alone for work reasons, young people aged 25 to 30 who live alone.
This project mainly solves the problem of young people who live alone and leave a pet alone at home because of work. Their pet, because of staying alone for a long time, will cause harm to their physical and mental health and destroy the home environment. It also increases the financial pressure on pet owners. Hope to help the healthy growth of these pets, at the same time, advocate a sustainable consumption mode, let people more conscious of pet spending.

Interview

PACT

Journey map

Persona

A preliminary idea

In view of my research, my initial design idea was to make an experience-oriented game.

However, after communicating with my tutor in the tutorial, I found that this idea could not meet the needs of the target group, so I searched the materials again to find new design points

A search for how to care for a pet at home alone turned up a new design point. With the increasing popularity of pet-themed cafes nowadays, people like to have afternoon tea while playing with a cute cat or dog. Businesses in these stores will post some “recruitment information” online.

I want to design a pet recruitment app. When their owners go to work, they can send their pets to work in the nearby cafe. Of course, the work is just a formality, as pets can be cared for professionally in a relatively free environment, while also being able to drink and play with other pets.