Post on 14-Jan-2017
Lost, found and reunited: locative media for improving animal welfareKathryn Gough Bachelor of Creative Industries (Honours) (Communication Design)Supervisor: Dr Jillian Hamilton
Research Question and Argument
This project argues that elements of locative, social and persuasive media can be utilised to provide an
effective design solution that supports people to
collaboratively locate pets in the community and through doing so, application usage will result in a decrease the amount of pets handled by
shelters.
How can elements of locative and social media be harnessed to improve animal welfare in local
communities, particularly by allowing application users to locate pets?
Project design - CONTEXT
Locativemedia
Persuasive media
Social media
New media
"location-aware technology"
and includes applications
such as mobile and
in-car navigation systems
and "user-led geo-tagging of
online content with
geographical coordinates”.
(Collis and Nitins 2009)
“interactive computing
systems designed to
change people’s
attitudes and
behaviours.”
(Fogg 2003, 1)
web-based or online
systems which support
“individual representation,
mass interaction, formation
and communication of
common-interest groups.”
(Hatzipanagos and Warburton 2009, 51)
Interaction design is defined as
“the art of facilitating or instigating
interactions between humans (or their
agents), which is mediated by products.
Furthermore it is concerned with the
behaviour of products, with how products
work” (Saffer 2004, par 3).
This includes the field of web design.
Project design - METHODOLOGYSolution to Problem• Practice-led research• Effective design
Understanding Design Problem• Participatory action research• Co-design
Design Methodology• Agile Software Development Process• Research methods
– User needs analysis, Questionnaire, Contextual inquiry, User profiles, Task analysis
Agile development process
Interaction design process
Project design - OUTCOMES• Demonstrational web
application– Functionality:
• Locate lost pets• Reunite found pets with owners• View injured and rehoused pets• Links to agencies for adopting
pets and reporting mistreated pets
• User-created pet memorials• Forums, groups, commenting and
private messaging• Graphs of site activity• User motivations including thank
you cards and a point system for participation
• Includes mobile site design
• 7,500 word exegesis
Significance• design contribution which combines the strengths of current technologies and
uses (social, locative media) to develop a contextual solution for a particular community
• extends on pre-existing applications, combine, improve, de-clutter• building a detailed knowledgebase of user submitted content• would decrease the number of animals being handed over to the RSPCA, Animal
Welfare League, council and other agencies and increase the number of animals reunited with their owners without using these organisations’ resources
• draw attention to patterns in where animals have been found or injured• increase community pride through participation in rehousing/reuniting pets with
owners etc• no current application exists like this in Australia yet• extending scholarly writing in the emerging field of locative media
List of referencesCollis, C. and Nitins, T. 2009. Bringing the internet down to earth: emerging spaces of locative media. In Communications Policy & Research Forum 2009, Sydney New South Wales, November 2009. Brisbane: Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology.Fogg, B.J. 2003. Persuasive technology – using computers to change what we think and do. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers: San Francisco.Hatzipanagos, S. And S. Warburton. 2009. Social software and developing community ontologies. ICI Global: London.Saffer, D. 2004. A definition of interaction design. http://www.odannyboy.com/blog/archives/001000.html (accessed March 10, 2010).