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).