Mobile App Design for Cat Parenting

User Researcher

UX Designer

UI Designer

After learning design thinking for three quarters, I designed Purring to help demystify cats’ needs and cultivate cat lovers’ confidence in parenting.

ROLE UX designer, UX Researcher

TEAM Solo project

1 The Cat Problem in Society and Pet Industry

Despite challenges, there lacks a systematic way to guide cat parenting.

That cats are low-maintenance is one of the most notorious rumors. And this leads to appalling social facts.

Irresponsible feeding causes 59% of the cats in the US to be overweight. Insufficient grooming leads to 6% to 15% of cats suffering from skin problems. Lack of attentiveness results in over 400,00 of them ingesting toxins like medications, human food, and plants.

Nevertheless, there lacks a systematic way to guide parenting.

“Cat parenting is not as easy as expected, while pet service brands care more about commercial objectives than cats’ needs,”

said Jacob Compton, 27, a 3-year-old Sphinx cat dad.

Current solutions consist of veterinary services, pet-care brands, and expert blogs. However, the information is piecemeal. Terminologies are overwhelming. Constant veterinary visits and wrong product purchases could be pricey.

2 Meet Purring: A Solution for Cat Parents, from Cat Parents

After talking with other novice cat parents, ideating, designing, testing, and iterating, I created five features that differentiate Purring and delight users.

Smart Mall

Connect cat growth with the right products.

Shopping Guide

Build users’ trust with professional filters and genuine reviews.

MindReader

Purring’s one-million-dollar idea!

Demystify cats’ needs with motion-emotion guide and real-time recognition.

Online Community

A low-cost engaging support group with user-generated content.

Cat Parents Calendar

Build users’ sense of growth with daily checklists and activity advices.

3 Knowing Users: Frustrated Novice Cat Parents

“I felt like I’m waisting time and money doing the wrong thing,”

said Srishti Bose, 29, a cat mom with a 2-year-old longhair cat.

Behind Srishti and Jacob in the first section are other Generation Z and Millennial cat parents, who occupy the majority of novice cat parents. They live an on-the-go lifestyle and lack a strong economic foundation. Wanting to bring out the best in their cats, they especially attach great importance to information accuracy and personalized parenting.

Due to these characteristics, their complaints range from tough time management to the lack of community support.

“In my family, cats come first,”

said Amy Boyle, 52, an experienced cat mom.

Amy Boyle’s words inspire me to glean ways to decode cat behaviors and the reasons behind them.

4 Knowing Cats: Everyday Feline Thoughts

“It’s hard to know what’s going on inside the mind of a cat. But there are ways,”

said Yuki Hattori, Japan's leading cat doctor.

Cats are perfect predators with amazing physical hardware. That’s why cats sometimes attack people, prefer staying in dark corners, and love climbing fridges.

Besides, cats imply their thoughts and emotions in their ears, eyes, tails, and sounds. Blinking is love, thrashing the tail is annoyance, all hair up is absolute fear, and purring - purring is the enchanted joy.

Physical motions help decode cats’ minds in general. But cats are endowed with unique individual instincts, too.

5 Design a Parenting Guidance App

User pain points and cats’ needs require a highly personalized, low-cost, educational, and trustworthy solution.

How might we demystify cats’ needs and build confidence in parenting for new cat owners?

I develop 25 product ideas and finally combine them into five core features.

Users take care of cats. Purring takes care of users.

Caring, personalized, enlightening, and autonomous are both Purring’s personality and design principles.

6 Perfecting Purring: Iterate

While improving Purring, I keep in touch with various novice cat parents and cat owners to improve based on their feedback.

A great guidance app grants users absolute autonomy.

Aware of its importance, I iterated Purring to enable cat parents to use the product at their own will.

Gradually, Purring takes shape as a product full of engaging, thoughtful, and witty details.

Click me to interact with Purring!

7 Reflection: To Err is Human, To Purr is Feline.

Great cat parenting can be life-changing.

The project took place in 2023, but it all traced back to 2021 when I met Chuan Chuan the astray cat. He was dashing on the road. I worried that he would be crushed by cars.

I brought him back and took care of him till found him a new home. It took two months. But it’s enough to change his life, and my life, too.

With careful parenting, Chuan Chuan grew from a coward and timid kitten to a confident and secure little lion. My depression from getting rejected by all Ph.D. programs was cured by his everyday meows, purring, sleeping on my lap, and rubbing my face.

It is this impact that motivates me to design and constantly iterate Purring.

Iteration clears design mistakes.

While designing Purring, I worked closely with cat parents, deeply empathize with them, and truly improve the design based on their feedback. This experience taught me that a good product should be grounded in users and solve real user problems.

Improving and enhancing the product is even more important than creativity.

In half of this project, I was refining the details to simplify user flow, encourage users’ initiative, and grant user autonomy. I wish every pixel of Purring could exude the initial kind intentions: to be caring, personalized, inspiring, and most importantly, helpful.

Any Thoughts?

In the next steps, I will conduct another round of usability testing to verify the solution. After it, I aspire to improve the product based on the feedback.

If you have any questions or feedback on this project, don’t hesitate to contact me: irisyingjieliu@gmail.com. I appreciate your opinions!

Thank you for reading. ❤️