Ndigi Gichingiri Presents
Guardian
Creating PetSafe's flagship GPS containment collar with tracking.
Background
PetSafe Brands' top-grossing category has been Containment (wireless/in-ground fences) since the company was founded over 30 years ago. In 2022, 2 competitors gained sizable market share in a segment we weren't in, GPS Fencing. Unfortunately these offerings were either expensive, unreliable, or worse, a combination of both. Guardian was kicked off as the company's highest priority project in an effort to provide pet parents with a cost friendly reliable solution that keeps their dogs safe, to maintain market share, and to grow in our largest category.
My Role
In partnership with a UX Researcher and a member of our Insights team, I led the discovery phase by creating storyboards to illustrate potential use cases and align on our feature set. Following that, I designed the end-to-end app experience including onboarding, fence setup, tracking, settings, and notifications.
The problem
Without physical fences, dogs are at higher risk of getting lost, and when they do escape, they can be difficult to find without a way to track them.
The Solution
We created a GPS collar with a companion app that combines virtual fencing to contain dogs safely on their property with tracking features that help pet parents recover their dogs quickly if they escape.
Tracking made simple
The dashboard serves as the central hub where pet parents track their dogs, designed to feel familiar to anyone who has used tracking apps like Find My or even social platforms like Snapchat. By showing all pets on one unified map rather than separate views, we made it easy to see the location of multiple pets all at once.
Speed when you need it most
Pet parents get instant alerts when their dog leaves a fence, and can activate Lost Dog Mode, which provides more frequent location updates to quickly find their dog and get them home sooner.
Drawing boundaries
made easy
Pet parents tap points on a map to create custom fences for their property. We found that competitors use two main approaches for fence setup: walking the entire perimeter or drawing on a map. We chose drawing because it's just as accurate but faster and easier, especially for people with bigger properties.
