PetInsights
Maïlys Terrier, Pavni Bakhshi, Tosha Bapat
Names and Contact Information:
Members:
Advisor:
GitHub: https://github.com/mterrier23/PetInsights
Goals
A few of our teammates have experience volunteering at animal shelters and have observed how a key issue shelters deal with is pets being brought back or returned due to being not what the adopter or buyer expected.
To help tackle this issue, PetInsights was created. With its crowdsourcing feature, users share the interactions they’ve had with the pets, giving potential adopters more insight on the pet’s personality and behavior. If adopters have an early understanding of the what to expect from the pet, they’ll be able to make more conscious decisions in the adoption process.
Intellectual Merits
Many adoption apps already exist, such as PetFinder, Petdoption, etc., but none of these apps allow users to share information on the pets listed. To our knowledge, PetInsights is the first crowd-sourced pet adoption application.
This will also help users adopt pets they have “virtually interacted with” at a time where they cannot necessarily go outside such as during a pandemic. Shelter Animal Counts (has a database tracking about 500 shelter organizations) recorded a rise in 15% adoptions - about 26,000 more adoptions in 2020 than the year before.
Broader Impacts
Saves and improves lives of many animals
People can save time and resources
Shelters support animals by nursing them and helping them. Sometimes, shelters run out of resources. By adopting pets, these animals’ lives can be improved (and potentially saved).
It can be difficult to find adoption centers, and a pet that you like. By using the app, people can save the time it takes to physically visit shelters and pets.
There is a push towards volunteering and donation
The users of our app are also reminded of the work they can do to benefit the world - by donating goods they would throw away otherwise, or by volunteering their time.
Images from unsplash.com
Design Specifications
Technologies
To create our cross-platform application, we are using Xamarin.Forms, a framework developed on XAML and C#.
Our data is hosted on Google’s Firebase service. �We are also using Google Maps API to allow location and map-based search options to users.
We also use Git for version control and Figma to create our app design.
Cross-Platform Compatible
iOS
Android
Challenges
Accessibility
Limitations of Xamarin Forms
Our goal was to create an application that is accessible to all users.
Xamarin Forms as a framework posed many roadblocks in our implementation.
Real-Time Updates
As the source of data for our app is crowdsourced, the application had to be able to handle real-time updates.
Milestones
Establish frameworks and APIs to use
RESEARCH
DEV STAGE 1
Develop and Test Adoption User Experience
DEV STAGE 3
Develop and Test Benevolence Experience
DESIGN PLANS
Wireframe, Database Design
DEV STAGE 2
Develop and Test Organization Experience
DEMO
Future Plans
Thank you!