Bark
The result of a 12 hour design challenge – Bark is an app that allows you to track your dog's location and activity level using a smart collar.
*Revisited in 2025 to loosely complete brand identity
December 2020 / March 2025
UX research
UI design
Graphic design
Branding
Brand Identity
UX Result Hackathon Case Study
Problem
Dog owners can't track their dog(s) when they escape.
Solution
Buy the Bark smart collar and pair it with an app to track the user’s dogs.
Goal
Enable users to set up their smart collar with a mobile app and display core application features on the app's home screen.
User Research
To understand our users’ needs, we created a survey and sent it to friends and family. Our user research and personas are based on the survey responses from 20 dog owners.
80% of our surveyed dog owners struggle with finding good routes to take their dog on walks.
53% worry that their dog is not getting enough exercise.
60% would purchase a smart collar with a tracking device for their dog(s).
50% of the dog owners wanted tracking, activity monitoring features, and alerts when their dog is far away from their house on an app that connects to their smart collar.
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% of Responders
User Responses
Wireframes & Process
To start the design process, we made sketches and user flow diagrams. Our sketches were rough and we were not able to do as much testing and research as we would have liked due to the limited time we had for the hackathon. However, we managed to share our ideas effectively and come up with sketches and a user flow diagram before delving into wireframing. Below you will see low fidelity and high fidelity wireframes that we made on Adobe XD.
Final Mockups & Prototype
The final step of our onboarding process for the UX Result Hackathon was to create beautiful mockups of our design to use in our final submission. I made these mockups on Adobe Photoshop, and they really pulled our project together and made our app feel real. Interacting with potential users was difficult because we had limited time for this challenge and no interaction with others being home during the pandemic. However, we were able to use a few members of the UX/UI Association at San Jose State University as potential users of our app. If I had more time, I would have done usability testing and made changes to our onboarding process based on those results.
