Introduction

A forward-thinking startup in Japan partnered with my team to build a new mobile app aimed at helping dog owners become “skilled veterinarians” for their pets. The concept centered on preventive healthcare, offering insights into a dog’s physical and behavioral wellness in an intuitive, easy-to-understand format.

The app empowers pet owners to proactively manage their dogs’ health by visualizing key indicators derived from daily routines, like walks, grooming, and activity patterns. The goal is to keep dogs healthy and happy, reducing dependency on medication through early detection and smarter care habits.

Key Features Delivered

  • Personalized Walk Planning: The app sets tailored walking goals based on the dog’s breed, age, gender, and owner preferences, making every walk purposeful and optimized for health.

  • Smart Weather-Aware Scheduling: Real-time predictions of ambient and road surface temperatures guide users to choose the safest time for outdoor activities, reducing health risks.

  • Clear Health Visualization: Behavioral and walking data are translated into easy-to-read health indicators, enabling daily check-ins and early intervention with minimal effort.

Team size

9 members

Industry

Pet Tech

Technology

Flutter, Python, AWS, Firebase Services, Health Kit, ChatGPT

Highlights

Value Delivered

  • Personalized Care Goals: Based on detailed dog information, the app provided tailored health and activity goals, optimizing the care process.
  • Enhanced Bonding and Happiness: AI-generated comments and assessments were highly encouraging, prompting owners to care more for their dogs, thereby increasing happiness for both owner and pet.
  • Stable Performance Under High Traffic: The system was optimized to efficiently handle large amounts of app traffic and usage, ensuring a seamless experience for all users.

Challenges

Building this app came with several complex hurdles:

  • Cross-Platform, Multi-Language Support: A seamless experience across iOS and Android with support for multiple languages was essential to serve a diverse user base in Japan and potentially beyond.
  • High-Concurrency Architecture: The system needed to scale for up to 3,000 active users concurrently, requiring a high-performance backend that could process and deliver data in real time.
  • User Experience That Builds Trust: The interface had to be more than functional, it needed to foster emotional bonding between the owner and their dog, encouraging continued use and engagement.
  • Meaningful and Personalized Feedback: To keep owners motivated, the app required a system that could interpret data and provide relevant, empathetic messages tailored to individual dogs.

Solutions

To tackle these challenges, we used smart technical approaches and focused on making the app easy and enjoyable to use:

  • Cross-Platform Development with Flutter: Utilizing Flutter for mobile app development, ensuring compatibility on both iOS and Android with high performance and a consistent interface.
  • Personalized Walk Goal System: The app calculates and suggests appropriate walking distance, duration, and frequency goals for each dog, based on age, breed, gender, and the owner’s specific objectives for their pet.
  • Health Activity Tracking and Management: Storing and displaying detailed information about walk distance, duration, and frequency through intuitive charts. Additionally, it allows for the management of care activities (such as vaccinations, pet hotel stays, health check-ups) and records unusual behaviors (related to eyes, head, legs, tail).
  • AI (ChatGPT) Integration for Personalized Feedback: Leveraging ChatGPT to analyze walk data and generate encouraging, friendly comments and assessments tailored to each dog, fostering greater owner engagement.
  • Robust Infrastructure on AWS: Developing the backend system on AWS, ensuring flexible scalability and stable performance to handle a large number of users and continuous data processing. Firebase Services are used for auxiliary services like authentication and real-time databases.