Time commitment
Daily care is difficult to sustain for students and full-time workers with busy, changing routines.
FurReal. AR Pet Simulator
- Role
- Project Lead · Product Design · UI/UX Design · User Research · Storyboarding
- Team
- Po-yu Chen · Erin Tolleson · Fay Ma · Meiyao Li
- Timeline
- Jan – Mar 2025 · 11 weeks
- Tools
- Figma · Blender · After Effects
Final pitch
FurReal is an AR pet simulator that prepares prospective owners through gamified, hands-on experience.
Context
Pets come with real responsibilities.
Over 23 million American households adopted pets for companionship while working from home. Many underestimated the sustained care behind pet ownership: feeding, grooming, exercise, and social interaction.
Rushed adoptions can lead to unintentional neglect, mistreatment, or abandonment. Prospective owners often hesitate because they are unsure whether they can offer a pet the care and commitment it needs.
Challenge
Pet care isn’t one-size-fits-all.
Beginner guides are accessible but not personal. They rarely offer hands-on practice or routines tailored to someone's space, schedule, and lifestyle—leaving future owners anxious and unprepared for adoption.
How might we prepare prospective pet owners for the time commitment, lifestyle adjustment, and emotional resilience needed before adopting a real pet?
Practice, not just advice
Prospective owners need a safe way to rehearse care tasks and learn through trial and error.
Realistic expectations
A lack of preparation can turn ordinary challenges—training, hygiene, and space—into overwhelming ones.
Solution
An experiential learning kit that builds routines.
FurReal is a pet-care experience simulator with gamified, interactive, data-driven learning. It helps future owners set realistic expectations and make informed decisions in a spatially immersive environment.
01. AR device
Spatial guidance, in the moment.
Image recognition analyzes user inputs and surroundings so a virtual pet can respond to its environment. Real-time audio cues and AR overlays guide care tasks step by step.
02. Companion app
Accessible without the hardware.
Mobile AR scanning keeps the experience available for every learner. AI-generated adoption insights, progress tracking, and gamification support long-term engagement.
03. AR stickers
Make care stations visible.
AR-recognizable stickers mark stationary care items such as food bowls, beds, litter areas, and toys. Learners scan a sticker and complete the corresponding hand-guided task.
04. Pet care supplies
Learn by doing.
A flexible kit of real care tools supports hands-on practice for complex routines such as walking, grooming, and waste disposal—then returns for reuse when the learner is ready.
Onboarding
Context-aware AI.
AI-powered pets recognize and interact with a user's physical environment, making the simulation more immersive and practical.
By integrating AR with a home setup, FurReal helps users find ideal feeding, sleeping, and play areas through trial and error.
Step 1: Scan living space
Construct a spatial map so FurReal can adapt pet behaviors to real-world obstacles, furniture, and room layouts.
Step 2: AR device connection
Connect mobile and AR glasses to create real-time awareness of a virtual pet across devices.
Step 3: Interactive AR visualization
Install AR stickers to mark pet-care stations, then bring 3D models and a virtual pet into the mapped space.
Complete a task
Gamification helps build habits.
Consistent pet care is built through positive reinforcement, progress tracking, and real-time feedback—not just a checklist.
Users move through a repeatable loop of a behavioral trigger, an actionable scenario, and a reward that supports readiness.
Step 1: Behavior trigger
A mobile notification nudges users to complete pet-care tasks when they are away from their AR glasses.
Step 2: Actionable AR scenario
Hands-on interactions replicate real care situations and give feedback in the moment.
Step 3: Reward consistency XP
Completing a task earns progress toward pet-adoption readiness and makes daily care feel achievable.
Step 1: Behavior trigger
Task prompts can also appear inside the AR device while the learner is in the moment.
Step 2: Reward bonding XP
A second kind of reward recognizes the attention and connection that build a healthy relationship with a pet.
Chores
Set realistic expectations.
FurReal builds prospective owners' emotional resilience and prepares them for unfiltered pet-care realities by stress-testing chores in their daily routines.
Oh boy... Don't eat chocolate!
Trigger unexpected events such as stealing food from the counter, biting furniture, or barking excessively at night. FurReal guides users step by step and explains the root causes of these events.
Location keeps you accountable
Socialization with other dogs and potty walks are equally important for a dog’s wellbeing. FurReal tracks GPS to make sure users complete these tasks outdoors—not at home.
Waste disposal
Hygiene tasks such as grooming and bathing can benefit from step-by-step AR overlay tutorials and real-time AI feedback.
Assessing readiness
Progress visualization makes growth visible.
FurReal turns care history into a tangible readiness measure across consistency, bonding, hygiene, and health—helping people identify strengths, adjust settings, and make grounded adoption decisions.
Research
First-time pet owners
To understand the pet industry and pain points of owning a pet, we conducted surveys with 50+ participants who are students, employees, and professional dog trainers. We then interviewed 8 pet owners and 2 prospective owners.
Current pet owners
What did you wish you knew before getting a pet?
“Pet insurance takes lots of money, vet, vaccination… like adding a child to the family.”
“Puppies are louder than expected… cried non-stop, barked constantly, peed everywhere…”
Prospective pet owner
What discouraged you from getting a pet?
“Am I at the right stage to bring a cat with me if I can’t be around it a decent amount in a day?”
“I’m stressed about setting him up for failure (i.e. separation anxiety, not feeding him well enough). I don’t want to make mistakes because I don’t know any better.”
Insights
Adoption is like parenthood
01. Time-Commitment
Pets require daily care—feeding, grooming, exercise, and social interaction—which can be challenging for students and full-time workers.
02. Hands-on Experience
Aspiring pet owners worry about proper care, as beginner guides lack hands-on experience, leaving them anxious and uncertain.
03. Trial and Error
Experienced pet owners learn to interpret pets’ intentions through body language and sounds through trial and error.
04. Training or Abuse?
Lack of space and unprepared owners can lead to misinterpreted pet behavior, unintentional neglect, or mistreatment due to inadequate readiness.
Ideation
Working backwards
We explored multiple mediums before we landed on AR. Physical toy, pet care services, dog walking apps. We generated 60+ possibilities with Crazy Eights and quadrant analysis, prioritizing breadth over perfection.
We clustered ideas around time management and feeling unprepared for complex tasks such as grooming and training.
Converge
Downselecting
PawG. Allen is a movable smart pet camera that analyze pet behaviors, body language, and health conditions with image recognition.
By providing real-time care recommendations, such as medication reminders, exercise plans, and grooming tips, PawG. Allen helps pet owners better understand their pets’ non-verbal cues. This system reduces trial and error in pet care, ensuring a healthier and happier pet experience.
User testing
Co-designing with stakeholders.
We invited prospective pet owners and pet-care experts to make, act, and tell: they revised a daily schedule after adopting a pet, simulated walks with unexpected events, and reacted to AI-generated adoption scenarios.
Making
Exposed real time conflicts in care routines.
Acting
Tested simulated care through mobile and AR interactions.
Telling
Created space for honest reactions to adoption readiness.
Storyboards
Different life stages, different learning curves.
Kids might romanticize pet ownership and underestimate daily responsibilities. They may struggle with routines like feeding and grooming.
Full-time workers may worry about balancing pet care with their busy schedules, feeling guilty for leaving their pets alone for long hours or not giving them enough attention. They may also be overwhelmed by random events.
Learning
The people you build with shape what you build!
