Elegant Pet Hydration
The PetSafe Healthy Pet Water Station
PetSafe, one of world’s largest pet products companies, knew there was an opportunity out there. They saw that the busy lives of pet owners didn’t always permit them to provide fresh, clean food and water when they weren’t home. Sure, there were some automated products out there, but for some reason, pet owners were not buying them in the quantities they should have. What could they do to solve this challenge and fill this market need?
Enter [applied] Design Thinking. With the help of the M3 Product Design Experts, PetSafe gathered experts and customers to figure out what this group of potential stakeholders were thinking. After extensive analysis, what they found was that people resisted purchasing the existing automated devices because they appeared to be “unclean” after use and they just didn’t look appealing when placed in human living spaces. What was needed was a family of products that were simple to use, extremely reliable, hygienic and designed to suit the human living environment.
M3 translated these needs into an elegant, hourglass-shaped form that is attractive as well as functional. While the pet is the ultimate “user”, it is important to remember that the pet lover is the one that must operate and maintain the device. With that in mind, the M3 experts developed concepts that took into account everything from the fully-loaded weight of the device, tip-resistance and size, to the ability to clean the exposed parts in a dishwasher and the simplicity of gravity-feed dispensing.
The result is the family of PetSafe Healthy Pet water and food stations. Sized to handle everything from cats to large dogs, the Healthy Pet products feature a small footprint to minimize floor space requirements, an elegant tip-resistant hourglass shape combined with a removable, dishwasher-safe stainless steel bowl for cleanliness. Gravity-feed dispensing eliminates the complexity of motors and electronics for ease of use.
A little [applied] Design Thinking can go a long way!
