A Mobile Application for Children that Promotes Wildlife Rescue Knowledge

UX & UI Designer | November 2016 - February 2017

The Origin of This Application

In one festival, one of my relatives came to my house to bring a giant salamander as a gift. In China, it is a kind of national protect animal.

How to deal with this little animal has bothered me. After that I decided to investigate this phenomenon.

Why state-protected animals circulate in the market as gifts ?

A Luxury Food Item, and An Important Medicines

Symbol of Identity

They are considered to be a luxury food item, as well as an important source of traditional medicines in China. The South China Morning Post reports that giant salamanders can command prices as high as 2,000 yuan ($320) per kilogram on the black market.

Many officers think it's very decent to treat guests with salamander, and they think the food is unique.

After the Government Found That Punishment was Small

Hunting these animals is unfortunately very low and only comes to 50 yuan, or about US$6, which is less than hundred times less the black-market price of a salamander.

It Is Not Protected by International Trade

The species are protected from international trade, and a sanctuary was established in Mount Wuyi, China to preserve the species.

Current Situation

The trade involves hundreds of millions of wild plants and animals from tens of thousands of species. To provide a glimpse of the scale of wildlife trafficking, there are records of over 100 million tonnes of fish, 1.5 million live birds and 440,000 tonnes of medicinal plants in trade in just one year.

food

379249

food

medicine

ceremony

100000

food

medicine

50000

food

medicine

3890

food

decoration

2500

decoration

2500

2000-2017 Growth of rare animals on Earth

The Reason Why They Become Rare Animals

Loss of Habitat

Most animals require a certain amount of territory in which they can hunt, breed and raise their young, and expand their population.As human civilization expands into the wild, these natural habitats diminish in scope.

Disease

While it's unusual for disease alone to wipe out a given species--the groundwork has to be laid first by starvation, loss of habitat, and/or lack of genetic diversity--the introduction of a particularly lethal virus or bacterium at an inopportune moment can wreak havoc.

Invasive Species

While most struggles for survival transpire over eons, sometimes the contest is quicker. If a plant or animal from one ecosystem is inadvertently transplanted into another, it can reproduce wildly, resulting in the extermination of the native population.

Human Predation

There's no denying that we've wreaked plenty of ecological havoc during our brief time: hunting the starved, straggling megafauna mammals of the last Ice Age, depleting entire populations of whales and other marine mammals.Until now, we are still hunting and illegally trading some rare animals.

What should I do when I meet an animal in need of help

Keep it ?

These are examples of well-intentioned people who want to rescue these animals killed by the wrong remedies.

Neonate Eastern Grey Squirrel in badly dehydrated and emaciated shape as a result of human interference.

This is an Eastern Grey Squirrel Baby someone attempted to raise. It did not survive more than 0.5h after it came into my care. The cause of death dehydration/undernourishment as a result of diarrhea caused by the feeding of an inappropriate food source.

This was a fawn someone tried to raise for 2 weeks. This fawn ate inappropriate food. This fawn was euthanized due to irreversible organ damage as a direct result of improper care.

Even the professional rescue will result in various causes of animal deaths, according to the data of the rescue station, we know that the survival rate of wildlife rescue is about 65%.

After the two pandas in Shanghai became ill, 2 veterinarians, 1 breeder and 3 zoo staffs participated in the diagnosis and treatment of panda. Unfortunately, the end result of critically ill, two giant panda died of treatment invalid.

Release ?

I checked the panda's habitat requirements and found few places to meet.

False release is not conducive to animal survival, and even lead to biological invasion. Invasive alien species are species introduced by humans, accidentally or intentionally, outside their native range and have negative impacts upon native biodiversity, ecosystem services, or human wellbeing. They are main factors of biodiversity loss, and the most common threat responsible for extinctions of amphibians, reptiles and mammals.

China

South Africa

USA

India

EU

$200 billion

$80 billion

$138 billion

$130 billion

$97 billion

Economic losses caused by biological invasion in different regions in 2015

What should I do when I meet an animal in need of help

Choose children as my popularity object

Early childhood’s attitudes towards things will affect the establishment of their adult values. At the same time in the application of the proceeds generated by the environmental protection organizations or charitable foundations will be put on the field where animals need help so that children can experience every little thing that can really affect the world.

What they know about rescue animals

33.3%

Rabbit

22.2%

Fish

Have you ever had any small animals?

80%

Yes

44.4%

Never

10%

Depend on the situation

10%

Don't know

If you encounter a wounded animal, will you help it?

18.75%

Want to help but don’t know methods

18.75%

Rub iodine wine

6.25%

Other

6.25%

Help it find its mother

6.25%

Keep it

12.5%

Give it a band-aid

31.25%

Send it to the hospital

How would you help it?

Interview Video

Teach them how to do it

It is not difficult to find in the survey that the children want to help these small animals very much, but their brains did not have a correct rescue system. They tend to help these animals according to their past experiences of injury or illness, but these methods are not right.

The right way to save

The correct way to release

Design Process

Why they use this application

understand

users and content

ideate solutions

prototyping

evaluation

output

Stakeholder map
User persona

Brainstorming
Storyboards

Card sorting
Wireframing
Interactive prototype

User testing

Who are we designing for

I intent to gain insight the values, identities and goals of various stakeholders and segment users. After creating a stakeholder map, we looked at some groups related to children and applied topics, and finally decided to focus on three of them. The three groups have both high interest and high influence.

Charity

Low

influence

Parents

High interest

Children

High

influence

Low interest

Teachers

Teenagers

What did they say?

——Yanchen

a first grade primary school student

"I want to help these animals and play with them."

——Min

a mother who have a 5 years old kid

I don't want kids to spend too much time on mobile apps.

——James

a staff from RSPCA

Encouraging children to rescue animals on their own is not a good way. We need to tell them the importance of asking for help.

Scenario & Framework

Wireframing

In order to improve the fun of the game and to avoid facing the electronic screen for a long time, we use AR technology to assist in the rescue process. In the process, the children must go out of the house to complete the game.

Interactive Prototype

User Testing

For the existing interface demo, we conducted qualitative tests on the target users, and observed and recorded the problems they encountered during use.

For some children in lower grades, sometimes they do not recognize these reminders, leaving them often unaware of how they should click. Like this kid, she stayed in this page for 5 second and do not know the meaning until asked her mother.

When answering set questions to earn coins, the difficulty of these questions is modest for kids, after doing some problems, there are 2 kids showing obvious impatience and wanting to return phone back to their parents.

Solutions

Add a voice announcement function under the large paragraph of text, and the children in the lower grades read the content.

Construct a double reward mechanism. When the children complete the task, they can not only obtain virtual currency, but also win some awards when they reach a certain amount. Use this mechanism to encourage your child to complete the task.

Highlights of Animals

Payment mechanism and social value

Step 1

Choose the quantity to buy

Step 2

Answer math question

Step 2

iew the institutions where gold coins are placed

When children need to pay real money, a complicated math problem will pop up. These questions cannot be solved independently for children aged 3-6. They must ask for help from their parents, so that the first one avoids the children spending money, the second parent can also play a supervisory role.

At the same time, the real money will be sent to the relevant rescue agencies to help the agency to help those small animals that are really injured and need help.

Maximum number of animals per rescue

There are already collected animals, but the capacity of the box is only two, the purpose is to encourage children not to stay away from the need to release or hand over to professionals.

Maximum number of animals per rescue

Each animal's page corresponds to an animal's encyclopedia knowledge, so that children can learn as much as possible during the entertainment process, and also make parents feel that the time spent by children in this application is worthwhile.