Help us design a product called the Pet Pad!

We are a group of Stanford designers, and we are testing out a new product for you and your pet. We’d love to know what you think.

The Pet Pad is designed for pets that live in enclosed tanks, like fish, reptiles, and amphibians. People have told us that they love these animals because they can be beautiful and exotic and don't "take over the house." At the same time, people have said that sometimes the animals seem to "just sit there," especially if they are nocturnal. The Pet Pad is a cool way to connect in a new way with your small pet!

The Pet Pad is a mat that senses touch and movement—you put it at the bottom of your pet’s enclosure, and it records the animal’s movements. It then turns those movements into a piece of art that reflects your pet’s personality.

For example, if you have a nocturnal leopard gecko, the Pet Pad can record your animal’s movements overnight when it is active. In the morning, you can wake up to a colorful piece of art created by your gecko while you slept!

You can share your animal’s art with people online. You can pin it on Pinterest, post it on Facebook, or compare it with the art of other geckos on the Pet Pad website.

Research has shown that interacting with a pet is good for our health in many ways, as we're sure everyone on this forum knows. We are working to make the Pet Pad a fun and inexpensive way to connect more with your pet and connect to other pet lovers.

You can help us make the Pet Pad amazing! Click here for a very quick survey where you can tell us what you think!

https://stanforduniversity.qualtrics.com...adOMJGXV8p

I understand that you can perhaps learn more about your pet's behavior or movement patterns but how does this benefit a pet? Will you be able to offer advice on perhaps how to change the pet's enclosure design if it is not active enough? Maybe you should design a website about how the pad can help the pet.

This seems like a really nice idea! Even if it doesn't benefit pets, if it's not hurting them in any way it's still a nice invention. It would be nice though if the device did offer some benefits for the pet. Like trishgl said before me, some kind of advice on helping the pet if it's not active enough, and maybe some general advice. Pets like fish, reptiles and amphibians are still not too common, and it would be very useful if the device could have a list of most common illnesses, general facts about the species, some fun facts etc.

Assuming it is 100% safe for the pets it does seem like a good idea. I cannot imagine what the results would be like from some of the slower moving or tiny creatures that are kept as pets.

It would be good to have a website where pet owners can share their pet's 'art' and other members could comment and vote for ones they like. If the website posted the top ten most popular ones on its home page, I think that would encourage more pet owners to purchase pet pads.