
Embracing the Internet of Things for Cats - ingve
https://realm.io/news/pragma-sally-shepard-internet-cats-wearables/
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xg15
I admit this product does not really collect any particularly sensitive kind
of data, but I still find this sentiment exemplary for the IoT market and it
kind of bothers me:

 _The data (collar, toys) needs to be collected, sent to the cloud, and
quantified (to view the results). There also obviously needs to be an app._

The problem the author was trying to solve was "get obese cats to move more"
and the technical implementation of the first prototype was a simple "if cat
does not move for a certain amount of time, activate toy". None of this
requires that there is an app or that the product should need an internet
connection for basic functionality. Yet those points seemed to be baked into
the design from day one, without even giving them much thought. I'd like to
know why this is the case.

Now, in this case, of course you need to collect data to figure out the
correct parameters, get feedback and figure out more complex behaviors like
the adaptive toy. But even then, this tracking could be done locally by the
"brain" that was described later and only uploaded occasionally and with user
opt-in.

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xerophyte12932
I don't find anything wrong with this. You need to remember while the cat is
an important stakeholder in the system, the executive stakeholder is the cat
owner (he pays the bills) and thus he needs to see the value. Thus the app is
to keep the owner in the loop and show them stats about the cat's activity.

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xg15
I'm not convinced a (mandatory) app is always seen as added value - often it
can be a liability instead.

But anyway, it's not clear to me at all that the owner would _want_ such
statistics or sees them as valuable. They bought the product to solve a
specific problem - get their cat to exercise - and I assume the value they
expect from it is to see their cat interact with the toy and eventually lose
fat.

The statistics are all nice and well and may even be of interest to some
customers - but that's in no relation to the hefty price that _all_ customers
are paying for them: That suddenly your cat toy requires a smartphone, an
internet connection and an external cloud service to function. (Not to mention
the collected data itself)

Things would be different if the cloud service was an obvious requirement for
the product's core function - e.g. a location tracker that lets you find out
where your cat is right now via smartphone. But that's not the case here in my
opinion.

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scottyates11
I think this is why people say the internet is developed for cat lovers. There
is a great market for us to reach the cat lovers through the internet. No
matter which social platform you visit, people are always sharing cat videos!
Thousand of shares can help marketers to spread the message. Maybe we will say
"cat marketing" instead of viral marketing soon!

