FitFido · Smart Pet Health · 2025

Turning weight management into something a dog owner never has to think about.

Overview

A frictionless feeding experience for busy owners.

FitFido pairs a smart scale with an automatic feeder, so a dog is weighed at every meal and the portions correct themselves.

Recognition: NY Product Design Award
IDA Design Award
MUSE Design Award
Roles: UX Design
Prototyping
UX Research
Timeline: 2 months
Tools: Figma
Rhino
Keyshot
Google Form
Team: Qiling Chen
Minwei Wu
Yiming Han
Yi He

Close-up of the FitFido scale plate showing a live 10.4 lb reading.

The FitFido app's Smart Scale screen held in front of the feeder, a corgi waiting beside it.

Try the prototype The final build, running in the browser

Background

Overweight dogs are common, and owners rarely notice in time.

Pet technology has grown into a large market, but almost none of it reaches the moment the problem starts: the meal.

Consequences of canine obesity: lifespan shortened by two years, many diseases, more aggressive behaviour. — Data sourced from the State of U.S. Pet Obesity Report and the Pet Tech Global Market Strategies Report.

59% of dogs are overweight; a $10.4B pet obesity management market; pet tech expected to reach $24.5B; a $1.2B animal weight scale market. — How big is this market?

Research & Insights

Planning our approach.

Step 01

Interview

We interviewed 11 dog owners and gained 228 datapoints: 4 whose dogs were obese, 3 whose dogs had been, and 4 whose dogs were not. We performed thematic coding on hours of transcripts, tagging individual user needs to uncover recurring patterns, then sorted those tags into clusters with affinity mapping.

Affinity map clustering tagged user needs from the transcripts.

Step 02

HMW questions

How Might We statements derived from the interview clusters.

Step 03

Early feature hypotheses

These came out of the interview insights and the HMW questions, as directions to explore in brainstorming.

Step 04

Competitor analysis

We audited the field for gaps, then placed FitFido against it.

Competitive audit of feeding, exercising and monitoring products, with key insights.

Feature comparison matrix with FitFido added against leading competitors.

Step 05

Lean Canvas

We used a Lean Canvas to align the validated user needs with a sustainable product strategy.

Solution

Four features, one loop: weigh, feed, track, adjust.

One number drives the whole system: the weight read at each meal. The other three features close the loop around it.

Active Weighing

A dog stepping up to the FitFido feeder; the built-in scale records its weight with no extra step.

Weight-driven AI feeding system

The smart scale is integrated with the feeder, so the weight it reads becomes the portion it serves.

Health insights

Professional-level insight, and a system that can synchronize with vets and hospitals.

Health Monitoring screen tracking the dog’s weight changes in real time and progress towards health goals.

Smart calorie detection

Owners scan or photograph the dog food in the app; AI recognition identifies the calories and folds them into the feeding plan.

User flow

Iteration

From first pass to final interface.

The interface it ended up as. The column beside it is how each screen got there.

Reflection

From “dog training product” to “dog weight management system”.

When the challenge is narrowed down, the path of design naturally emerges.

As a User Experience Designer, this project reinforced the importance of uncovering genuine user needs instead of defaulting to existing product solutions. By grounding decisions in data and ongoing research, and by testing outcomes iteratively, we can create products with real potential.

Data is only as valuable as the insights it yields. Through user interviews, I discovered that the barrier to pet health wasn’t a lack of care, but cognitive load. This realization shifted our solution from a tracking tool to an automated system, proving that true innovation comes from solving the underlying behaviour, not just the surface symptoms.

FitFido feeder, scale and app in a living room with a corgi.

Impact

Three international design awards.