Agapet: Supporting A Responsible Adoption Process for Stray and Abandoned Pets in Urban Areas

Abstract

The growing number of stray domestic animals negatively impacts cities' possibilities to be safe and resilient spaces for their citizens, thus hindering possibilities of attaining the SDG 11 of fostering sustainable cities and communities. Organizations and governments strive to ensure stray pets are adopted. However, doing so is challenging: citizens often do not want to adopt, and many of those who do end up returning their pets to shelters. This situation worsens in countries from the Global South where in-place infrastructures struggle to reinforce existing policies. During four months, we worked closely with a civic-led rescue organization in Ecuador to explore how technology can support organizations in motivating responsible and sustained adoption. As a result, we propose Agapet, a mobile app that, using a timeline, visual representation of milestones, short pet-ownership courses, and a rewards system, sheds light on all the stages of the adoption journey. In this article, we summarize our design process and how the positive results we have obtained so far suggest the app is a step towards responsible pet ownership in urban spaces.