Don’t judge a book by its cover. Don’t judge a dog by its breed.
Designing the brand and platform for the largest citizen science project in the world.?
I was recently walking along a neighborhood sidewalk with my partner and a woman was approaching us with what looked like 2 large mixed breed pit bull terrier dogs, the dogs were unruly, pulling at their leashes and displaying every sign of aggression other than gnashing their teeth at us. My partner and I both had the same, instant and visceral reaction and moved well out of range as quickly as possible. We commented on how and why do people keep such aggressive dog breeds as pets in tiny New York city apartments. But now with the results of the long dog study that we have been supporting at the Broad Institute, it's time to take a fresh look at the relationship between dog breeds and dog behavior. After conducting owner surveys of over 18,000 dogs and sequencing the genomes of over 2,000 dogs, Dr Elinor Karlsson and her team have now concluded that the connection between breed and behavior is far less close or certain. As stated in the headline of an article in the New York Times that accompanied the release of the findings, "They’re All Good Dogs, and It Has Nothing to Do With Their Breed".?My recent real world encounter fed into my false assumptions and previous encounters and observations that all pit bulls, dobermans and the like are inherently aggressive and angry by breed. So what is really going on, are we training dogs to behave in a particular way based upon assumptions and desired behavior? Well it now appears this is mostly the case. The findings report that on average, breed only accounts for about 9 percent of the variations in any given dog’s behavior.
We've been working with Dr Karlsson and the team at the Broad for a number of years now to develop a platform that becomes the interface between dog owners and the scientists in the lab. Its called Darwin's Ark, and the purpose of our project is to develop a brand, design, develop and code a platform that is easy to use, communicates well and supports the scientific studies, giving the dog owner detailed information about Scruffy and the thrill of participating in the largest citizens science project in the world. The findings of the work are the cover article for the journal SCIENCE.
The Darwin's Ark program is open to participants from all over the world, all you need is a dog, an internet connection and the desire to learn more about Scruffy than you could possibly imagine, and to know that the results of your participation are contributing to dogs and their owners living longer and healthier lives.
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The platform consists of multiple channels, both physical and digital. First we need dog owners, tens of thousands of them. Fortunately, thanks to The New York Times, CNN, NPR and many other media channels, getting the word out for such a dynamic, interesting and do-good project is not the hardest piece of the equation. After onboarding, the Darwin's Ark team follow-up with questionnaires that the dog owner is asked to participate in. The owner can also sign up to get a genome sequencing kit for Scruffy and after a saliva sample is swabbed and the genome is sequenced we come back to the owner with what we think the results of the sequencing are telling us about the dog. This is where it gets really interesting.
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Our challenge is to design a brand, and a user experience that is appealing, scalable and very user friendly. Dog owners create an account for themselves, and for Scruffy and enter data about the general characteristics of the dog. This project is a perfect mashup of strategy, design and technology - designing the brand look and feel, the technology database back-end, the front end user interface and templates, packaging for the kits and the "Trail Blazer" book that that contains the results of Scruffy's genome sequencing, questionnaires and other study findings. It's like 23 And Me but for dogs, and with a citizen science and feel good aspect to it.
If you are facing the challenge of needing a multi channel designed and technology solution that crosses B2B and B2C channels we would love to have a discussion with you.?
Contact us, learn more about us and the work we do with scientists at: