After Daniel’s idea generation tasks, I left class feeling inspired and began thinking of apps or products I could make to present in week 12. To do this I made a mind map.

These were the two ideas that I came up with, both which I felt very passionately about, as well as there being a space in the market from them both which I feel many people would benefit from.

With the increase in domestic dogs getting taken from gardens to be sold and transported across the world to meat markets etc, and having just recently got a puppy myself, I decided to research into this idea first.

Although it is not currently possible to place a GPS tracker in your dog along with its microchip, I feel strongly that there will be a solution to this made in the future which will completely reinvent the idea of the microchip.

Just like Find my iPhone, I wanted got create a GPS tracking chip which would be included in the microchip which will enable you to download an app and track your animals location if it were to every get stolen or go missing.

I looked into the pros and cons of the current microchip and discovered that the only real Con to the device is that is doesn’t contain a GPS, making it impossible to track your pet unless it is found and handed into to a vets to scan it and retrieve your number via their database.

This lead me to research if anyone had previously attempted implanting a GPS tracking device in animals or pets to see if it was possible. This lead me to discover the company “Xega”.

Xega

The Xega Company, based in Mexico, has created an injectable chip, which is the size and shape of a grain of rice. It can be injected into the client’s body using a syringe. The chip sends out signals from the person’s body which can then be used to locate and pinpoint the location of someone in distress. The chip costs about $4000 and comes with an annual fee of $2,200.

Despite these extortionate costs of the injection and annual maintenance, it has been proven to to help save 178 children who had been kidnapped in the last decade which is amazing.

However, cons of this include that an external GPS tracker device is needed to be on the person for the implant to work properly. This means that if people are in danger, the kidnapper could easily remove the external device from the person, causing their implant to become useless.

 

Despite this, I plan to create a product which does not require an external device as it would be easily removed from an animals body.  I will then create an easy-to-use app to go alongside this, allowing owners to be able to track their pet to ensure their safety.