Whisker Mobile Application
Turning a Robot App Into a Pet-Centered Experience
When I joined Whisker, the mobile app functioned primarily as a remote control for the robots. Users could start a clean cycle, adjust settings, and stop there. It worked, but it felt incomplete. Early on, I had a strong suspicion: people didn’t actually care about the robots themselves. They cared about their cats.
To test that assumption, I dug into user research, app analytics, and robot interaction logs. The pattern was consistent. Engagement was heavily skewed toward physical interactions with the robot, not the app. Users weren’t looking for more ways to control hardware. They wanted insight. They wanted to understand their cat’s behavior, health, and routines.
That insight became the foundation for a broader product shift.
Reframing the Product Strategy
The challenge was structural. The existing app framework wasn’t designed to support deeper insights or scalable data interpretation. It was built for control, not understanding.
To make the case for change, I created a presentation for executive leadership and product management that paired data with storytelling. To illustrate the risk of forcing future capabilities into the existing system, I borrowed a clip from MythBusters, the classic “you can’t fit ten pounds of… stuff… into a five-pound bag.” In this case, the “stuff” was behavioral data.
I edited the clip, rewrote the voiceover, and used it as a light but pointed reminder: the future depended on building a scalable foundation rather than cramming insight into an app never designed to support it.
There was understandable tension in the room. This meant significant investment and a shift in how value would be delivered. I grounded the conversation in data, showing clear usage patterns and opportunity areas, then followed with a vision video demonstrating how the strategy could come to life. That combination… evidence, narrative, and a bit of humor, aligned the room and unlocked momentum. The direction was green-lit.
From Robotics to Real Pet Insights
That decision marked a meaningful shift. The robots remained important, but they moved to the passenger seat. The experience focus shifted to the cats.
The new strategy centered on transforming raw, unstructured behavior data into meaningful insights. Changes in frequency, timing, duration, weight, and even output characteristics from bathroom visits could now be analyzed over time. Paired with input-based signals, this enabled the identification of patterns, anomalies, and early indicators of potential health issues.
Even in early stages, users shared stories of detecting emerging health concerns through Whisker products. Those stories validated the direction and reinforced the emotional weight of the work. This wasn’t about feature expansion. It was about trust and care.
The latest Pro model extended this vision further. With dual cameras, one outside the litter box and one inside and a custom cat-detection LLM capable of recognizing individual cats with high certainty from minimal embeddings, owners gained a clearer window into their pets’ lives.
This work helped lay the foundation for a future where pet owners can make better decisions, catch issues earlier, and feel more connected to the animals they care about. That shift from controlling a device to understanding a living being is the impact I’m most proud of.
