Startups love dogs and messaging platform Slack, and Washington, D.C.-based iStrategyLabs has found a way to combine the two. With the company's new Puppies at Work (PAW) system, none of the many dogs roaming the office will ever get lost again.
"One of the dogs got lost one time and we had to send out small search parties before we found it in the parking garage," ISL senior creative strategist Samya Behary said in an interview with DC Inno. "Luckily, the dog was fine but we're in a first floor office, we're close to the streets and wanted to figure out how we can keep track of them."
PAW applies a creative approach to both Slack's API and the Internet of Things. Behary and her team created a personalized electronic tag to put on a dog's collar called a Kibble. When a dog owner comes into the office in the morning, the Kibble automatically reports the dog checking in via wireless devices called Hydrants that relate the dog's status on a group Slack channel. The Hydrants check for the dogs every 20 seconds throughout the day and alert the channel if one is missing.
"Slack is already integrated into our lives, we thought it was the best way to grab people's attention," Behary said. "20 seconds seemed like the right amount of time. Dogs can move pretty fast."
Owners can manually set their dog's status as "on a walk" if they are away, and the Hydrants stop checking for the dogs at the end of the day. The dog-centric names were very much part of the process of building the devices, Behary said. If ISL starts hearing some demand for PAW, they might start building it as a commercial product, but for now it's only the team's dogs, including Behary's pug Petunia, that are outfitted with a Kibble.
ISL often builds these kinds of fun tech projects, such as the SELFIE mirror or the Dorothy app that connected to a "Ruby" device in your shoe to let you do things on your phone by clicking your heels together. PAW though could be a real draw for the many pet owners who work in offices where dogs are allowed or notably encouraged, for example, Opower.
"We love our dogs," Behary said. "This is a really good way to keep track of them, especially if there's an emergency, should there be a fire or something."
