Consciousness for animal welfare: A trial of multidisciplinary education.

Abstract

Cats and dogs have been living with humans for centuries in various conditions and for various reasons. Various factors such as different housing conditions, owner’s expectations and attitudes may affect the well-being of domestic animals. It is the responsibility of Veterinarians to ensure that the environment meets their needs, which further determines the welfare levels of animals. In order to meet the needs of different pets, the products used for pets should be designed in line with these needs. It can be suggested that products that fully meet the needs of pets are possible only with a multidisciplinary education model including design and veterinary behavior. In this study, a multidisciplinary education model was used for the 3rd-grade industrial design students at the Department of Industrial Product Design, Middle East Technical University in the autumn 2018-2019 Semester to develop design solutions for improving the well-being of cats and dogs as well as their owners. 30 design students attended the program. They divided into 9 teams according to the species, and environment they chose. Two lecturers from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine gave lectures about the emotional needs of dogs and cats to the design students and supervised them during the design process. As a result, significant improvements were detected in the awareness of the industrial design students of biological, emotional and behavioral needs of cats and dogs. Thirty different products with ideas targeting different problems such as dental health, drug application, grooming were designed by different teams. Most of the end products were scored between good (75-79) and outstanding (90-100) by the instructors from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. The results of this study show that multidisciplinary education and the exchange of information between different professions have a significant impact on product development success to improve the quality of life in animals.