Project Ark: designing a lost-animal alert that actually reaches people
A missing animal is found in the first hours or not at all. That constraint shaped the whole feature.
Hotan GamesWhen an animal goes missing, the useful window is short. A listing that sits on a page waiting to be discovered is not much help.
So in Project Ark a lost-animal report is a push, not a post. It goes to people who are nearby and who have opted in to receive these alerts — nobody is subscribed by default, and nobody is tracked in the background.
The hard part is deciding who counts as nearby without collecting more location data than the feature needs. We are working through that now, and we will write about the approach once it settles.