First ideas:

The picture on the right side shows some early drafts how the artificial companion could have looked like.

But none of this characters satisfied us.The results of our interviews showed us that dogs are very popular. So we decided to design a cartoonish dog.

 

First sketches of the young Homie:

Although the dog was looking very nice, we concluded that it was too young for our needs.
To provide better identification for elderly people we found an old dog more appropiate.

 

Brainstorming:

A draft from one of our brainstorming session.

 

Different kinds of emotions:

Not every emotion made it into the final concept.