— GOODFRIEND —
Find and book professional pet care services
OVERVIEW
GOODFRIEND IN A NUTSHELL 🌰
GoodFriend is a two-sided Pet Care and Services startup where you can find and book services from trusted professionals near you. The platform is a B2C and B2B service where the Providers list their services and get paid directly through the platform.
MY ROLE: Head of Product Design & Experience
RESPONSIBILITIES
Design task roadmapping and prioritization
Design direction and reviews
Design execution
Design staff management and resource allocation
Branding and marketing collaboration
Content Strategy
CHALLENGES
Ambitious Launch Timeline: Designing and launching the marketplace by Q4 2022
Outsourced Design: Initial design efforts were handled by an external agency, GraveFlex
Limited Resources: Tight timelines and constrained bandwidth
Provider Acquisition: Attracting Providers to join a new services platform
Complex Payment Integrations: Navigating State-specific payment system rules and tech integrations
Startup Hustle: The usual chaos and excitement of startup life 🥴
ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Scrappy and efficient teamwork: Given the small startup team, we were able to streamline our workflows, which were subsequently modeled throughout other parts of Kinship
Launched the platform in ~9 months: Opened up the marketplace in 7 states with over 1000 providers
Transitioned from outsourced design to in-house: We saved roughly 200k/quarter by bringing
E-commerce redesign: Refactored and redesigned the DTC e-commerce experience for the Wisdom Panel DNA services platform
Scaled the Coco Design System: We extended the Wisdom "Coco" Design System to our sister brands
Integrated Content Management System (CMS): Contentful added into our workflow for fast and scaleable experience and content composition
DRAFTING FLOWS, INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE, AND CONCEPTS
Never start with zero. Leveraging our research insights and collective expertise to inform our design decisions, we workshopped the initial experiences with prioritized use cases, journey diagrams, and IA.
ARCHITECTING A STARTUP
MOCKUPS AND BRANDING
After a few rounds of concept and prototype testing with stakeholders and users, we transitioned to high-fidelity mockups and started bringing our brand to life. This took a few iterations to get right.
THE MOVE FROM PHOTOGRAPHY TO ILLUSTRATION
We took a step back and thought, "This brand needs to stand out from our sister products..." From there, we decided to add hand drawn illustrations to capture the heart, playfulness, and quirkiness of our pet friends.
LOCALIZED IMAGERY: In addition to adding the tactile illustrative look and feel, we created customized illustrations for each of our launch regions.
OVERALL PERFORMANCE
Net Promoter Score: 66
Average Customer Rating: 4.8 - bringing joy to Pet Parents
Average Provider Rating: 3.5 - Moderate satisfaction
Provider’s top pain points:
Lack of practice management integration
Inconsistent customer traffic
Payment model integration
Regional Growth: +70% (2022-2023)