— WHISTLE —
Whistle smart devices manage pet health, track their location, and monitor daily activity
OVERVIEW
WHISTLE IN A NUTSHELL 🌰
Whistle is a smart collar device for pets that features industry-leading health AI, GPS tracking, interchangeable collar styles, and an app. It allows pet parents to monitor their pet’s health, location, and uses pioneering tech to track and translate their behavior into in-depth daily health insights.
MY ROLE: Head of Product Design & Experience
RESPONSIBILITIES
Design task roadmapping and prioritization
Design direction and reviews
Design staff management and resource allocation
Branding and marketing collaboration
CHALLENGES
Corporate Transition: Team accustomed to the Mars, Petcare environment adapting to new dynamics
Development Bottlenecks: Single Product Designer supporting multiple stakeholders sometimes creating delays in the development cycle
Leadership Turnover: Managing high management attrition
Offshore Dependencies: Reliance on an offshore industrial design team
Roadmap Overload: Balancing multiple product roadmaps
Learning Curve: Integrating AI technology with engineers who are new to the field
ACCOMPLISHMENTS
SSO and Pet Parent/Pet Profile overhaul: Successful and timely refactoring of the SSO and pet data diagnostics profile
E-commerce redesign: Refactored and redesigned the DTC e-commerce experience for the Wisdom Panel DNA services platform
Successful launch of two new SKUs in record time: We launched both the Health 2.0 and the Go Explore 2.0 devices concurrently within 9 months
Added key app features and UX refactoring
LET’S GIVE THE SHOPPING SITE SOME LOVE
Our usability studies and web analytics revealed numerous user pain points and mediocre performance metrics during their visit to the product shopping and marketing site. With this valuable info, we rallied and worked together on a brand overhaul and site redesign. This effort turned some of these challenges into a smoother, more enjoyable user experience — while increasing utilization and sales!
BEFORE:
⚠️ Bounce Rate above 58%
⚠️ Uninspired and static design from generic template
⚠️ Exit Rate above 50% on product page(s)
⚠️ Cart Abandonment Rate ~66%
⚠️ Page Load Time over 3 seconds
⚠️ Numerous accessibility issues
AFTER:
✅ Decreased Bounce Rate by 7%
✅ New design and branding, showcasing rich interactions and animations
✅ Decreased Exit Rate on product pages(s) by 8%
✅ Increased Cart Conversion Rate by 10%
✅ Page Load Time under 3 seconds
✅ Fixed accessibility issues, now adhering to WCAG compliance
APP-TO-APP INTEGRATION
As we evolved into a unified pet platform, we began brainstorming integration options.
In the interest of Kinship's business goals of creating a single Pet Parenting platform, our team began exploring various design options to highlight this potential. We started by integrating Whistle's behavior analytics with Wisdom Panel DNA data, as the most straightforward approach.