Kinship is poised and ready for a big transition

— THE KIN —

FROM: A multi-product portfolio structured as a “house of brands” with limited visual or experiential connection, data continuity, and personalization for current and prospective pet parents.

TO: The first digital Pet Parenting platform that uses shared data and Machine Learning to create cohesive, relevant experiences for modern pet parents, optimizing funnel conversion throughout their journey.

MY ROLE: Head of Product Design

MY RESPONSIBILITIES

  • Strategic and tactical design direction

  • Project management

  • Budgeting and resource allocation

  • Brand consultant

  • Agency/Vendor relations

  • Agency design direction and collaboration

TEAM: Product | Engineering | Marketing

PEOPLE & PARTNERS

  • 4 Product Managers

  • Chief Technology Officer

  • Head of Engineering

  • 2 UX Designers, 1 Researcher

  • VP of Brand & Marketing

  • Agency Partners: Porto Roca, Instrument

CHALLENGES

  • Legacy and disparate technologies

  • Limited bandwidth due to concurrent projects across the Kinship product portfolio

  • Complex and siloed product dev workflows

  • Brand alignment and cohesion

  • Feature and product fit prioritization (surprise, surprise — 🙃)

  • Integrating various technologies (e.g., ML/LLMs for pet health diagnostics, IoT and smart sensor devices for pet data tracking) into a cohesive user experience

PROJECT DURATION

  • 4 months - Strategic planning, research, definition, ideation, UX/UI & brand design

  • ~6 months - Design System and UI implementation, technology + API integrations, initial launch and deployment

THE ASK

Unify Kinship's product ecosystem to create a platform personalized to pet parents at any step in their journey.

STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT AND UX BLUEPRINTING

Never start with zero

We began the project by setting a clear vision, direction, and project roadmap, prioritizing market needs and aligning them with business objectives. This involved wise resource allocation, cross-functional alignment, and integrating user experience (UX) design principles. My first task was to spearhead the implementation of our UX Strategy Blueprint within the workflow framework and scouting an agency partner, selecting Instrument to help bring our vision to life.

To solidify our approach, we facilitated workshops with stakeholders to define the product and experience strategy. The blueprint of this new product was built on six key components: Challenges, Aspirations, Focus Areas, Guiding Principles, Activities, and Measurable Outcomes. This comprehensive strategy ensured a focused and measurable path forward, aligning all efforts with our overarching business goals.

RESEARCH & NEEDFINDING

Hypothesis breakdown:

We believe [doing this]: "we should create a pet care platform/app with personalized content, access to provider care services, and pet records ..."

For [these people]: "... younger millennial Pet Parents ..."

So that [user need or insight]: "… they’ll have a single place to to manage all aspects of their pet’s lives with relevant guidance at any moment."

We reviewed existing research and insights from our Mars Petcare research database and our Kinship sister brands (GoodFriend, Wisdom Panel, Whistle, The Wildest, Adopt-a-Pet, and PetExec ) to inform our user personas, Pet Parent archetypes, potential product features & services, and our product roadmaps. From there, our team created prioritized use cases and scenarios.

DESIGN CONCEPTS

Transforming insights into tangible experience concepts

FROM RESEARCH —> TO DESIGN :

After synthesizing our research into prioritized needs, scenarios, and use cases, the collective design team (internal at Kinship and external partners at Instrument) conceptualized the ideal user flows. We created variations for each touchpoint, which were subsequently user tested, iterated upon, and chosen for higher fidelity mockups.

UX & UI PROTOTYPING

Time to riff on high-fidelity mockups and prototype the experience!

OUTLINE THE INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE (IA) —> PROTOTYPE

Once the v1 information architecture (IA) diagrams were finalized, we transitioned to creating product prototypes. This involved defining the user flows, sketching initial wireframes, and then developing the prototypes. Throughout this process, we incorporated stakeholder and user feedback and iterated accordingly with Instrument.

DETERMINE THE BRAND IDENTITY

We partnered with Porto Rocha to collaborate on The Kin’s aesthetic and personality

LET’S CREATE THE KIN BRAND IN TANDEM WITH OUR UI DESIGN SYSTEM!

In parallel with building out our v.1 UI design system, we also began creating and defining The Kin’s brand identity and guidelines. This simultaneous effort ensured that our visual + UI design elements and brand principles were seamlessly integrated, resulting in a cohesive and unified product experience. No more silos!

DOCUMENTING THE UI IN THE DESIGN SYSTEM

With our branding looking sharp, our Kin team worked with Instrument to direct and prioritize UI components, patterns, and interaction guidelines. I worked with my design team to create a component prioritization matrix which was used as the foundation. This was an exciting phase, bringing our brand to life with every detail!

PRIORITIZE UI COMPONENTS AND PATTERNS —> FRONT END DEV

Using our brand guidelines as a reference, the designers began constructing our components, patterns, and interaction specifications. We used Figma to house our “source of truth” while working with our development team to integrate the APIs into Store Front and their FED stack.

MEASURINNG THE EXPERIENCE WITH ♥️

The app was ready for takeoff! 🚀 But before liftoff, it was time to align on performance and UX metrics. Working together with product management, we applied the HEART Framework to track the user experience for the Kin, focusing on five key metrics categories: Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, and Task Success.

RESULTS AND SUMMARY

Launching a 0 - 1 startup platform within our enterprise was an exciting journey, albeit not without its hurdles. 🥴 We faced challenges rooted in rigid product development methods, legacy tech stacks, team silos, and bandwidth constraints. Yet, through persistence and collaboration, we managed to overcome many of these obstacles—transforming our practices and workflows along the way. Our biggest victories emerged from embracing change and expressing a genuine collaborative spirit that propelled us forward.

Through design research and product testing, our initial hypothesis was proven valid and so we began our first alpha build and The Kin was born.

PRODUCT AND DESIGN WORKFLOW

+60%: Turnaround time. Created joint workflows with design, product, dev, marketing, and research removing the siloed work streams

98%: Projects and deliverables completed on time and within scope

+40%: Increased throughput. Our Jira/Sprint task efficiency (design and dev) compared to previous Kinship projects

-25%: Reduction of production defects

BUSINESS

~15%: Average application download/conversion rate on launch

+12% / quarter: Post-launch growth rate

4.5: Rating on the Apple store

~$20 / per user: CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) on launch — missed goal of $5-7

60: NPS Score at launch

EXPERIENCE

72: Initial SUS (System Usability Score)

92%: Task Success Rate. A majority of users can successfully complete a task without significant issues

88%: CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) score indicating a large number of users are satisfied with the app