CatPal is a subscription-based cat wellness concept built to capture the hearts and minds of modern cat parents by seamlessly integrating into their everyday lifestyle and allowing them, like never before, to optimize their cats’ wellbeing. Clorox wanted a prevention-oriented MVP that proves value quickly through a personalized assessment and a clear membership pathway. The design process brought that strategy to life across acquisition funnels, landing pages, the marketing site, and the assessment-to-results flow, translating everyday behaviors into a wellness score, tailored recommendations, and actionable next steps.
Year
2021
Client
Clorox
My Role
Designer & Researcher
The Challenge
The overarching business goal of CatPal was to validate a subscription-based cat wellness service that fits naturally into the modern pet parent’s lifestyle, building trust and long-term loyalty while improving outcomes for cats. Informed by trends research around premium pet care, preventative wellness, and digital-first subscriptions, the strategy focused on meeting cat parents with expert-backed guidance, a lightweight assessment, and personalized recommendations that prove value quickly. The concept was designed to drive membership conversion, strengthen retention through ongoing support, and establish a scalable foundation for future offerings and partnerships.
The Approach
Our approach was to design and validate an MVP through a “launch and learn” mindset, starting with clear problem framing and trends-informed assumptions about what modern cat parents value most. As the lead product designer, I owned the end-to-end experience, mapping the customer journey and iterating through content strategy, information architecture, and UX/UI design across the core touchpoints, including the acquisition funnel, landing pages, the marketing site, and the assessment-to-results flow. I additionally owned all research, testing with real-life consumers and integrating their feedback along the way. Each iteration prioritized clarity and trust, refining how everyday cat behaviors translate into understandable insights and actionable recommendations, while keeping the membership pathway simple and compelling.
Sprint 1: New Value Creation
Our Process
To ground the product in real cat-parent needs, I led early discovery research with 12 participants to understand how they currently make wellness decisions, where they feel uncertainty, and what kinds of support they would actually pay for and stick with. Insights from these conversations were synthesized into a set of key needs, motivations, and friction points that directly shaped our “value creation” step. From that synthesis, we generated nine distinct concepts that explored different ways CatPal could deliver value, including guidance formats, levels of personalization, and subscription benefits. Those nine concepts became our starting point for prioritization and iteration, ensuring the MVP direction was rooted in validated user language and behaviors rather than assumptions.
Sprint 2: Big Ideas and the Consumer Journey
Our Process
We translated our archetypal directions into four distinct product approaches, each exploring a different way CatPal could help cat parents feel more confident and informed. These concepts focused on building closer awareness and everyday learning, giving users tools that reveal meaningful signals about their cat’s wellbeing and turn uncertainty into clear next steps. By pressure-testing multiple directions early, we created a stronger foundation for choosing a path that feels both valuable to users and viable for a subscription model.
Sprint 3: Product Development
Our Process
We moved from concepts into digital prototyping, translating our strongest ideas into testable screens and flows. After evaluating the early directions, we selected the most promising concept and built it out into an MVP, focusing on the core journey from onboarding and assessment through results, recommendations, and the membership pathway. We user-tested along the way to validate comprehension, trust, and perceived value, then iterated quickly based on feedback to sharpen the proposition, simplify key interactions, and ensure the experience could realistically support a “launch and learn” release.
Sprint 4: MVP Creation
Our Process
For the MVP build, we focused on delivering the smallest complete CatPal experience that could prove value quickly and support a “launch and learn” rollout for the client. We translated the chosen concept into a cohesive end-to-end flow, from onboarding and the wellness assessment through results, personalized recommendations, and a clear membership pathway. The MVP was designed to feel trustworthy and premium while staying lightweight enough to test with real users, giving the client an actionable foundation to validate demand, measure engagement, and prioritize the next phase of product development.
