Purrpaw Design

UX/UI Design & Graphic Design

(1 Year Contract)

Company Overview

Purrpaw Design is a new startup business that provides customized pet portraits combined with lenticular printing. Lenticular printing is a technology in which lenticular lenses are used to produce printed images with an illusion of depth, or the ability to change or move as they are viewed from different angles.

My Role

This is a huge project to undertake because I took on the rolls of both UX/UI Designer & Graphic Designer. As a start-up company, the client only had the idea and I was tasked with both designing the brand’s overall visual look including the logo, marketing materials, and product samples as well as the research and website design. I first created a timeline spreadsheet so the client will know what to expect and help me manage my time.

After I set out to research and compare existing pet portrait services as well as interview potential users to analyze initial opinions. Afterwards, I designed the site map, wireframes, and a clickable prototype to be tested before going live.

DISCOVERY

Researching The Idea

I started off by basing on my initial research on the current top 5 most popular pet portrait sites to learn what makes them stand out. After, I will dive into the details of lenticular printing from the cost of the printing process, application, and 3rd party vendors vs in house point of view. I also wanted to see how technical it would be to learn the process.

Custom Pet Portrait Sites

Lenticular Printing

How to Make Lenticular Printing
- LentiDotManager
- 3D Lenticular Printing Using Photoshop
Lenticular Print 3rd Party Vendors
- Parallax Printing
- Donsense

What Was Discovered

All listed sites had the same service of face swapping a portrait with a user’s pet except for West & Willow which was just the pet itself in a stylized way.
Prices for for poster prints were roughly in the same ball park except for Purr&Mutt which were higher but they had free shipping.
Discounts were always active even months later which suggests that prices were inflated before discounting.
Only Purr&Mutt had the option to purchase the digital design file.

DEFINE

User Persona

With the gathered information, I set about interviewing pet owners on customized pet portraits and Purrpaw Design’s unique selling point of customized lenticular portrait prints. I noted down their thoughts, likes, dislikes, and concerns with this service.

Conclusion

After the interviews, I discovered that users had similar feedback.

Overall, users tended to gravitate towards Crown & Paw because it had an astounding amount of positive reviews with pictures which built confidence in the user to purchase.
User opinion on lenticular portraits were on the cautious side since there were no sample pieces they could view. Getting a sample product and a way to present it online will be crucial.
Some users suggested having the option to include the pet owner into the portrait with their pets. This could be a new feature since the competitors do not have this option.
The higher initial cost of Purr&Mutt were received negatively even if the overall cost was about the same with free shipping.

IDEATION

Framework

I started off by building a basic site map, user flow for purchasing, and a visual design guide. With these basics out of the way I reviewed them with my client and tested on some friends for a second hand opinion.