Dog and Dog

Designing the product experience for a live vet-tech startup — from the first flows to a design system the team can build on.

Role: Product designer
When: 2025 — Present
What: Product design · Live vet-tech startup

Dog and Dog — the Health, Home and Play screens of the app

A product without a spine

Dog and Dog is a live vet-tech startup on a mission to make veterinary care simpler for pet owners and clinics. I came on board to own product design — turning an early idea into an interface people actually want to use.

When I joined, the product was a set of features without a spine: no shared components, inconsistent flows, and screens designed one at a time. The opportunity wasn't only to make things prettier — it was to give the product a coherent structure it could grow on.

Working directly with the founder and engineering, I moved between three jobs: designing the core flows, making product decisions under real constraints, and laying down a design system so the team could ship consistently without me in every loop.

Three decisions that shaped the product

Dog and Dog design system boards — colours, corner radius, spacing and text fields

System first, screens second

The fastest way to slow a product down is to design every screen from scratch. Before adding features, I set the foundation — color and type scale, spacing, and a small set of components. New screens became assembly, not invention, and the product stopped drifting visually.

The pet-owner app beside the clinic dashboard

One product, two mindsets

Pet owners and clinics use the same product with very different goals — reassurance versus efficiency. Instead of two disconnected apps, I designed shared primitives with context-aware density: calmer, guided flows for owners; faster, information-dense views for professionals.

The product's task flow, mapped end to end

Cut the core flow to its essentials

The main task carried too many steps and too many decisions. I mapped the flow end to end, removed everything that didn't move the user forward, and set smart defaults for the rest. Fewer choices, clearer state, a shorter path from intent to done.

Final screens

Dog and Dog — notifications — Notifications

Dog and Dog — dose reminder — Dose reminder

What changed

One visual language across the product — same components, same patterns, everywhere.
Faster design-to-dev handoff: engineering builds from a shared library instead of rebuilding screens.
Documented product decisions, so the team keeps moving without design in every loop.

Hiring a product designer? Let's talk.

deepmaker0@gmail.com