Jolly Hugs

Overview

Jolly Hugs is a multi sided pet care platform that connects pet parents with doctors, expert caregivers, and pet products through dedicated applications for users, veterinarians, and paraveterinarians.

My role focused on designing the end to end mobile experience across all three applications. The goal was to make essential pet care services easier to access while supporting appointment booking, service requests, product discovery, and the operational needs of care providers.

The Problem

The core challenge was designing three connected applications for users with very different needs. Pet parents need quick access to care, appointments, medicines, and supplies, while doctors and caregivers need efficient ways to manage availability, accept requests, and coordinate their work.

Combining these workflows in a single interface would create unnecessary complexity. At the same time, the platform needed to support location based availability, payments, referrals, and product discovery without making urgent care difficult to access.

The Approach

I approached Jolly Hugs as a service first ecosystem, designing separate role specific experiences while maintaining a consistent visual language across the platform. Wireframes and structured screen layouts helped establish the information hierarchy before moving into high fidelity interfaces.

The pet parent app prioritises access to expert caregivers, doctor video consultations, appointments, medicines, and the pet store. The home screen brings essential services and product categories together, while dedicated category and product detail screens make browsing and purchase decisions more straightforward.

For doctors, I designed interfaces for discovering and managing appointments, viewing professional profiles, and handling upcoming consultations. The caregiver experience focuses on service availability, request management, location based matching, payouts, and referrals. These role specific workflows allow each user group to focus on the tasks most relevant to them without navigating unnecessary features.

The commerce experience complements the service journey through organised product categories, promotional sections, and pet care essentials. By prioritising access to care while retaining shopping functionality, the platform supports both immediate needs and ongoing pet wellness.

The Results

• Three role specific mobile experiences designed around the needs of pet parents, doctors, and caregivers
• A structured service discovery journey covering expert care, video consultations, and appointments
• Dedicated interfaces for professional profiles, appointment management, and care provider operations
• An integrated pet commerce experience supporting product categories, medicines, food, and wellness essentials
• A consistent visual direction across service and commerce workflows

What I'd Do Differently

I'd run usability sessions with veterinarians and caregivers in their actual working environments. Their applications may be used while travelling between appointments or managing urgent requests, and testing in those conditions would reveal interaction challenges that desk based reviews might miss.

I'd also establish the shared design system before developing all three applications in parallel. A common component library, interaction guidelines, and role specific design rules would help maintain consistency while allowing each application to address its own operational requirements.

What I Learned

Different users need different workflows. Pet parents, veterinarians, and caregivers share the same ecosystem, but their goals and working contexts differ significantly. Separate role specific experiences can reduce unnecessary complexity while keeping the overall platform connected.

Urgency should shape the information hierarchy. Pet parents may open the application because they need help quickly. Essential care services and appointment access should therefore take priority over secondary activities such as shopping and product exploration.

Services and commerce can coexist when the hierarchy is clear. Leading with care helps preserve the platform's primary purpose, while a well structured store supports ongoing pet wellness without competing with urgent service needs.