A product-led insurance app that supported a $6M investment to bring pet insurance to the Italian market.
Product Design
Brand & Visual Design
User Research
Design Leadership
NovaPet is an AI powered pet care and insurance app designed for the Italian market, where pet insurance is largely unfamiliar and culturally met with scepticism. Early stakeholder insights suggested that leading directly with insurance would trigger distrust, so the challenge was to introduce an entirely new category through a pet care first approach.
I worked alongside Minimal Viable Launch, leading brand direction and product design across the full process, from early research and discovery through to a polished, investor ready vision prototype. The designs and research directly supported a $6 million seed investment to move the product into development.
Case Study
Pet insurance is largely unknown in Italy. Unlike the UK where pet care plans are embedded into vet culture, Italian pet owners have little exposure to the concept and a deep cultural scepticism toward insurance products in general. Initial stakeholder conversations revealed that the word "insurance" itself was a potential barrier that could trigger distrust before any value proposition could land.
Through stakeholder interviews and market analysis, we identified that insurance in Italy carries significant negative associations, particularly among young, professional families in northern Italy. Early anecdotal evidence suggested that positioning NovaPet as an insurance product would face immediate resistance.Instead, we would lead with genuine utility. The AI vet feature became our primary hook, offering immediate value for daily pet care concerns, supported by educational content and personalised guidance to position NovaPet as a trusted companion. We committed to a mobile first approach with AI chat as the entry point, building trust gradually through education before introducing financial products.
Stakeholders emphasised that NovaPet needed to feel warm and aspirational without falling into typical insurance aesthetics, which Italians associated with bureaucracy and distrust. We facilitated a brand workshop using comparative exercises like "professional or playful" and "medical or lifestyle" to uncover their desired positioning.
From a moodboarding exercise exploring premium lifestyle brands, we developed three distinct approaches: Minimalist (clean, premium), Playful (warm, approachable), and Tech (contemporary, confident). Guerilla research with potential users showed the playful option resonated most strongly, but stakeholder input ultimately shifted toward the minimalist approach. The final brand direction combined sophisticated restraint with carefully selected warmer colours, creating a brand that felt both credible and approachable for the Italian market.
Starting with user flows built on our strategic insights, we mapped key user journeys around the central AI chat experience. The flows focused on conversational onboarding that would gather pet information while building trust, leading to a personalised dashboard.
Wireframes focused on core features: an AI chat interface serving as entry point and ongoing support, a dashboard with personalised recommendations, and pathways to connect with vets without overwhelming users with insurance messaging. As designs evolved into high fidelity, we applied the minimalist brand direction to create a unified interface that balanced medical credibility with warm, approachable elements. A set of design tokens and core components were established at this stage to ensure consistency as the system scaled, covering colour, typography, spacing, and the repeating UI patterns across the product.
We transformed these designs into a fully interactive prototype and developed a comprehensive testing script covering key user journeys, recruiting participants through Respondent.io who matched our target demographic of working professionals aged 25-40 with pets in Italy.
The moderated usability tests revealed fascinating cultural nuances, from pets being viewed as "free spirits" rather than owned property, to deep-seated suspicion of insurance due to historical scams in Italy. Sessions were synthesised using affinity mapping to balance quantitative metrics with qualitative cultural understanding.The research validated our strategic approach with compelling data: 80% of participants showed positive interest in signing up monthly, and all participants were familiar with AI tools, with 40% already using AI for pet-related concerns. Crucially, 60% preferred medically sourced content over influencer recommendations, reinforcing our decision to position NovaPet as a credible, expert-backed platform.
Most importantly, cultural insights confirmed our initial hypothesis that insurance needed to remain secondary. Users responded enthusiastically to the AI vet feature and points based engagement system, seeing genuine value in daily pet care support, but insurance remained something they would only consider after trust was established.
The completed design delivered a comprehensive mobile first pet care platform that successfully positioned insurance as a natural extension of trusted pet guidance. The AI chat served as the primary entry point with "Hey, I'm your virtual pet assistant" rather than any mention of financial products. Users naturally shared pet information through conversational prompts that fed into personalised profiles without feeling like formal applications.
The dashboard featured a points counter prominently at the top alongside four key entry points: Check-in, Learn/Library, AI Vet, and points. The points system provided crucial engagement mechanics, with users earning points for reading care guides and completing health assessments, creating a gamified pathway that gradually built their profile for eventual insurance eligibility.
Insurance only appeared after users had accumulated points and engaged with content, positioned as "Extra care" alongside educational content. The visual interface used warm mint green, soft coral, and neutral grays that felt both medical and approachable, with typography balancing friendly headers and clean body text.
The design work directly supported NovaPet's successful $6 million seed funding round. The investor ready prototype effectively demonstrated both the product vision and market opportunity, with cultural insights and user validation providing crucial credibility for funding discussions. The research backed approach to the Italian market, combined with polished brand execution and proven user engagement metrics, positioned NovaPet as a compelling investment opportunity in the emerging pet tech space.
The biggest insight was balancing user research with stakeholder requirements in startup environments. While our street research favoured the playful brand direction, broader business considerations ultimately led to the minimalist approach. This taught us the importance of diverse research methods and managing multiple stakeholder perspectives when making strategic design decisions.
