Vegan App — From UX Portfolio to the App Stores
My journey designing an app that ended up on the App Store platforms
The year was 2016, and I had just moved to Ireland. I realised I would face challenging days, not only when searching for accommodation or a job but especially if you are vegan.
It all started when I went to the grocery store to buy a cruelty—free toothpaste. I didn’t know any of the brands on the shelves, so the first thing that came to my mind was to open Google and type “vegan toothpaste in Dublin.”
The search didn’t return any significant results. Most showed stores in the UK, but nothing precisely showed me where to buy in Dublin or which suitable brands are available in the Irish market.
A bit frustrated, I still wanted to find where to buy, so I went to Facebook to ask in the Vegan Ireland group, which took me two days to get answered.
Later on that day, I was working on updating my online portfolio. Most of the material I had there showed my work as a Graphic Designer, from printing to logo creation. However, nothing focused on UX Design besides a few websites I have done throughout my career.
The goal was to have a side project to work with and have as content for my portfolio—a use case to go through some of the UX processes.
Back to my frustration of not finding vegan toothpaste, I wondered if there was an app that would help users find vegan products or services based on their location.
Most of the vegan apps I found in the market focused on helping people find cafes and restaurants, but none about finding products or services.
What if I create a collaborative social platform? The user would share photos, interact, and discover vegan-friendly products and services based on location. Supporting the local community, any company or business somehow collaborates with the environment.
I remember having some creative insights about creating the vegan app. I was excited about it but also wanted to make sure it wasn’t just my assumptions.
I knew I needed to do proper research, so I started with a questionnaire with a few questions addressed to the vegan community in Ireland.
This first research got over four hundred participants, which helped me better understand the vegan community in Ireland and learn from them about the products they buy.
The second research focused on learning about the services they use.
Besides the quantitative research, I participated in events and interviewed a few people to gather more data before sketching the user journey's wireframes.
The MVP
In 4 months, I had the prototype with the user flow finalised and the interfaces designed.
Leaders of Tomorrow — Summer Accelerator Programme by Accenture
Back in 2019, I was working as a freelancer for an Ad agency in Dublin. I wasn’t doing anything related to the Vegan Check app until I joined the Leaders of Tomorrow, a Summer Accelerator Programme by Accenture.
I joined a team to conceive an idea for a hackathon. We would work on it for the next two days and then present/pitch it at the end.
The winning team would join the Summer Accelerator Programme for the next three months, getting all the support from Accenture professionals, from mentors to entrepreneurs and businesspeople, without any expense.
The accelerator programme team needed to wrap up the first phase, defining a project. We were stuck on picking a concept to work with. None of the presented ideas were approved by the group members.
I encouraged myself to present the Vegan Check app project to the team at the last minute. The concept and prototype were already in place, and all it needed was a team, so they all agreed to work on it for the next two days.
The following days were a fantastic learning process, getting feedback on the app from mentors and team members, collaborating on shaping the app to a better user experience, understanding the business side and improving the prototype in terms of design and concept.
We were ready for the presentation, looking forward to that moment and the opportunity to get a chance to join the accelerator programme if we win.
The vibe was great, and the team was engaged and excited about how the idea was taking shape. The other groups and staff of the event were also looking forward to our presentation.
The presentation
Everyone in the group participated in that pitch. The I.T person and business management, including me, talked about the app, its functionality, and how it would impact the search for plant-based products and services.
We had the concept well defined:
Vegan Check App is a centralised access point platform for vegans, vegan-curious, health and eco-conscious individuals who constantly search for 100% cruelty-free and plant-based products and services.
It helps people know about current and newly available products and services based on location.
After the presentation, the judges liked it. They asked questions, showed excitement about the concept, and pointed out the vegan market trend and how the app could be a good product.
Finally, twenty minutes later, we were done and looking forward to knowing the winning teams. It was a Friday, and we had to wait until the following week to get feedback from the programme.
A few days later, Accenture emailed me inviting two other members of that group and me to join the Summer Accelerator Programme!
We didn’t continue with the Vegan Check app during the Summer Programme, but I was glad that the app's pitch allowed us to participate.
People became interested in knowing more, including people willing to download and use it.
I got so excited that what seemed to be a distant goal could happen if I had the right person joining me with the same passion I had when I created the idea.
I started by the social media for Vegan Check: Instagram and Facebook.
I wanted to show the concept, get users’ feedback, and build a community around that app. I knew I would have the app done at some point, which would be great for launching, with users already following the news and excited about it.
On social media, I posted content about the app and its features and vegan-friendly products, showing where to buy, what new products are on the grocery store shelves, etc.
It has been over a year since it all started. A few app developers wanted to join, offering a partnership. Others joined and left, and so on.
Today, I see how difficult it is to find the right person who aims for the same goals as you. I’ve learned if the other side is not on the same page as you, passionate as you, it has the chance of not working well in the future.
This is a human relationship; it doesn’t matter if it is a business or a love story.
Consider all these points if anybody is considering getting a professional to join you as a team partner.
Despite the challenges, I was still very motivated to use the app. Social media was growing; users subscribed to be notified when the app would be launched, and some media published about the app, from vegan news to a startup website, all around the globe, even before it launched.
VegWorld Magazine, Silicon Republic, Venture Mirror, Plant-Based Ireland
The expectation of having the app was growing from my side and the community, but the biggest challenge was still having someone joining me. I couldn’t do it alone.
I didn’t want to lose motivation and have this idea inside a desk drawer. I needed to try, and after a while, I decided to invest my own money and hire a developer to build the app.
I hired a company which quoted me an affordable price, and I could pay in 6 months. Dealt done.
The development process was challenging. I was working as a project manager for my app, and now there are two developers involved.
It was November 2019 when the development started, and by March 2020, the app was available to download from the Play Store and Apple Store.
The week the app was ready to launch was the same week the world began to collapse due to COVID-19.
I was looking forward to announcing the app launch, but I thought it wouldn’t be the proper time, so I held one more month, expecting things to get to normal, but it never happened.
I knew it wasn’t the best time, but I decided to launch it. It was a chance to get more time to populate the app with content, attract some early adopters, and collect feedback.
To my surprise, the app gained good acceptance quickly, reaching a significant number of downloads, considering it didn’t invest a penny in advertising.
I used social media, which I’ve been updating even before the app was done, engaging the users by posting products and sharing tips and relevant information.
The media spontaneously published about the app, and I had the chance to be interviewed to talk about the app:
The problem
Despite the relative growth of the app, from user downloads to publishing and participation in comments, it didn’t have a solid structure. Bugs were popping up every week.
Some feedback from users who couldn’t log in or published products not displayed in the post collaborated to get a bad experience.
The developers fixed the bugs a few times, and others charged me.
During the first year, I had some additional costs to fix bugs and the development cost, which had already been paid by then.
I had a lot of expenses to keep the app rolling nicely. It worked well for a couple of months, but then there were always bugs compromising the app's usability.
I figured out how I managed and dealt with it, but it wasn’t the most satisfactory.
It was an eternal loop of expenses, mainly because I didn’t have the developers join as a team, so every update was charged. I couldn't have an app where users couldn’t log in or publish products.
The app’s core features weren’t working correctly, which contributed to my decision to remove it from the stores.
It was a tough decision. More than four thousand apps were downloaded, in addition to the investment I made to make this app come to life.
I learned a lot from the experience of having my first app published in the stores, the journey I went through, and the people I met.
We are what we experience, and I’m sure I made it even without the app, taking the knowledge of how to do it differently the next time.
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