Ziying Cai
← All work

Making Pet Portal useful for every pet parent

Pet Portal used to work only for people who took their pet to a Chewy vet clinic. I led the design to open it up to every Chewy customer, from deciding what it should be to shipping the first version.

20.9KVisits a day
14.5KPet profiles a day
+22.4%More traffic to Chewy Health
Role
Lead Product Designer
Team
Product · Engineering · UXR
Shipped
Jan 2026

Retail

Retail customer view

Pharmacy

Pharmacy customer view

Clinic

Clinic customer view

The problem

The original Pet Portal only worked for clinic customers.
I was asked to scale it to all customers.

Before · clinic customers only

Original Pet Portal for clinic customers
ClinicExisting PharmacyNew RetailNew
Clinic visits
Vet care reminders
Health history
Prescriptions
Pet profile

The catch

Most customers have never been to our clinics, so we know very little about their pets.

My design goal

Make Pet Portal useful even when we know almost nothing about the pet.

Key decisions

Three design questions I had to answer

01What should Pet Portal be?

I pushed for a health home, not another store

I explored six concepts to define Pet Portal’s role—from shopping and prescription management to a health timeline, educational content, a services directory, and a care plan. Through leadership alignment, we selected the Care Plan as the direction: a health-focused home connecting Chewy Pharmacy, Vet Care, and CarePlus insurance.

  1. → Shopping

    Supplies-led ★ finalist · too shop-y

  2. → Pharmacy

    Orders & Autoship ✗ just an account page

  3. → Telehealth

    Pet timeline ✗ too noisy

  4. → CarePlus

    Learning hub ✗ read once

  5. → Vet Care

    Services directory ✗ which one?

  6. → Connects all three

    Chosen

    Care Plan ★ chosen

ChosenCare Plan — one place to look after your pet, connected to Chewy Pharmacy, Vet Care and CarePlus insurance.

02What goes in a care plan?

I explored many ideas, then tested the top 3 with customers

With no vet telling them what to do, what should a care plan include? I explored many directions, narrowed them to the 3 strongest, and put them in front of customers. Two lessons shaped the product:

Suggest, don’t dictate.
Start with what they need, not our list of services.

Finalist · Daily feed

Digest feed concept

Finalist · Build your own

Customer-created tasks concept

Finalist · Suggested routine

Generated routine concept

03How do we ship it?

I planned it in steps instead of cutting it down

The full care plan needs pet health info we don’t have yet. With Engineering, I picked a first version that works with what we already know (prescriptions), and mapped what comes next.

V1 · Shipped

Prescription reminder saved

Next · H1 2027

Care plan with care activities

North star

Full Care Plan

ShippedPrescription reminders — live for every customer since January 2026.

The solution

What shipped: one design for every customer

Impact

More customers coming back to Chewy

20.9KPet Portal visits a day
14.5KPet profiles created a day
+22.4%More traffic to Chewy Health from links across Chewy.com