Skipper Hospitality Booking Engine · Product Design
B2B SaaS
Subscription
Customer Portal
Lead designer
End-to-end
Spot & Tango customers on UnKibble meal plans were occasionally running out of food before their next delivery. I designed Buffer Bags — a one-time add-on embedded in the customer portal — that started as a 10% pilot and scaled to 100% of users, driving over $300K in sales.
01 · Context
About Spot & Tango
Spot & Tango is a direct-to-consumer pet food brand offering fresh and dry (UnKibble) meal plans delivered on a subscription basis. Customers customize a meal plan for their dog and receive regular shipments sized to their pet's caloric needs.
As the sole product designer on a team of 10+ engineers, I owned the end-to-end design of Buffer Bags — from initial research through the shipped portal experience. I worked closely with a PM and engineering leads across approximately 3 months.
My role
Sole Product Designer
Phase 02
Define
02 · Problem
Customers were running out of food with no self-serve solution
Spot & Tango's meal plans are calibrated to a dog's exact caloric needs — which means there's no built-in buffer. When something disrupted a customer's schedule, they'd run out of food before their next shipment. The only options were to contact CX, wait, or buy elsewhere. All three eroded trust.
Customer pain
Running out of food unexpectedly (ROOF)
No self-serve way to get extra food
Multi-dog households needed flexibility
Anxiety about pet care gaps
High volume of 'out of food' CX tickets
Risk of churn when buying elsewhere
Missed revenue from customers who'd pay
No existing portal solution
Key findings
Top 5
'Out of food' was a top-5 CX contact reason — a preventable friction point with a clear design solution
3 Types
Three distinct needs: reactive (ran out), proactive (want safety stock), multi-dog (need flexibility)
0 of 4
No competitor offered a portal add-on attaching extra food to an existing subscription order
100%
Of portal sessions reviewed showed customers leaving to contact CX — no self-serve path existed
Research synthesis
The opportunity wasn't just to sell extra food — it was to give customers control and confidence. A Buffer Bag that attached to their existing order, framed in days rather than bags, with dynamic quantity recommendations, was something no competitor offered.
Phase 02
Define
Problem statement
UnKibble subscribers need a frictionless way to purchase extra food mid-cycle — because peace of mind around their dog's nutrition shouldn't require a phone call.
MVP constraints
Attaches to existing subscription order
Cannot be a standalone order — must add to the next UnKibble delivery
UnKibble only at launch
Fresh food plans use different logistics; auto-removed if customer switches
Max 4 bags per order
Cap applied across all recipes to prevent overstocking
No days recalculation on plan change
Quantity stays fixed if customer changes plan size
Phase 03
Design process
The selection modal: days, not bags
The core interaction was a quantity selector inside a modal. Framing as "14 days of extra food" rather than "2 bags" made it immediately meaningful. The interface dynamically calculated days based on the customer's current plan — always personalized.
For multi-dog households, the modal defaulted to all dogs first, with individual selection as a secondary option. This resolved most cases in one tap while supporting complexity when needed.
Buffer Bag modal
Phase 04
Solution
Three decisions that made Buffer Bags work
Each design decision was grounded in a specific research finding or constraint — and each required navigating a real tradeoff.
Buffer Bag modal
Decision 01
Days-based framing over bag quantity
Instead of showing how many bags, the interface translated quantity into days of food — dynamically calculated based on the dog's current calorie plan. A large-breed customer saw '7 days,' not '2 bags.'
Design rationale
Customer interviews showed 'bags' meant nothing to them — they thought about feeding schedules. Days created an immediate, personal connection to the purchase.
Orders
Decision 02
Add-on to existing order, not a separate purchase
Phase 05
Testing & Rollout
Test setup
Participants
5 hotel guests via UserTesting.com
Method
Moderated remote usability test
Prototype
High-fidelity Figma, Journey East Hampton brand
Tasks
3 core flows: search → select → pay
Phase 06
Outcome & Reflection
From a 10% pilot to $300K+ in sales
After a successful pilot, Buffer Bags scaled to 100% of UnKibble subscribers. The feature became one of the highest-performing add-ons in the portal — demonstrating that solving a genuine customer pain point drives sustainable adoption.
$300k
In Buffer Bag sales
Post rollout
Rollout expansion
After successful pilot
−10%
'Out of food' CX tickets
Reduced in pilot cohort
30+
Frontend Launches
As sole designer that year
What shipped
Buffer Bags launched in the Spot & Tango customer portal and remain available to all UnKibble subscribers.
What this project taught me
Buffer Bags was the first project where I felt the full weight of being the sole designer on a team. No senior designer to review my work — just me, the PM, engineering leads, and a deadline. That forced a level of confidence in my decisions I hadn't needed to develop before.
The most important thing I learned was about constraint as creative input. The operations constraint — Buffer Bags had to attach to an existing order — initially felt limiting. Reframing it as a feature made the product clearer and more trustworthy.
What I'd do differently
I'd involve CX and operations earlier. The order attachment constraint came late and almost derailed the timeline. Cross-functional alignment in week one rather than week four would have saved significant back-and-forth.
What surprised me
The framing change — days instead of bags — had a bigger impact than almost any visual design decision. Language is design. The copywriting decision mattered as much as the UI component.
Main nsight
In subscription products, retention is the product. Buffer Bags wasn't really about selling extra food — it was about removing a churn trigger. The $300K in sales was a byproduct of solving a retention problem.
What came next
Add-ons in booking flow (early check-in, special requests) — highest-priority v2 feature from testing
Multi-CRS integration to support additional hotel clients beyond Journey East Hampton
Analytics dashboard for hoteliers to monitor conversion and drop-off in real time
Expanded design system to support 5+ hotel brands without per-client rebuilds