Nino’s closet

Overview

Facing the challenge of finding well-fitting, durable apparel for Italian Greyhounds in Mexico City, I created Nino's Closet—an e-commerce platform offering premium, sustainable clothing tailored to this specific need. Through a four-month UX Writing bootcamp, I designed the brand to address both practical and emotional pain points for Iggie owners.

“There are tons of dog boutiques in the city, María.” Yes, but none that cater to Iggies’s particular slender frame.

After conducting a self-led user survey with 28 people, I was able to identify the most common pain points most Iggie parents seemed to share:

No right fits: There are some cute clothes at the local Petco stores, but they fail to properly fit Iggys’ protuberant chests and tiny waists.

Cheaply made: The majority of dog clothes are made with synthetic materials, which causes them to tear quickly.

Trust issues: Some people have a hard time trusting unknown vendors with their information.

Hypothesis

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Most Italian Greyhound owners would buy clothes for their Iggies at a premium cost if they knew they were made from sustainable materials and ethical production.

Implementation

Research

As part of my initial research, I performed:

A competitor analysis

A user survey

Conversation mining

User persona 👤

After clustering and analyzing these results, I started defining and creating my User Persona

Meet Emmy. She’s an Austin-born digital nomad who moved to Mexico City with her 1-year-old fur baby, Hamlet. Emmy needs to find cute and sustainable clothes to keep Hamlet warm and dry during this year’s rainy season. She hasn't had much luck finding the right fit for Hamlet at any of the local pet shops. That is until she discovered Nino’s closet.🐕

Ideation

Features

Now it was time to define the features for a perfect first-time online shopping experience at Nino’s Closet. I did this using a feature prioritization method where I divided my features into must-haves, delightful yet surprising, nice-to-have, and can come on future iterations.

This helped me organize my features based on relevance and importance while still leaving room for surprises that would delight my users and set me apart from the competition.

Voice and Tone

I then began to dissect Nino’s personality to create the brand’s voice guidelines (aka the Content Style Guide). Like I said before, I based the brand’s personality on my Italian Greyhound, Nino. 🐕 How could we describe him?

Nino is:

Friendly: He loves to make new friends, whether they’re other dogs or more on the “hooman” side.

Fun: He’s always ready to play his favorite games, like chasing his ball, running around in circles, or jumping high in the air.

Sweet: He loves cuddling up next to me or his Papa.

Cheerful: His waggy tail and sweet disposition will put a smile on anyone’s face.

Cute: I mean, look at him.

Screens

Up next, you’ll see the final mockups I designed on Figma and (a lot) of caffeine. ☕

Home page

I made sure to include information about the brand and its mission very early on in the journey to target the user needs for brand transparency.

Sign up pop-up

I’m stating the main benefit in the header (a 10% discount) while explaining the secondary benefits and the desired action in the subheading.

Item description at checkout

I’m giving the user visibility on their deal while maintaining Nino’s quirky voice.

Save a Grey donation flow:

Users feel like their purchase has a bigger purpose. This is a huge differentiator, helps create brand loyalty, and positions us as an ethical and conscious brand.

A “Thank you” message appears after selecting a donation amount.

Error message for when the user enters an incorrect card number

Error messages are not a time to be cute and funny. They should be as concise and helpful as possible.

Learning

Managing this project on my own was both challenging and fun. I handled everything from research to iteration while making sure Nino’s voice was consistently applied. I especially enjoyed finding, developing, and applying that voice throughout the process. I ran a guerrilla-style A/B test by tapping into relationships with peers at Hola Cash.

Balancing this with my full-time role helped me learn how to prioritize tasks, set realistic timelines, and deliver impactful results. The project’s validation confirmed my problem-solving and business-driven approach.

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