meomow
Role
product designer
Scope
2 weeks | august '25
Tools
Figma & Bolt
Project Type
ai prototyping
tl;dr
An experiment with AI prototyping to bring a playful idea to life
I’ve always loved cats (I have three of my own) and find joy in spotting them around the neighbourhood. I wanted to challenge myself to turn a turn this moment into a working product without any mobile experience.
This case study documents my experience experimenting with AI coding tools to build meomow, a mobile app that lets you capture cat sightings.
goals
Design an app that makes recording neighbourhood cat encounters fast and playful.
Test how AI can streamline development while retaining the UX.
Prioritize features to build a functioning prototype without mobile experience.
The Problem
Cat spotters have no quick or consistent way to log and organize their encounters.
The Demand
Apps like Pokémon GO, Beli, and Neko Atsume prove that people love building collections. They turn everyday discoveries (or simulated discoveries) into catalogable moments, providing you satisfaction in watching your collection grow over time.
If users can quickly capture cats, they'll build a catalog that turns casual encounters into a collection worth revisiting.
Understanding the Audience
The primary audience is mobile-savvy young adults age 15 to 25 who like logging parts of their daily life. They already document what they eat, where they go, and who they are with. The appeal is collecting, curating, and looking back at something they built.
Their goals are simple: capture the cat fast before it moves, save where they found them, track their personality traits.
Based on these user needs I was able to translate them into stories.
As a casual cat spotter, I want to snap a photo and log it instantly, so I don’t lose the moment.
As an avid cataloger, I want to tag personality traits, so my log feels personal and fun.
As a cat lover, I want to see my saved cats in a catalog, so I can revisit them easily and show my friends.
Feature Prioritization
I grouped features into three phases based on what would deliver immediate value versus what could enhance the experience later.
Capture features are the most important as easily logging a cat is critical. From there, visual polish and organization features follow. Social features are nice-to-haves since the audience seeks to collect only for themselves.
Essential features: camera controls like zoom and flash, multiple photos per entry. Deprioritized: account systems and sorting options.
Choosing the Right Tools
After prioritizing features, I began designing the main user flows. I initially experimented with Replit to build without upfront design work, but realized that the visuals were core to making this experience feel playful.
I discovered that Replit, Lovable, and similar tools couldn't build native mobile apps. This concept needed to feel like a real app with smooth camera integration and native gestures: this led me to Bolt AI and Expo. It allowed me to design detailed mockups in Figma, then build those designs to maintain control over the experience.
Taking ownership of the experience is essential to structuring the output.
the solution
meomow transforms spontaneous cat encounters into a personal catalog. Users open the app, snap photos, and let users save personality traits, age and cat type.
The app prioritizes speed without sacrificing context. The catalog makes browsing feel like flipping through a photo album. More importantly, meomow turns a fleeting experience into a meaningful collection, creating a reason to document these small moments and build a catalog worth returning to.
Your personal cat-alog
This project explored how thoughtful feature prioritization and AI-assisted prototyping could bring a niche idea to life without mobile experience. Each decision considered what would make users actually open the app and what would make them smile when scrolling through their catalog weeks later.
