Kaylo

I co-founded a company that provided a mobile app for nannies (a surprisingly underserved market). I executed all design (on both product and brand), and marketing efforts for our company, Kaylo.

Lessons Learned

After about 2 years, my business partner and I called the quits on Kaylo. We didn’t get much traction organically, and with both of us having other full-time commitments, we began to recognize that a location-based app for nannies was either too niche OR not robust enough to compete with existing players in the space.

Deliverables

Art Direction
Branding
Illustration
Strategy
UX + UI
Front-End Dev

The Team

Danny Pier [Co-Founder + Dev]

Initial Surveys & Data

Prior to beginning anything, including the branding work, my business partner and I sent out a survey to our target audience to get some general sentiments about the app. We validated some of our initial assumptions, and though we could tell there was a bit of a “why would anyone need this?”, we decided to push through.

Eventually, we found out that question was bigger than we thought and the app never found a sweet spot. In any case, we learned a lot throughout the process.

The Brand

Once we had a general idea of what the app should be, I created the brand identity. My business partner came up with the name “Kaylo” which was the inverse of “locate” phonetically. From there, I explored a number of directions until we landed on this direction with an organic, “mother earth” style of approachability. We didn’t want to pander to moms and parents like most of the market with soft, baby-like colors, so we went the opposite direction with bold pops of color.

Kaylo Icon

Initial direction, from our previous mark for "Kindred"

Business Cards

Mobile App UI

Custom Illustrations

One advantage of being a small team is that you have to/get to do everything yourselves. I knew we wanted a playful tone for the brand, so though limited in quantity, I took the opportunity to create some custom illustrations for things like our error screens.

Wireframes

The Website

Our initial marketing plan relied mainly on word of mouth, so we didn’t need a robust web presence. And so, I designed and created more of a single landing page, just so we had something to point to. I designed the site in Sketch, and built it in WordPress so we could quickly edit it as we played around with messaging.

Marketing website

Kindred vs. Kaylo

When we first launched the app, we used the name “Kindred” because of its familial ties. All of the initial branding, including the stylistic “K” symbol was done with that name. However, within one week of launching our app, we got a cease and desist for copyright infringement… made everything feel pretty official! In any case, we hit the ground running and I had created a number of social media assets, including this Instagram video: