If you haven't heard of Snake Discovery, they're one of the biggest reptiletube creators on the planet. Emily and Ed Roberts are the two nicest and most likeable people on the internet. If you want to cure your depression, get over your phobia of snakes, or just love to learn about animals, and you HAVEN'T heard of Snake Discovery- don't even read this, go watch them first!

Adoption Island is the name of Snake Discovery's reptile rescue, rehab and adoption operation. I must clarify that the name is not mine! In a recent video they discussed how Adoption Island has changed after 3 years in operation, I caught on to one thing they mentioned. They had plans of making their processes more streamlined, perhaps with a dedicated app. My immediate thought was "hey I can do that". But I decided to treat it as more of a practice project because I had just started learning to use Lovable to create products and I thought this was a great candidate for that.

For this app, I included user flows to adopt an available animal and to surrender an animal to SD. I based these flows on the process of adoption and surrender I've seen them follow through their videos. I added my own interventions to enrich and improve the user experience, such as screening potential adopters, communicating important healthcare info, connecting back to SD's Youtube channel and online store. It is a very mock-up level execution and by no means something I would consider shipping, but the purpose of this project was to learn Lovable and its capabilities, much like I did with Spicy Planet. I was honestly impressed by how well Lovable was able to execute the basic product from the very first master prompt. Many of the details I didn't initially realise were needed were already there, which made me really happy, and also gave me a good view of various new things I will need to keep track of when creating a product with an AI coding assistant.

I also learned that, from a purely design PoV, AI coding assistants are just not there yet. Admittedly, I've only done these experiments on Lovable and not its contemporaries like Replit and Bolt. Before I started learning this new tool, I was seeing a lot of chatter on the internet along the lines of "UX is dead", "UI is dead", "Vibe coding is the future", etc. Riffing on this for a moment, I'm pretty sure the people saying those things were either designers with very limited experience, or other types of specialists who maybe don't fully understand design. Truly, there is so much more that goes into UIUX/Product/Design than just fonts, colours, wireframes and buttons.

Designers are required to have a nuanced understanding of visual psychology, business practice in multiple industries and the history of brand marketing, they have to conduct effective research to find ways to improve people's lives, and produce creative output in a sea of market clutter, somehow making things that appeal to focused and/or broad audiences, without creatively burning out or stagnating, and they must do this again, and again, and again. Many of these skills are not taught in design schools, they're learned through experience, and they're definitely not dying out. Nobody wants a future where everything in your life looks, feels and acts the same, whether it's brands, buildings or water bottles. These skills and their applications are changing in subtle ways, and designers that don't keep up might have some soul searching to do. More on this from me soon! 👩🏾‍🍳

For now, here's my (WIP) take on a dedicated Adoption Island app for Snake Discovery. Take it for a spin, tell me what you think, and please watch Snake Discovery, I promise you won't regret it. 🐍 🐢 🦎 🐊