The founders came to us with an idea and a hunch: what if you could video chat with a veterinarian—anytime, from anywhere? No waiting rooms, no guesswork, just peace of mind in your pocket. Telemedicine was still early. For pets, it was unheard of. But the moment they said it out loud, we felt it—this wasn’t just a good idea. It was obvious.
Market & Context
Vet On Demand entered the scene before the wave. In 2015, “telehealth” barely registered in veterinary circles—most pet owners had never heard of it, and most vets wanted nothing to do with it. The idea of diagnosing an animal through a screen sounded risky, even irresponsible, to traditional practitioners. Regulatory boards were cautious. Industry voices were skeptical. The rules hadn’t caught up to the technology.
But the demand was there—millions of pet owners googling symptoms at 11pm, wondering if they needed to rush to the ER or just wait it out. There was no bridge between total inaction and a $300 clinic visit. Vet On Demand saw that gap and stepped into it with a simple, powerful premise: what if you could FaceTime a vet?
It was a cultural moment. Smartphones were normal. On-demand everything was booming. Uber, Postmates, Doctor on Demand—real-time access had become the expectation. Vet On Demand wasn’t just betting on a product. They were betting on a new behavior.
Brand & Product Limitations
There was no name. No product. No team. Just two founders, a category-defining idea, and a whole lot of unknowns. From the jump, we were building the plane mid-flight—crafting a brand, architecting the product, and sourcing the right engineers to bring it all to life. There was no roadmap because there was no road.
We had to define the core feature set from scratch. What does a video-based veterinary consult actually look like? How long should it last? What can a vet legally do over a screen? Even the basics—call history, digital pet records, choosing your favorite vet—had to be imagined, tested, and built in parallel.
The network didn’t exist yet either. We needed licensed veterinarians, across multiple states, willing to take a leap on a model most of their peers dismissed. And we had to do it while earning the trust of pet owners who had never seen anything like this before. The product had to do a lot: feel warm, work fast, and prove it was more than a novelty.
Strategic & Technical Barriers
We were building a real-time medical service on technology that wasn’t quite ready. WebRTC was still in its infancy, and mobile video infrastructure wasn’t built for smooth, diagnostic-grade interactions. Cell networks were unreliable, time zones were a mess, and 24/7 vet coverage meant threading the needle between operations and economics. We weren’t just solving for UX—we were solving for uptime.
Then there was the regulatory minefield. In most states, veterinarians legally couldn’t diagnose or prescribe without first establishing an in-person relationship. That meant we had to design around gray areas—tele-triage, not tele-treatment. Every feature needed to walk the legal line: helpful but compliant, efficient but careful.
Even things like documentation became complex. What notes should vets take? Who stores the pet records? Could we create continuity without crossing legal boundaries? There were no playbooks, no benchmarks, no safe defaults. Just questions. We answered them by building.
Human & Organizational Challenges
This wasn’t a story of misalignment—it was a story of ambition outrunning infrastructure. The founders were clear-headed and committed, but non-technical. They trusted us to lead everything from architecture to execution, which meant the weight of product strategy, engineering decisions, and implementation fell squarely on our side.
We had a lean team, but the real friction came from the limitations of the medium itself. Mobile video over cell networks—especially in 2015—was notoriously unreliable. Spotty connections, dropped calls, jittery streams. We weren’t just designing for ideal conditions—we were designing for reality. That meant constant testing, fallback patterns, and UX decisions shaped by edge cases.
Discovery & Strategy
We went all-in from day one. The entire agency—four of us—was embedded as an extension of the founding team. No silos, no client-vendor dynamic. Just one group, building toward a shared vision. We worked like an internal product team: daily standups, real-time iteration, full-stack thinking from brand to backend.
We started by mapping the ecosystem. Who were the users? What were the use cases? How could we design for trust in a space where people had never done this before? We ran competitive audits, talked to early vets, stress-tested assumptions, and built from zero with clarity and speed. The product wasn’t just new—it was unprecedented. So we designed the system that would define the category.
Concept Development
We didn’t want to just create a call center for pet questions. We wanted to build a system that could guide, reassure, and route in real time. The core metaphor was the “virtual house call”—intimate, responsive, and grounded in care. But layered on top of that was a triage engine. If a pet was showing signs of distress, our vision was to instantly recommend the nearest emergency clinic. Not just talk—navigation.
Every feature laddered up to that ambition. We built continuity into the experience—users could favorite a vet, save call histories, and store digital health records for their pets. Sessions were capped at 10 minutes to keep things efficient but still personal. It felt lightweight, but purposeful. Our north star was simple: make remote care feel human, and make serious situations actionable.
Design Execution
We crafted a design system that felt calm, modern, and trusted—just enough warmth to feel personal, just enough polish to feel clinical. The core palette blended deep violet with bright citrus accents, giving the UI energy without sacrificing clarity. The typography leaned friendly but precise, and the iconography was minimal, intuitive, and distinctly non-corporate.
Key actions like “New Consultation” were framed with clear, tactile hierarchy—a bold orange call-to-action floating above a spacious, icon-driven menu. We gave pet owners control and comfort in equal measure: add a pet, save your vet, rate a visit. Every detail was tuned for emotional reassurance.
On the vet profile, we gave care providers space to tell their story. Ratings, bios, specializations—they weren’t hidden behind a portal. They were front and center, building trust before the call even began. From onboarding to follow-up, the flow was intentionally lightweight and human. You could go from signup to speaking with a vet in under two minutes. It felt like magic—because it worked like it mattered.
Build & Integration
We built Vet On Demand from the ground up, in-house, across both iOS and Android. No outsourcing, no handoff gaps—just tight alignment between design, product, and engineering. Every interaction was designed in Figma and translated directly into code by our team, ensuring that what we shipped was pixel-perfect and purpose-built.
Under the hood, we chose a .NET backend—deliberate and pragmatic. At the time, it was one of the few frameworks with maturity, security, and healthcare-adjacent credibility. Many medical systems were already built on it, which made it easier to future-proof integration paths and work within a regulatory mindset. The result was a tech stack that could move fast without compromising trust.
Collaboration & Workflow
This wasn’t agency work—it was team work. We operated as a fully embedded product unit alongside the founders, handling design, engineering, and product decisions under one roof. With just four of us on the build, there was no room for bureaucracy. Everyone touched everything. We shipped fast, made decisions in real time, and solved problems before they turned into blockers.
Daily standups kept priorities clear. Feedback was instant—often happening mid-prototype or mid-sprint. We shared everything through Figma and GitHub, worked in tight weekly iterations, and reviewed new builds internally before surfacing them to the founders. The rhythm was intense but energizing: build, test, refine, repeat. In that environment, momentum wasn’t an outcome—it was a requirement.
Vet On Demand launched to national attention. It was the first of its kind—live video consults with licensed veterinarians, available on demand, from your phone. Within months, the app had over 20,000 users and was featured by Yahoo Finance, Forbes, and Fierce Pharma. But more importantly, it changed how people thought about pet care. Suddenly, it made sense that veterinary advice could be just a tap away.
For the founders, it proved the market existed. For pet owners, it offered peace of mind in moments of panic. And for the industry, it set a precedent. We didn’t just ship an app—we helped pioneer a category. Vet On Demand may not have survived the structural challenges of early telehealth, but its fingerprint is still on every pet care platform that came after.
At Metamodern, we don’t just execute. We help ambitious teams leap into the unknown—and make it feel inevitable.
Before the world was ready, we showed what was possible.
More projects.
(2010-2025)
