Papa's Strain
logo, mobile concept
Papa's Strain
March 2020 - January 2021
Papa’s Strain is a self-initiated project inspired by Papa’s Herb dispensary, reimagined through a UX design lens. This case study explores how typography, branding, and visual identity integrate seamlessly into a mobile app interface and promotional assets.
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Papa’s Strain
Logo, Mobile Concept, and Brand Experience
Problem
The goal was to translate a dispensary brand into a digital-first experience that feels approachable, trustworthy, and consistent. Users needed an intuitive mobile interface that simplified exploration, product discovery, and engagement while reinforcing the brand’s personality.
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Translate a dispensary brand into a digital-first experience
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Ensure the mobile interface is intuitive and approachable
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Reinforce brand personality across all touchpoints
Approach
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Branding & Typography: Developed a visual identity system with clear, legible typefaces and a distinctive color palette to strengthen recognition across digital and physical touchpoints.
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Mobile Interface Design: Designed a responsive, user-friendly app prototype prioritizing navigation, readability, and task completion for quick and seamless interactions.
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Promotional Assets: Extended the brand into marketing materials to ensure consistency across campaigns, social media, and other channels.
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UX Principles: Applied human-centered design thinking, testing layouts and flows to optimize engagement and usability while reinforcing brand trust.
Outcome
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Cohesive, visually engaging digital brand experience
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Optimized navigation and task completion for mobile users
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Strengthened brand perception while delivering a meaningful UX
Creating the logo
The Digilifeap.com website had been stagnant for years, with usability issues limiting visitor engagement. Our goal was to improve the overall user experience while refreshing the visual identity, ensuring the site attracted clients for video and film production services.
Working within the existing framework presented a challenge, as a full back-end overhaul wasn’t feasible. Instead, we focused on front-end design enhancements, prioritizing intuitive navigation, clear visual hierarchy, and storytelling-driven aesthetics. The logo development was central to this effort, creating a mark that reflected the brand’s creative expertise, strengthened recognition, and seamlessly integrated into a modern, user-centered interface.
Mobile App Concept
Building on the brand foundation and custom logo, the mobile app concept brought Papa’s Strain into a digital, user-centered experience. The goal was to create a platform that allows customers to easily explore strain options, flavor profiles, and limited-time promotions, while staying true to the brand’s nostalgic, old-school cannabis roots. The app delivers a streamlined, scrollable experience that balances playful retro visuals with modern usability principles. Custom icons and bold, chunky typography were applied to ensure consistency and strengthen the overall UI.
Experience-Driven Design
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Intuitive Navigation: Streamlined scrollable layout designed for effortless product exploration.
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Interactive Product Discovery: Touch-friendly selection for strains and flavor profiles.
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Promotional Integration: Limited-time offers and special events highlighted without disrupting usability.
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Cohesive Visual Identity: Consistent application of color, typography, and branding elements.
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Playful, Engaging Interface: Retro-inspired visuals combined with modern UX patterns to create an enjoyable experience.
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User-Centered Design: Features and layout optimized for accessibility, readability, and smooth interactions.
Understanding the User Journey
Developing detailed personas allowed us to represent a wide range of users, capturing differences in age, reading ability, and cultural background. These personas guided design decisions, ensuring that the experience was engaging, intuitive, and tailored to real user needs.
Mapping the user flows highlighted key interactions and touchpoints, helping visualize how users would navigate the platform from start to finish. By identifying potential pain points and opportunities for engagement, we were able to iterate on layout, content hierarchy, and interactive elements before moving into higher-fidelity designs.
Primary Users
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User-Centered Design: Personas guided decisions focused on the needs and goals of primary users.
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Intuitive Navigation: Flow optimized for the most common tasks of primary users.
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Engagement Mapping: Prioritized touchpoints that maximize interaction and learning.
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Accessibility & Inclusivity: Designed to accommodate primary users while remaining flexible for a diverse audience.
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Iterative Prototyping: Tested early sketches and flows to ensure usability for primary users.
Establishing the Interaction Framework
Before moving into high-fidelity visuals, I created a series of low-fidelity wireframes to define the app’s core structure and user flow. These sketches provided a clear blueprint for how primary users would navigate the platform, helping identify key touchpoints and interactions early in the design process.
With the core personas in mind, the focus was on crafting a layout that felt intuitive, scroll-friendly, and easy to navigate. This approach allowed rapid iteration, testing multiple options for hierarchy, content placement, and interactive patterns, ensuring a solid foundation for subsequent high-fidelity designs.
Takeaways from Lo-Fi Prototypes
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User Flow Validation: Early mapping of interactions revealed friction points and opportunities.
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Persona-Centered Layouts: Wireframes tailored to the primary users’ behaviors and needs.
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Content Hierarchy Exploration: Tested placement and prioritization for clarity and readability.
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Navigation Optimization: Iterated scroll-friendly layouts and intuitive pathways.
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Rapid Iteration: Low-fidelity sketches enabled fast testing and refinement before hi-fi design.
Old menu & logo
New menu & final logo
Enhanced Navigation & Branding
The updated menu structure and finalized logo enhance clarity, improve navigation, and strengthen overall brand presence, creating a more intuitive and visually cohesive experience for users
A new menu layout and finalized logo added clarity, style, and a stronger brand presence.
Refining Navigation and Visual Identity
The hi-fidelity screens showcase an optimized menu layout for intuitive navigation and a polished logo that reinforces the brand’s bold personality. Each screen was redesigned to prioritize usability, visual hierarchy, and interaction clarity, ensuring a seamless and engaging user experience.
App screens were redesigned with a clear focus on user experience, improving visual hierarchy, interaction clarity, and task flow. Each interface element was evaluated against UX best practices to ensure a cohesive, engaging, and accessible experience that resonates with users while maintaining brand consistency.
Extending the Brand to Social Media
To complement the app experience and strengthen brand presence, I designed a series of Instagram concepts that translated Papa’s Strain’s playful, retro-inspired identity into a social platform context. The designs focused on engaging the community through bold visuals, highlighted strain features, and seasonal promotions, creating a cohesive and immersive brand experience.
By applying UX principles to social content, each post was structured to capture attention quickly, guide the viewer’s eye, and encourage interaction. Consistency in typography, color, and visual style ensured the brand’s personality remained authentic, while layouts and content hierarchy were optimized for the fast-paced, scroll-driven nature of social media. This approach reinforced the overall brand experience across multiple touchpoints, creating a seamless connection between digital products and social engagement.
Social Design Takeaways
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Attention-Driven Layouts: Structured visuals to guide the viewer’s eye quickly.
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Engagement-Oriented Content: Promoted interaction through strain spotlights and seasonal promotions.
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Consistent Brand Language: Unified typography, color, and visual style across posts.
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Scroll-Friendly Design: Optimized for fast-paced, mobile-first social media consumption.
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Seamless Experience Across Touchpoints: Social content reinforces app branding and overall user journey.
Outcome
The project resulted in a cohesive, visually engaging digital brand experience that seamlessly integrates the app, logo, and social media touchpoints. Every design decision—from navigation patterns to visual hierarchy—was guided by UX principles to ensure clarity, accessibility, and ease of use.
Mobile users now benefit from optimized navigation and streamlined task flows, enabling effortless exploration of strains, flavor profiles, and promotions. Interaction points were carefully refined to support engagement while reducing cognitive load, creating a fluid and intuitive experience.
The strengthened brand identity resonates consistently across platforms, reinforcing recognition and trust. By combining human-centered design with strategic visual storytelling, the experience delivers meaningful interactions that connect with users emotionally while supporting business goals.
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Cohesive Brand Experience: Seamless integration across app, logo, and social media touchpoints.
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Optimized Navigation: Streamlined flows and intuitive interactions for mobile users.
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Task Completion & Engagement: Reduced friction and improved usability for key user tasks.
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Consistent Visual Identity: Strengthened recognition and trust across all digital platforms.
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Human-Centered Design Impact: Meaningful interactions that connect emotionally and support business goals.
