Card 01
Neighborhood Saver
When the grooming van is already serving a customer's neighborhood, customers can choose a route-friendly appointment at a preferred price.
Better for the customer.
Better for the route.
Better for the business.
Contra × Lovable Hackathon
Paws & Suds
From a business problem to a working product.
Paws & Suds is a fictional mobile dog-grooming business created for the Contra × Lovable Hackathon.
The challenge was to identify a realistic business problem, understand the operational friction behind it, and rapidly turn a possible solution into a working product.
Concept project · Fictional business
The Problem
It sounds like a booking problem.
“Can I book an appointment?”
For the customer, that is a simple question.
For a solo mobile groomer, every booking also affects where the van needs to travel, how much time is spent between appointments, how many customers can be served that day, and whether the route makes business sense.
Customer sees
Available time↓Book appointmentBusiness has to consider
Location+Travel time+Service duration+Dog requirements+Schedule capacity+Existing routeA traditional booking system solves calendar availability.
A mobile service business also has to solve route efficiency.
The Insight
Finding the leverage point
“What if the booking experience could help optimize the route before the appointment is even booked?”
Instead of asking the business owner to manually optimize every booking request, the product could encourage customers to choose appointments that naturally fit the existing route.
This became the central product concept:
Neighborhood Saver
The Solution
A product mechanism, not just a discount.
Neighborhood Saver aligns customer choice with operational efficiency — the price signal is how the product invites customers into route-friendly slots.
Card 02
Standard Booking
Customers who need another available day can still choose or request a standard appointment at the regular price.
Flexibility remains part of the experience.
Designing around the business
The simplicity is on the surface.
The customer shouldn't have to understand routing logic, capacity planning, or operational constraints. The product should.
Simple customer experience
DogAddressServiceDate & TimeDetailsConfirm / Request
Business logic
Neighborhood routingService durationAppointment buffersBusiness hoursLead timeRoute-day availabilityAdd-on servicesBooking holdsOwner review
Two sides of the product
One experience. Two perspectives.
Customer experience
- Add dog information
- Enter location
- Select grooming service
- Compare booking options
- Choose date and time
- Add grooming/access notes
- Confirm booking or submit request
Business owner experience
- View bookings
- Manage calendar
- See route context
- Manage route days
- Review requests
- Handle exceptions
- Maintain operational control
NexaSpark build approach
From friction to prototype.
01
Find the friction
Start with the actual problem, not the technology.
“Can I book?” initially looks like a scheduling problem. Dig deeper and it becomes a routing + capacity + customer-experience problem.
02
Find the lever
Identify the smallest product idea that could meaningfully change the workflow.
For Paws & Suds: Neighborhood Saver.
03
Design the experience
Translate business rules into something simple for the customer.
Keep complexity behind the product rather than making the user manage it.
04
Build it
Move rapidly from:
Idea → Product logic → UX → Working prototype
05
Test & learn
Use the working prototype to ask better questions:
- Does the workflow make sense?
- Would customers understand the choice?
- Can the business manage exceptions?
- What should be automated next?
“Instead of debating an idea on paper, build enough of it to learn.”
What was built
From concept to working experience
01
Customer booking experience
02
Route-aware scheduling logic
03
Neighborhood Saver concept
04
Standard booking option
05
Service and add-on selection
06
Booking/request workflows
07
Owner dashboard
08
Calendar management
09
Route-day management
10
Request review
11
Responsive prototype
Built with Lovable
Built with AI. Built by doing.
Paws & Suds was rapidly prototyped using Lovable as part of the Contra × Lovable Hackathon.
The project demonstrates how AI-assisted development can move an idea beyond slides, specifications, or wireframes and into a working experience that can actually be explored and tested.
Explore Paws & Suds
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Concept project
Paws & Suds is a fictional business and prototype created for the Contra × Lovable Hackathon. It is not presented as a client engagement or an operating grooming business.
The project was created to demonstrate product thinking: identifying a realistic operational problem, designing around the business constraint, and using AI-assisted development to rapidly turn the concept into a working prototype.
What this demonstrates
The project wasn't really about dog grooming.
It was about asking: can we understand a messy real-world workflow, find the point where technology can make it simpler, and build something quickly enough to test the idea?
Find the friction↓Shape the solution↓Build the idea↓Learn from what works
NexaSpark
Have a problem worth building around?
You don't always need months of planning to understand whether an idea has potential. Sometimes the fastest way forward is to build enough of the solution to see it working.
Bring the problem. Let's build what's next.