SHËL - Skincare Routine Builder

UX/UI Design Project Case Study

PHASE 1: Research

Proto Persona

We started with a proto persona of a woman having trouble maintaining a skincare routine while traveling. The stress of a busy job and the inability to verify what she needs when buying products in different cities had caused her to break out and feel terrible.

User Interviews

From here we interviewed seven different people about their skincare routines. This was all very new to me. I learned a lot by asking people about their routines and what products they prefer. A lot of my initial ideas were thrown out after this process. It was a really valuable lesson in making assumptions before making a project.

Research Question:

How could a mobile app assist in helping users learn more about skincare products and maintain a healthy skincare routine?

Research Objectives:

1. Discover more about what users know about skin types and how to take care of their specific skin type.

2. Find how people research their skincare products and make sure they will work for their needs.

3. Learn more about people's skincare routines and see if there are any patterns.

Sample Questions:

“How do you research products? - How many minutes/hours do you put into research before purchase?”

“Do you set a beauty budget for yourself?”

“Do you notice if your lifestyle affects your skin? -working out, alcohol, stress, living in a city, etc.”

Interview Transcript Selection:

“Something I’d really like to see in a skincare app is the capability to see which kind of products would work during what time of day and how I could organize that.”

User Data Analysis

Once we finished seven interviews we assorted our data as stick notes in Miro. What with the Pandemic going on we weren’t able to do any of this project in person, unfortunately. Once we had all our insights in one place we sorted those findings into an affinity diagram that gave us a better idea of what our user’s concerns were. The categories we created included budget, insights on user’s views of ingredients, thoughts on a theoretical skincare app, and skincare concerns.

Empathy Map

Now that we had an overview of what our user looks like we were able to create an empathy map. This would give us a clearer idea of the user we were designing for and let us better understand how to meet their needs when designing our app. Through the interview process, I learned how personal skincare can be so it was really pivotal that we have a very real person in mind that we could envision using this application.

PHASE 3: Ideation

“I Like, I Wish, What If” Method

Examples of things we Like:

• Knowing what products work best for me

• Understanding which products do/don't work well with each other

• Getting recommendations based on price category

Example of things we Wish:

• I wish I could remember to moisturize before I start looking like a crocodile

• I wish I didn't have to spend so much time researching the best products for my skin

• I wish I had more guidance on a helpful skincare routine when I was younger

Examples of ideas we had when we asked What if?

• What if an app could help me build confidence

• What if we could use lasers mounted to satellites to vanquish blemishes from space (no bad ideas!)

• My phone could give me light healing therapy

Feature Prioritization Matrix

After we had a good assortment of ideas, we asked ourselves which of these Molly would view as the most useful and which we think would be the most achievable. Some of the focus features we wanted to create were:

• The ability to read reviews

• The ability to recommend products based on skin type

• The ability to build and track your personal skincare routine

• Ability to recommend products based on weather conditions

Storyboard

Now that we had an idea of the features we were going to try to implement we could start to consider how these would work for our user. We created a Storyboard to visualize exactly what value Shël could bring to a user.

PHASE 4: Prototype

Competitor Analysis

I specifically looked at an app called Think Dirty. It lets users scan barcodes to check ingredients and read reviews. We also looked at a routine building app called Fabulous as an indirect competitor. The Think Dirty app had probably the coolest feature; users can scan barcodes on items and get information about the ingredients as well as reviews from other users. Fabulous had the coolest-looking interface. I didn’t get too far into using Fabulous, but I loved all the illustrations. It definitely gor me thinking about how I could make Shël’s have a warm organic look and feel.

Strengths of competitor apps:

Think Dirty:

• Excellent UI, great features, fun animations, lots of information to dig in and explore.

Picky:

• Community of active "skincare lovers"

FeelinMySkin:

• Keeps users coming back by doing "tip/term of the day"

Fabulous:

• Great UI, plenty of pre-set habits already set, music plays along when the app opens

Paper Wireframes

We each sketched out our ideas for the pages of the design of the app. We ended up using my sketches to build the paper prototype in InVision, but we made sure to include ideas from both Parinaz and Rachel’s wireframes.

There were some disagreements over the design, but we figured that testing would hopefully allow us to weed out some issues. We didn’t have a clear idea of the main screen at this point. I designed a sort of news feed layout with a bunch of tiles.

Paper Prototype

The first prototype had quite a few issues. Users could figure out how to search for products and add them to their drop list, but adding products to a routine wasn’t really clicking. Another major issue was people couldn’t figure out how to check off their routine. We decided the profile, main page, and routine were what we really needed to focus on. To get a better idea of how to improve on this for our mid-fidelity wireframes, we iterated on our user flow diagram.

User Flow Diagram (Second Version)

Based on the tests of the paper prototype, we decided it would be best to combine the routine and profile sections. This would make the app’s personalized features more centralized. Additionally, we determined the best configuration for the main page’s design would be a screen that lets you verify that you completed your routines. I imagine this would feature could also be completed with a phone notification as well since it might not be convenient to always open the app.

This new user flow made the goals of the user much more straightforward and allowed us to be more on the same page with the design of the app. We felt a lot better about making the digital wireframes than we did making the paper ones.

Digital Wireframes

After creating Avalanche I had a pretty good idea of how I could improve on my process of designing in Figma. I wanted to test a design that had a lot of organic curves and few straight lines. When we first opened the creation tool, Parinaz used a blob creation tool to make a big blob vector on the frame. I just went with that and tried to make every page have at least a few soft contours and an organic feel.

Mid-Fidelity Prototype

We had to complete this prototype on a pretty tight deadline due to the accelerated pace of the class. Parinaz worked on the presentation we would give in class while Rachel and myself drilled away on different aspects of the design. Rachel worked on a user assessment, product descriptions, and how the ingredients list and reviews would be displayed. I worked on the onboarding, the user profile, and the main page. As we worked we would through ideas at each and share ideas on how to build out this prototype.

Check out the working Figma prototype here:

PHASE 6: Conclusion + Future Opportunities

Conclusion

It was interesting to go through the design process as a group. We didn’t always agree on everything and it wasn’t always easy to move in the same direction together, but I think we did a pretty good job figuring it out. For the most part, it was nice to share the workload and figure out best how we can each contribute. I didn’t really expect to work on a skincare app, but I’m happy with the prototype we created. I think this was good practice for the real world where I won’t always be able to pick my team or the nature of the product I’m working on.

Changes and Future Opportunites

If I can find time, I’d like to make some changes to this app. Here’s a list of things I think should be updated.

• I started modifying some of the prototype screens with more high-fidelity visuals, color, and product images. I’d like to update the prototype to be full color. You can see a few of those screens in the images below.

• I’d like to make the routine builder a little more straightforward I think it’s a little convoluted and I don’t think it’s a particularly good user experience at the moment.

• Experiment with a stacked routine layout instead of the two columns. I think this would allow the user to have more space to view their routines.

• I’d like to add more guidance to the routine building system. Testing showed that users found this part a little confusing.

Thank You for Reading!

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