The demand for skincare is thriving due to the growing desire for health-promoting and self-care products, increasing interest in the power of regimens and routines, social media influences. However, 46% of Americans still experienced skin problems in their youth, and 67% say skin issues affect their confidence. As the data can tell, the struggle for clear skin is real even there are myriads of skincare lineups.
Entering the skincare journey for a beginner in this day and age is just like visiting Times Square. It's bright and shines, yet it's all about the advertisement, and it's overwhelmed.
Despite the benefits of the internet and technology, people have begun running on information overload due to the massive amount of content created on social media. People feel lost and frustrated in picking up or maintaining an effective skincare routine that can help to either improve their skin health or treat their skin problems.
I designed a skincare app that makes skincare more accessible and curated based on skin type and goal. Users will get tips and insights crafted by dermatologists and licensed estheticians, coupled with AI skin scanning evaluation. Furthermore, users can track the effectiveness of the routines with the built-in daily logging feature.
Disclaimer: All views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the respective company. Some design elements have been changed from the original. The name and branding were changed for this case study.
Onboarding
Personalized Skincare Routines
Skin Daily Log & Insight
Routine Completed - Make It Easy
Users can easily mark routine completed by using the Siri shortcut. Besides that, users can either swipe the routine card or tick on the check box to mark it done. By providing multiple ways that help users faster the process, encourage users to maintain their skincare regimen.
Product Compatibility & Ingredient Details
This is how I came up with the solutions, let me walk you through
Market Research
Competitive Analysis
User Interview
Affinity Map
User Persona
User Journey
Problem Statement
Brainstorming
Feature Roadmap
Sitemap
Task Flow
User flow
Wireflow
Branding
High-Fidelity Prototype
Usability Testing
Affinity Map
Final Prototype
I begin the project by conducting research to get more context of the landscape & understand people, their needs, and what their motivations are. Before diving into research, I set out a research plan for where I'm headed including research goals, assumptions, questions, and methodologies. The research finding plays a crucial role in laying a foundation for ideating solutions in a later stage.
Research Goal
I want to learn about people's lifestyles, self-care focused on their experience with skincare routines, such as skincare habits and emotional drivers. This will help to find the gaps in their experience that prevent them from being able to develop & maintain their skincare regimen.
Hypothesis & Assumptions
Methodologies
I started with analyzing the market to get a better understand about the skincare industry, how it has been change since the pandemic and what's the current trends, who is the target audience of the market.
is the growth of the professional skincare market from 2021-2025
Source: Prnewswire
American is affected by acne annually. 67% of American say skin issues affect their confidence
Source: Nypost
Millenials & GenZ consumes skin care products the most when it comes to beauty item category.
Source: Forbes
of American shoppers shifted to minimalism skincare routine, due to the pandemic.
Source: CNBC
After grasping an idea of the land scape, I moved to analyze competitors to gather insight into their strengths and weakness. These insights also help me identify any gaps in features that Dewy might address and uncover the highlighted features and trends the competitors are implementing.
I listed 3 direct competitors of Dewy which are skincare related app including skincare tracker, skincare community. I also looked into Vichy website as an indirect competitor to analyze how the cosmetic brand helps user to get the routine that suits their concerns and goals. Please find full competitor analysis here.
Next, I conducted primary research with 1-on-1 interview to gain insight into current user frustrations, goals, needs and motivations as well as have an understanding on broader scale when it comes to following & maintaining the effective skincare routine.
Interview Objective
Participants
Research Findings
To synthesize and accelerate the analysis the research at ease, I transcribe a recording, discover patterns by tagging taxonomies through Dovetail. The detail research findings is documented here
Assumptions Validated
By highlighting and tagging for key moments from Dovetail, I was able to uncover insights from qualitative data easily. I generated Insight Board backed with video evidences from my interview.
A streamline process when it comes to discovery & maintain skincare routine
Because users are too lazy to stick to a routine and busy with their daily activities, they believe skin care is part of self-care. Still, complex routines will put them off and even cause more anxiety when facing skin problems.
4/5 participants mentioned they are lazy, just want a convenient way to get things done.
Get the information from reliable and creditable source.
Because users tend to trust those who are experts and have knowledge and skillset in the industry when it comes to skincare.
4/5 participants mentioned they often discussed with their friends about the movie and asked for their friend's recommendation because they feel more connected and trust their friend's opinion.
Digestible information regarding to their skincare products
Users need to consume information regarding their skincare concerns effortlessly because they are busy with daily activities while the skincare related information is overwhelming & hard to understand.
5/5 of participants are frustrated with the overwhelming information, and the jargon of ingredients makes them feel discouraged to learn about the product or routine in general.
Personalized recommendations for product and routine
Users need to get recommendations about products that suit their skin type and concerns to have informed decision-making. Besides, users also need a personalize skincare routine based on their skin condition because at some certain points they faced with different skin problems
5/5 Participants often search in specific term to help their skin condition like” best skincare product for acne”
After having a clear portrait of who target users are, I created the user persona to represent key audience segments. It helps me tackle the most critical problems and address the significant needs of the most important user groups.
To guide myself further in design and visualize the process by which Lucy interacts with a product to achieve her goals and identify areas of frictions during Lucy experience, I created a journey map. I highlighted the key features that may make Lucy feel happy in the process by using stars.
With the user journey, persona, and insights from the research stage, I turned my knowledge into Point Of View (POV) Statements to frame the problem from the user’s perspective. After defining the design challenge in POV, I generated a series of How Might We questions to fuel my process for a solution brainstorming session later on.
Detailed POV Statements and HMQ Questions
With the listed How Might We questions, I started a brainstorming session with PM and Engineers. I provided them some context about my process to arrive at the user insights and needs, and how I came up with my problem statements and HMW questions. Then, we spent 2-3 minutes brainstorming the solutions for each problem and replaying the process with a second round to come with as many solutions as possible
After clearly understanding users' goals, I revisited the business goal & wrote down some technical considerations. I then created a Venn diagram to visualize the project goals which user and business goals are aligned to ensure our product would be backed by all stakeholders.
After that, I created a product roadmap by listing out the potential features which tied with user goal. I also keep in mind the time constraints when ranking the level of effort & prioritizations. This roadmap helps to communicate with stakeholders in terms of the priority of product development.
After deciding what features to prioritize and include for the MVP, I created a site map to help define the overall content structure of the app along with the relationships between different screens and features. The goal is to make a logical and easy route for users to navigate while shying them away from being overwhelmed when users are in stressful state due to skin problems.
Next, to learn how the Lucy would be interacting with the app . I started by identifying the key tasks based on her goals, and the key pages that Lucy might encounter with to complete the task.
With the flow for specific tasks from above, I then mapped out user flows by taking a step into Lucy's thoughts and including the different decisions she would make while interacting with the app. Doing this helped to ensure a more seamless and flexible user experience.
Taking what I’ve learned throughout my process to this point, I sketched out the screens I'll be designing based on persona, user goals, and requirements. I also referred to competitors' apps to see the design patterns as well. Doing this will help layout content quickly and try out multiple ideas without the barriers of technical tools. I also add some notes after the mentor's session and feedback from group critics to decide which solutions we should move forward with before moving to the wireframe.
My exploration centered around helping Lucy get personalized recommendations and insights from people she trusted to improve her skin condition.
Now that I had an idea of which direction I would pursue from sketching and feedback sessions, I created wireflows to represent the layout of the pages in tandem with communicating ideas when it comes to interaction design and user workflows. These designs focus on providing a personalized skincare routine crafted by dermatologists and seamless skincare habit tracking.
Before moving on to the UI design, I began with planning the concept for discovering and determining brand's attribute, brand identity. I first came up with the app name and the word "Dewy" which represents youthful and fresh just naturally spring to my mind. As simple as that, Dewy was born, to help people's skin feel revitalized, fresh and dewy everyday.
Since finding the routine to help cure skin conditions is tiring and stressful. It was essential to bring a positive, delightful feeling to appeal to and encourage users. I then created a mood board in which I put ideas, concepts together to set the direction of the new branding while keeping in mind this, I discover and determine the brand attributes and keywords #friendly(personalized) #refreshing #pleasant
I also refer to persona to make a decision on what kind of brand Lucy would want to engage with. I picked the color palette, digitized the strongest concepts after sketching a tons of them on paper. I then ultimately narrowed them down to the final logo, which could be best reflect Dewy's brand identity. The branding letter D with the sparkle to signifies shiny, glossy skin. I also consider the simplicity and legibility at both large and small scales when determining the final one.
Next, I created UI kit to act as a reference document and ensure consistency. If Dewy ever wanted to build additional features for the app, all of the main UI elements would all be in one place.
With the visual style defined for the UI design and wireframes ready, it's time to put things together.
It is time for testing my design choices and assumptions that have been made about the navigability, the screens, and the actions associated with different tasks. I then added interactions & animations to the high-fidelity wireframes to generate a prototype.
View Initial PrototypeWith the prototype ready, I then drafted a usability test plan by outlining the test objectives, methods, KPIs and defining the core tasks for users to complete. The plan also included a script for the moderated and unmoderated sessions.
Test Objectives
Methodologies
Unmoderated & moderated remote testing through Maze, Zoom
Participants
Task
The Result
After the research, I transferred the information from interview session and maze report into the post-it note. Then, I created an affinity map to synthesize the finding. By doing this, I was able to document the research findings and uncover the issues in my designs and help to determine on the prioritization for revise.
Now that I uncovered the pain points from the affinity map as well as evaluated the level of effort and value before moving on with the revision. I started by fixing the screens that prevent users from completing the main flows and revising the screens that didn't meet user's expectation
With all the revisions have been made and the established UI design elements , I created the final prototype that provides all the information necessary for users to seamlessly access skincare routine and maintain healthy skincare regime
After launching the app with highlighted features, we observed the following positive changes after one month.
Increase in app engagement
routines are duplicated from our recommendations
5-star ratings on the App Store and Google Play.
Improving vendor experience by enhancing portal-wide financial clarity
*NDA Project - Contact me for the password ✉️
Crafting the first online ticketing platform in Iraq to help users easily grab tickets and enjoy events.
