SkinSync Case Study
Product: iOS App
Duration: 1 month
Role: Product Designer
Purpose: Identify how a person can build a skin care routine that’s shaped by their skin care goals.
Key Focus Areas:
User Interaction Design
Prototyping
Product Overview: SkinSync is a mobile app intended to help users understand which skin care products are best suited to pair together, track their skincare routine, and buy new products for their skincare regime.
View the full prototype here.
Background
The skincare market is oversaturated with products and recommended routines, it can be difficult for someone to figure out what the best products and combination of products is for them.
Goal: To understand how to make developing a skin care routine and selecting the right products can be made easier for a consumer who is new to skin care.
Research
To conduct my research, I conducted primary and secondary research to understand my potential users currently used to plan their trips.
Primary Research: In-person Interviews (3 interviewees)
Secondary Research: Competitive Analysis (4 vendors)
Key Takeaways
100%
Interviewees mentioned they did extensive research before purchasing a new product
60%
Interviewees mentioned they consulted medical professionals to help shape their skin care routine
100%
Interviewees mentioned having a documented routine helped them go through it
Define
After conducting my research I decided to focus on a single type a new skin care user, who is budget conscious, and doesn’t a routine that’s too extensive
Cara - A Busy Bee
Cara is a school counselor in the DMV. She loves working with children and is seen as the go-getter who will go above and beyond to help her students even after hours. Like her job, she likes to pour in extra effort to her skin care routine. She wants to maintain a multi-step routine in the day and night time and likes to research products and ask others for advice before purchasing. She also looks to maintain a budget friendly skin care routine.
With my persona in mind, I created initial user flow with called out user flows to depict a product that would allow a user to state their skin concerns and shape a skin care routine.
Final Scope: An application that will allows users to develop a new skin care routine and purchase products that are recommended to them.
Design
After defining scope of the project, I conducted multiple rounds of design starting from low to high fidelity with rounds of user testing in between iterations.
Low Fidelity
I developed my first set of wireframes based on my How Might We statements to get a better understanding of features that would resolve a user primary skin care issues. The statements help me decide that SkinSync would need to help a user create skin care routine and buy the products for creating a routine.
High Fidelity
After my initial ideation, I contacted the people I interviewed to drill down into key pieces of information that was needed for skin products and the skin care routine.
Branding
In parallel to working on the wireframes, I also started to build out the brand identity. Overall, I wanted the identity to appear feminine and elegant to the user.
Behind the Name: The solution name “SkinSync” was picked because I wanted a name that show cased how its related to skin care and how through repetition and routine a user can become in sync with their skin care habits.
Understanding Color Choices: The colors chose were meant to convey feminine, fresh, and clarity. I opted for purple and pink tones since they are typically associated as feminine colors.
User Testing
Once the high fidelity wireframes were completed I conducted user testing to understand how I could improve the usability the over all application. Overall the usability testing was successful, but I received feedback to tweak small details in the design. Additional details regarding the testing plan can be seen here.
Updated Bottom Navigation
After conducting user testing, one user mentioned that the logos in the bottom navigation were confusing. To increase the users understanding of what the bottom navigation the following updates were made:
New Icons: I updated the icons and the bottom navigation to be more descriptive of intended functionality.
Navigation Labels: To provide additional clarity on what the bottom navigation entails, I’ve added label to allow users to quickly understand each part of the application.
Updated Multiple Choice Selection
When conducting user testing, two users didn’t realize they were able to select multiple answer for one of the questions on the initial skin quiz. To correct this interaction I updated the screen to include check box and denote that the user could answer multiple questions.
Updated Purchasing Process
When the testers were looking to purchase a product, one useful point of feedback is mentioned was that they were interested in adding multiple items to their cart. To reduce the number of times the user would have to go through a check out process multiple times, the “Add Cart” button was added.
Final Product
For the final product, SkinSync enables a user to enter their skin goals and start their skincare routine with what they currently own with the option to buy additional products to supplement it. The full prototype can be found here.
Personal Reflection
Challenges
Defining an Audience: The group I interviewed varied in their skin care experience, making it difficult to determine which user type I wanted to focus on for the scope of this project.
Projecting Needs on to Users: As someone who’s interested in skin care, its was a struggle for me to remove my biased in proposed features.
Key Takeaways
Providing Clarity is Essential: In user interview, it was noted that people wanted additional clarity on what to use for the skin care process. It was also a piece of feedback I had received during user testing to add labels to the bottom navigation to improve the clarity.
Understanding Different “Level” or user needs was extremely helpful in developing the scope: My user research gave me insights into how different skin care users become as they become more knowledgeable about skin care. This enable me to identify which features would go into the MVP and what features could be saved for the future
Next Steps
Add additional features to help the skincare users further improve their routine: The user interviews lead me to think about additional features as people who are new to skin care become more experiences. While the app is focused on new skincare users, I would like to shift it the focus to more experienced skincare users and add features to notify the user when their product is about expire or recommendation specific combinations of product across brands. I would like to expand the target audience to enable more users