A mobile app designed to simplify and elevate how users organize, track, and manage their beauty products effortlessly
✔ AI-drive camera and barcode scanning
✔ Personalized inventory management
✔ Ingredient analysis
✔ Track product results and expiration dates
.png)
The beauty industry is going strong even through and after the pandemic. With a significant population interested in and regularly purchasing beauty products, how do they keep all of their products organized and managed?
Users struggle with managing their skincare and makeup products beyond just physical organization. Their challenges include:
- Ensuring they use what they already have
- Knowing when products expire
- Maintaining an accessible inventory
- Understanding product ingredients (both current and prospective purchases)
Given these challenges, a digital inventory app that allows users to easily enter product information and provides details on ingredients, usage, effects, and compatibility would help them manage their skincare and makeup products more effectively. This would ultimately improve their skin wellness and overall spending habits.
The design process started with empathizing with potential and current users (of other similar apps). The process of research, define, ideate , design, and test was cyclical rather than linear. It was an ongoing process with repeated cycles of designing, testing, reideating, redesigning, and testing again.
.png)
I would like to understand the current pain points, motivations, and goals of people who are looking to find ways to organize their current beauty products and to stay informed about them. I want to identify the problem users have in regards to beauty organization and management and provide a solution that is user friendly and effective.
- Investigate how users currently keep track of their beauty products and the tools or methods they use.
- Identify the primary challenges users face in organizing and managing their beauty products.
- Understand the criteria users consider when selecting beauty products (e.g., ingredients, brand reputation, past experiences).
- Determine the factors that influence users' purchasing decisions for beauty products.
- Explore how better organization and management of beauty products can enhance users' self-care routines.
- Identify the psychological and emotional benefits users seek from effectively managing their beauty products.
- Evaluate users' willingness to adopt a new beauty product management app.
- Identify potential barriers to adoption and strategies to encourage user engagement.
- Customer survey
- Competitive analysis
- Secondary research
- User interview
I first started with conducting a customer survey with 13 participants, 12 females and 2 males, ages ranging from 18 to 40s. Below are some key insights I learned through the survey:
Level of Organization:
- 8/13 participants are very organized with their products.
- Only 1 participant said they are not organized, despite owning almost 50 products.
Storage Methods:
- 5 participants keep all products in one place.
- 4 participants organize by categories/types using baskets, drawers, etc.
- 2 participants store products where they can visibly see them.
In Organization:
- Space/storage limitations.
- Too many products to keep track of (forgetting what they have).
- Tracking expiration dates.
- Not putting products in the same place.
In Shopping:
- Affordability (4 participants).
- Not knowing what they already have (1 participant).
- Authentic reviews (2 participants).
- Matching skin types and checking ingredients (7 participants).
Factors Considered:
- Reviews (all participants).
- Past experiences (12/13).
- Affordability (11/13).
- Brand reputation (9/13).
- Ingredients (7/13).Sustainability (6/13).
- Better self-care.
- Financial benefits.
- Environmental awareness.
- Product effectiveness tracking.
- Ingredient awareness.
To achieve the research objectives, I conducted a competitive analysis of other beauty mobile apps in the current market. Below is my analyses and findings from this research:
The beauty industry has been and continues to grow stronger and bigger. Through researching current beauty trends, especially among younger populations, I gained insightful findings that highlight what consumers are looking for. This research reveals opportunities to create a digital product that can enhance consumers’ experiences with beauty products. Below are the findings:
Global Influence and New Trends:
The rise of new brands focusing on quality ingredients, particularly from Korea, Japan, and other countries, has become a significant trend. Korean skincare gained popularity in the West with Sephora's introduction of Dr. Jart+ in 2011. Key aspects of K-beauty include a focus on dermatological ingredients, customizable product steps, and the emergence of indie brands.
Beauty and Wellness:
Beauty and wellness have become closely intertwined, with a focus not only on looking good but also on feeling good—self-care.
Social Media's Role:
The rise of social media, especially platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, has significantly propelled the beauty industry forward. These visual platforms allow brands to showcase product visuals, interact directly with consumers, and leverage influencers for marketing.
TikTok's Influence:
TikTok saw a 164% increase in sponsored beauty posts and a 481% increase in engagement, highlighting its growing importance in beauty marketing.
Gen Z and Millennials:
- Gen Z consumers value product efficacy, transparency, diversity, inclusion, sustainability, and authenticity. This provides room for new, indie brands to step up.
- 66% of Gen Z shoppers and 58% of Millennials report spending more online on beauty products now than they did before the pandemic.
Overspending and Debt:
- As the beauty industry flourishes, overspending increases, particularly among younger generations, with an average of $2,670 spent by Millennials and $2,048 by Gen Zers.
- 33% of consumers have regretted overspending on beauty products, a figure that rises to 52% among Gen Zers and 40% among Millennials. Additionally, 27% of both generations have gone into debt as a result.
In order to have a better understanding of users, I interviewed 3 participants between ages of early 20s to mid 30s. Two participants were females and one was a male.
Product Exploration:
- 1 participant likes to try different products unless they find one with a significant impact.
- 2 participants prefer sticking to their usual products due to concerns about breakouts.
Organization:
- Visibility is important for keeping track of products; participants tend to forget items once they are put away.
- Participants prefer organizing products into categories like skincare, eye makeup, base makeup, etc.
- 1 participant, despite preferring a visually minimalistic approach, keeps products visible to avoid forgetting what she has or buying duplicates.
Product Management:
- Keeping up with expiration dates (2 participants).
- Not knowing which product is good for specific effects.
- Forgetting what products they own.
- Uncertainty about reactions to certain products, especially small samples.
Shopping Challenges:
- Finding authentic reviews and credible sources.
- Delivery options.
- Avoiding products with unclean ingredients.
- A sense of control by knowing what they have and restocking on time.
- Avoiding over-purchasing due to lack of organization and forgetfulness.
- Easy input of products into an app, preferably without manual typing.
- A list to track inventory and expiration dates.
- Credibility in product information (relying on awards, professional recommendations, reviews).
- An app that allows easy entry of inventory, centralizes product information, and enables searching for products by ingredients
- The ability to look up credible sources online about products.
- A list of frequently purchased products to streamline future purchases.
- An app that provides analytics based on marked products (e.g., allergic reactions, unclean ingredients) and alerts users with red flags when looking up those products.
Lastly, when asked if they were willing to try such an app, all participants responded that they are interested in trying if it allows easy inventory entry, centralizes product information, and enables ingredient search. They seek an analysis of which ingredients are beneficial. They prefer information that is not too text-heavy and want to understand what ingredients mean.
.png)
Based on the research, I developed three user personas for the app Clear, each reflecting the motivations, pain points, and desires of the target users.
I created a storyboard for each user persona. In these storyboards, you will see the users' struggles and how they solve their problems using the Clear app.
I would like to build 3 task flows - log in/sing up, adding to vanity, and adding a collection in vanity. Below are the task flows:
Building on the task flows, I added user decisions and actions within the flows to create user flows.
.png)
Using the user and task flows, I kicked off the design by building mid-fidelity wireframes in Figma. This step is integral part of the design process as it guides me to identify issues in the flows and other roadblocks before transitioning into high-fidelity prototypes. It is never to early to build, test and identify possible issues during the process, and mid-fidelity wireframe serve that purpose :)
To focus on the MVP, I skipped the onboarding flow and went straight to the home and the scanning flow.
The key words of Clear are clean, simple, and transparent. Keeping these and the overall vision in mind, I created branding decisions, such as the logo, mood board, typography scale, and color palette.
Now that I've tested the flows with the mid-fidelity wireframes and have built the UI library with the branding decisions, it is time to kick it up to the high-fidelity prototype!
Building new types of interactions and animations took some learning curve but was a fun learning opportunity.
.png)
It is now time to conduct usability testing! The goals of this usability testing are to assess the user’s ability to complete the main flow of the MVP and to receive constructive feedback - verbal and observations.
1. Scan (built in animation) the product to learn more about the products - ingredients, compatibility, and other details.
2. Enter your skincare/makeup product into your vanity.
1. Tasks are completed quickly and efficiently.
2. Users are able to follow the flow intuitively.
3. Error forgiveness and users retrying.
I organized the feedback using the grids below. First, I sorted the feedback into four categories: what worked, questions, ideas, and changes. Then, I used a effort-impact grid to prioritize the feedback based on the impact when the changes are made and the efforts that will take to make those changes.
After the feedback analysis, I prioritized iterations I wanted to make:
✅Must Do
- Sticky top bar for the product detail pages (easier navigation)
- Pop up overlays for add/save buttons (2 interactions in one trigger)
- Change add/save → add to vanity and save for later
- Overall scalability and legibility - typography, buttons, cards, etc.
⏰May Do (if time allows)
- Switch ingredient scores into out of 5 instead of 100
- Minimize the homepage (keep the color scheme)
- Get rid of ingredient highlights -> big buttons to vanity, scan, or profile
- Matches down at the bottom
- Fix rating stars interaction
.png)
✔️ Ingredient highlights --> Main menu cards
- keep the functions more minimal
- more consistent with the color palette
✔️ My matches pushed down
- recommendation is a secondary function of the app
- bookmark button is more legible
✔️ Sticky top bar
- navigation bar sticks while scrolling for easier navigation
✔️ Safety score
- out of 5 instead of out of 100
- safety ratings metrics
- 4-5 Good (green)
- 2.5-3.9 Fair (blue)
- 0-2.4 No-go (orange)
✔️ Add and save buttons
- add -> add to vanity
- save -> save for later
.png)
✔️ Add/Save Overlays
- Upon selected, overlays pop up to communicate action completed (on the right)
- Fixed the buggy button state interactions (seen on the left)
✔️ Vanity Collections
- collection folders instead of tab bar at the top.
- more consistent with the design system.
.png)
With the iterated prototype, I've conducted two more testing and made final small changes, including fixing the star rating interaction and overall typescale, scalability and legibility. Please see below for the final prototype:
.png)
MVP! I took a lot of time in thinking about what an MVP is and creating the MVP that is truly workable.
All parts of the design process from research to testing were important in making a successful MVP. During the research process, the secondary research and competitive analysis gave crucial insights that helped me to dig deeper in order to craft a solution that users can benefit from. Researching on the current beauty industry trends and insights was crucial in identifying project and business goals. Competitive analysis of various current beauty apps helped me to see what is missing and what could be enhanced based on the user needs and the current industry trends.
As I began ideating, I had to remind myself that "less is more". I gained so many ideas from the research but had to constantly return to prioritizing for the MVP.
All of these challenges, I believe, made me grow to become a better product strategist and designer overall.
- Take enough time in the research process. There are so many valuable findings during this process that will guide the project to a better place.
- Always go back to the MVP: what do I want this app to do really well? What is one or two features that will make this app really successful?
- Low-fidelity sketches and mid-fidelity wireframes are SO important! These make the design process so much smoother and less stressful because I can visualize the flows and interactions before I add other UI elements. This means it is easier to fix mistakes early on.
- During usability testing, give enough context to the participants! Sometimes the users feel like they need to play a guessing game while participating in the testing. Providing clear context will make the testing more useful and informative.
