Glo

elevate your beauty experience with your own personalized helper

Project Overview

The Problem

The beauty industry is overgrowing and oversaturated with products for everything.

Consumers face several challenges such as product disorganization, figuring out what to buy, easily finding succient and organized product information, and finding what works for them in an endless abyss of products.

Role: UX/UI Researcher & Designer
Tools: Figma, Miro

The Solution

An app with a user-centric approach, aimed to redefine users' beauty routines by providing a seamless solution to product disorganization, information overload, and the struggle to find the right products.

Task

Researching and designing a beauty tracker/digital vanity app that meets the needs of target users while enhancing their beauty experience.

1. Research

The beauty and personal care world is massive and affects what we buy and use every day. As a beauty consultant, I've helped people find products that work for them, drawing from my own struggles to discover the right stuff and keep it all organized. To kick off this project, I started with some secondary research to figure out my goals.

Some questions I had going into my research was figuring out:
→ How much are consumers spending on beauty and personal care ?
→ How do consumers decide what to buy ?
→ How "big" is the user industry ?

1.1 Secondary Research Results

American women spend $3,756 on beauty products and services per year on average, men come in at an average of $2,928.

Brand loyalty, price, product quality, and social influence are the key factors consumer consider when purchasing.

The U.S. beauty and personal care industry is expected a revenue of $100.30B in 2024

There is a rising demand for clean and sustainable beauty/personal care products.

A study by LendingTree reveals that 33% of consumers regret overspending on products, that number rises to 52% for Gen Z

76% of users in a StyleSeat interview believe social media influencer recommendations are fake.

1.2 HMW?

How might we...
‍
→ make sure users are using the products they have and sensibly shopping without overspending trying to find the right product ?
→ easily convey relevant information users actually want to see while shopping ?
→ share real unbiased information and reviews on products ?

2. Empathize

Continuing our research, I decided to collect some primary research by conducting a round of user interviews.

2.1 User Interviews

I conducted 3 interviews with participants aged 21-24. While our sample size is close in age, Glo is still designed to be usable for all ages and for everyone.

I asked the participants about 10 open ended questions about of beauty and personal care products. The questions aimed to provide insight into their shopping experience, usage of the products, how they choose which products to buy, and their routines.

2.2 Interview Findings + Affinity Mapping

key points that stuck out from each user interview

affinity diagramming to sort and categorize all the user data to understand key trends

2.3 Key Takeaways

diverse

users have a diverse range of shopping habits when it comes to personal care & beauty items

organization

product information, expiration dates, shades, what products consumers already own are hard to track and organize

transparency

ingredients and full transparency is important to users.

2.4 User Personas

Karissa and Greg, the user personas that are kept in mind while designing Glo

3. Ideate

Next we're going to ideate how we may meet user needs and eliminate pain points.

3.1 Mind Mapping

taking pain points and problems and brainstorming all potential ways Glo could solve them

3.2 Sketching

sketching up some screens for the main screens and features of the app

3.3 Low-fidelity Wireframes

low-fidelity wireframes to start to lay out major components and features

4. Design

Using our low-fidelity wireframes, I designed the first version of Glo.

4.1 High-fidelity Wireframes

Glo's introduction

A quick quiz in the start to create a personalized experience for the user

The routines feature on Glo

Searching for a product and viewing its product page

5. Test + Final Design

Next up, I tested the initial prototype with some participants and collected their feedback to help improve and iterate the design.

5.1 User Feedback

"I wish there was a dupe/recommendations feature, and I'd like to see where I can buy the product"

Hue/color wheels to pick your eye & skin color

The safety scale may "scare" people with the chemical names

5.2 Improvements

features that were added after user testing the first version of Glo

5.2 Final Prototype

Check out the final version of Glo !

6. Takeaway

What I Learned

attention to detail

As I develop my UX/UI skills, I'm paying close attention to the often overlooked details that may seem minor but play a crucial role in enhancing the overall user experience. I'm learning every detail counts.

practical design

I'm so inspired by the beautiful and cool designs trending in the UX/UI community. However when I sit down to actually design, I'm learning what's actually practical as a useful design for users vs. designs that are cool as just concepts. That realization helps ground me and stay user-centric while designing.

user flows

Glo has the most user flows I've ever designed for a personal project. It's really valuable putting yourself in the shoes of a user and walking through every important step of your prototype and making sure it has a clear example screen.

Reflecting

Being a beauty enthusiast with an abundance of products, Glo was a delightful and personal project. It allowed me to view it from different perspectives, catering to users new to beauty, those seeking routine assistance, detail-oriented users, those wanting quick facts, and more. Designing features for everyone and weaving a cohesive design story was truly enjoyable.

Thank you for reading ❤️

Check out my other projects

Glo