FRIDA BLEU
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The challenge
Shade Matching
With over 4,305 cosmetic and beauty product manufacturing brands in the US, it's now harder than ever for users to navigate through different products and brands. The experience can be very overwhelming to consumers due to the surplus of options, biased reviews, and doubtfulness in performance. Specifically, shade matching products such as foundation, concealer, and bronzer can be very time consuming and can depend on many variables such as lighting, undertones, skin type, oxidation, coverage, season, finish, skin preparation, etc.
The opportunity
A new in-person beauty solution that helps user confidently purchase new beauty products. This innovative product with solve with shade matching issues in order to provide users an efficient way to find their match without the hassle of trying on products. This solution with utilize new technology, optimize user experiences, and elimate excess product and makeup waste within the beauty industry
Background
Clean
Entered the beauty and cosmetics industry scene at the perfect time. The indie company launched in 2015 just as more and more consumers sought out “clean” beauty products made from safe, non-toxic ingredients. Founder, Sheena Yaintanes, came up with brand concept with the goal to formulate, test, and innovate until every Kosas product pushed the beauty industry forward. Kosas became one of the fastest-growing clean beauty brands, reaching a reported $910k in annual revenue by 2022.
Our User
To begin our research, our team did more research on beauty consumers to understand what products they are typically interested in, how they prefer to shop, and how they are influenced to buy products. Below shows the breakdown in percentages of our consumers habits.
21%
of US adults purchase organic makeup +
products exclusively
53%
of US beauty consumers research ingredients in products before purchase
38%
of US beauty consumers reliant on user-submitted visual content
Our
Competitors
Challenge the conventions of clean beauty to create something radically new, to protect and revive your skin.
Challenge the conventions of clean beauty to create something radically new, to protect and revive your skin.
Challenge the conventions of clean beauty to create something radically new, to protect and revive your skin.
Initial User Journey
Created an initial user journey map to help analyze the typical process our identified user group to better understand user needs and pain points. Interviews and surveys were conducted to collect and make data driven goals and jobs to be done in order to improve the user's retail experience.
Decision Tree
Created a decision tree to help visualize the current steps a user may go through when picking out new beauty products in-store. This chart helped pinpoint which part of the process is most challenging for consumers. This helped us define our design solution in order to maximize consumers in-store retail experience when shopping for Kosas products.
Overall
Painpoints
After concluding my market and user research, I studied my discoveries in order to determine product opportunities and design criteria. Through my analysis, I found that the biggest pain points users' face to shape my final design solution. These top pain points included:
Biased Reviews
Shade Matching
Product Waste
Concept
Inspiration
When developing the final design concept, my team looked into different accessible and customizable solutions that are currently on the market to help inspire our final solution. Some highlighted products were the Coke Freestyle Machine, customized vitamin and makeup subscriptions, and beauty vending machines.
Accessibility
Customization
Our Solution
The Kosas
Kiosk
Introducing the Kosas Kiosk . This kiosk is designed to be placed in beauty retailers that currently sell Kosas Cosmetics, like Sephora. These kiosks will provide the user with a simple questionnaire about their skin type, coverage type, typical makeup look, and finally scan the user's face to find their perfect shade using AI technology. The kiosk will then spit out sample cards with their personalized products and a QR code that will save their information so they can come back and quickly edit their products if necessary and buy full sized products.
Each sample card will cost the user $5 that can later be redeemed for store credit & be put towards more Kosas products
Moodboard
User Flow
When designing the user flow of the kiosk interface, we wanted this experience to be as intuitive and enjoyable as possible. Picking out new makeup products should be fun and exciting, and we wanted our product to embody that. We designed our navigational structure to be intuitive to use, ensuring UI elements and language were clear and engaging, and only incorporating secondary information when necessary. The process was designed with the user in mind, limiting it to only a few steps so the user can quickly and efficiently receive their new, customized Kosas products.
New User
Returning User
Lo-Fidelity
Wireframes
When starting to wireframe, I wanted to keep the user's time and emotions in mind in order to optimize their retail experience. Picking out new beauty products can be intimidating, especially when investing in a pricey product that may not work out. The interface was designed to instill confidence in users when making purchasing decisions.
User
Testing
To test our design solution, we invited users to interact with our prototype and give us feedback on the idea, interface, user flow, how much they would pay, and how confident they are in the shade matching. We asked questions and created prompts to engage the users and spark useful comments and suggestions.
Testing Outcomes
Our UI was
good, but not
GREAT
drop downs weren't clear
users weren't sure how
to interact with prototype
branding didn't
scream "Kosas"
Hi-Fidelity Prototype
Final
Interface
When designing the final interface, we carefully considered the user feedback we got during our testing. These included refining the UI elements and language to align better with the "Kosas" brand, and also enhancing the touch points and drop downs making navigation more intuitive and clear. Our final UI interface design achieved these, allowing users to easily flow through the kiosk prompts, leaving the user with new, personalized Kosas products.
Expected Results
Improved
Journey Map
Created a new journey map taking the user through the process of using the new Kosas Kiosk to visualize the actions and emotions taken by users. With this new design solution, the user has a much easier and more enjoyable retail experience picking out new products.
