Scripted Hair

Problem

Most people are using the wrong hair products for what their hair concerns are, leading to wasted money and worse outcomes. We want to put the trust back into the hands of the professionals.

solution

Our solution was to have the user create their profile by taking the assessment/"hair quiz", then provide new hair “prescription” suggestions. By still giving the user options to choose from, they can determine regime types or levels versus products that are pushed on them. We want to give them the feeling that they can trust the app and that it is not just here for sales.
We need the user to feel like the results are customized and that the results will actually be helpful to their needs. Even though it is a customization app, it should still feel personal. Now that the solution had been chosen and wireframes were getting created, it was time to start recruiting for our user interviews and usability testing.

Audience

Since my client is an experienced hairstylist and owns her own salon, we selected our audience based on her knowledge and expertise. Our target audience isn’t necessarily a specific age range or gender. It is more about an audience willing to invest in their hair.

Our goal was to create something that finds a hair regime that fits the user needs and concerns but still gives them a very personalized feeling. We want the user to feel as if they were sitting and chatting with their stylist in person.

Check out the
low-fidelity
prototype

Discovery and research

screening survey

When we did our user screening survey, we added in a couple of extra questions so we had extra research if needed since participants were already filling out “a survey”. These extra questions within the survey helped us make some decisions for our next steps in building the app, but we will touch base on that later.

Survey results

We did find through this survey that the majority of participants said that they were satisfied with their hair care and that the majority of participants were using products recommended by their stylist. This was exciting for us because it validated the point that you should put your trust in the professionals when looking for haircare.

user pain points

Stylist will recommend more than I actually need
Recommendations won’t actually address my real hair care concerns.
Have to have a salon appointment in order to be able to talk to someone about your hair care concerns and receive help from a professional stylist

Competitive Analysis

During the competitive analysis, we did not find a single hair app that was helpful, easy to use, or intuitive. There also wasn’t anything we could find that was trying to accomplish the same thing as we are. NOT ONE! We searched elsewhere in on-boarding experience apps that display results taking your concerns or expectations and giving you a result.

In order to further understand the user experience we needed to create journey maps and storyboard sketches. This helped maintain focus and stay on target. It also assist in a way to better map out the problem in order to find the solution.
‍Using user-centered design helps to better visualize how a person might use and view the app.

Our goal is to achieve the same kind of feel as personalization apps like netflix, spotify, and other streaming services but the service we are providing is more about customization. We are looking to create a hybrid of between personalization and customization.

user persona

Age: 34
Gender: Female
Status: Married
Location: Bolingbrook
Occupation: Stay at home mom

Cindy is a stay at home mom of two. Her children are biracial, so she is learning how to work with hair that is much more coarse and curly than her own, very fine, straight hair. She is all about stretching a dollar and getting her moneys worth because kids are expensive! She has about 30 minutes to herself every morning before her kids get up and she doesn’t want to spend all of them getting ready for her day. Even though she is home with the kids, her to-do list is endless and she is constantly running around and on the go. Her new favorite phrase is “Bless This Mess” because life with toddlers is chaos. She gets mommy time about twice a year where she gets to go to the salon to get her hair cut and colored.

motivations +

Needs something fast and easy because she does not have a lot of time to get ready in the morning.
Needs something to tame her daughters course, frizzy curls but will keep her hair soft.
Bonus if she can use it on herself too.

Frustrations +

Dry Shampoo leaves residue on hair.
Doesn’t want a thousand beauty products all over her bathroom.
Most products cause Daughter’s hair to be more frizzy instead of taming it.

information architecture

User flow

sketch it out

Click the photos below to view my sketches!

During the discovery and research process, we needed to create several sketches to help get the creative wheels turning. I did a crazy 8s exercise to help me find my best solution. This exercise allows you to try and push yourself for the best solutions possible in a minimal amount of time. We then built off of that solution with more sketches and created user stories along with a user journey map.

Journey Map

Wireframes

After deciding how the user would use this app, it was then sketched out into wireframes. Once this was completed, it was time to create the actual wireframes. In order to do this I used Figma, click the wireframes to see more!

Prototype

The idea

When we created this prototype, we wanted everything to be accessible and at the user’s fingertips. We designed the user’s cart to be displayed at the top of each prescription suggestion page so that they didn’t need to click away to see what is already in their cart. We also initially thought of having the products displayed so they would be horizontally scrollable as you can see displayed here but after we completed testing we decided that the next version of this prototype will need to change the way product suggestions are displayed.

the solution

Our solution was to have the user create their profile by taking the assessment or hair quiz. The app would then provide the user their new hair “prescription” suggestions. By still giving the user options to choose from different regime types or levels and not pushing all of the products on them at once, we want to give them the feeling that they can trust the app and that it isn’t just here for sales.

Check out the
low-fidelity
prototype

We were looking for a "we want what’s best for you" vibe. We needed the user to feel like the results aren’t too generic and that the results will actually be helpful to their needs. Even though it is a customization app, it should still feel personal. Now that the solution had been chosen and wireframes were getting created, it was time to start recruiting for our user interviews and usability testing.

usability testing

The testers

For the user interviews and usability testing, I made sure to test multiple age ranges.

I did this because I have found the there is a correlation between interface skills and age that can impact a person’s perception of a product.

Tasks

I gave each tester three tasks to complete:

How would you create a profile?
You are currently not satisfied with the hair care you use for styling and are looking for a change. How would you approach doing this using this app?
How would you make a purchase/complete a checkout?

Check out the
low-fidelity
prototype

testing

All testers stated they felt that the app was
user-friendly and very easy to use. They enjoyed using the app and how simple everything was to get to. They also liked that it was a way to get salon-quality products without the salon visit.

The results

We learned a lot from usability testing and observing how the user interacts with the app. No user actually read the homescreen, they just clicked on the big pictures based off of the "header", which weren't actually made to be buttons. When asked about how they would checkout, almost all users clicked on the select your personalized Rx picture.

It was exciting to see how much the user’s enjoyed using the app. By watching what the user appeared to struggle with the most, I was able to evaluate the app’s usability and decide what the next steps should be and how much farther we have to go in order to build this product.

Final thoughts

additions

Eventually, we could add reviews for the product and the user could see the reviews from people with similar hair types first, or use a drop-down or tab button so they can see all reviews if they wanted to, similar to the rent the runway app. We should also eventually add a favorites option.

We could also link the app to “their provider” like the pet desk app. This would display their salon and/or stylist’s name, website if there is one available, and the salon phone number and address. Pet Desk and The Vagaro App also have an option to show if you have any upcoming appointments and past appointments. We could do something similar to this, and provide a way for them to make an appointment or display how to make an appointment.
In T Lorén’s case it would direct them to the salon’s website so that they could request an appointment.

The most crucial thing about this app is going to be the hair quiz. It is going to need a lot of thought on how we can get the answers we actually need from the user. We could maybe add pictures for them to choose from or provide a way for them to tell that their hair is one way or another. Not everyone knows their hair type or if they have product build-up, what coarse hair is, and so on. We could make trick questions, where we ask the same question but word it differently to see if they give the same response. We should also add a progress bar so that they know how far along they are in the quiz.

changes

Some adjustments will need to be made and we will need to do more user research and testing to make sure when the quiz is up and running that it gives the user accurate and helpful results. We will also need to make some small adjustments to the display screens.

We had a lot of fun getting this project started and I cannot wait to see what it develops into. Stay tuned for more updates on this app!