Lacquer Lovers
Context
In today's beauty market, choosing the perfect nail polish can be a daunting task. Buyers often face myriad challenges, such as limited availability of certain brands or shades, inaccurate color representation online, being overwhelmed by limitless choices, and grappling with high prices or inconsistent product quality.
Kathy and I both shared equal responsibilities throughout the project and worked on every component together: conducting user research (interviews, competitive analysis, affinity diagram), creating wireframes (sketching, low and high fidelity prototypes), and conducting usability tests (heuristic evaluations and usability tests).
Time frame: 4 weeks
Role: UX Designer
Type: Collaborative project with Kathy Wang
Overview
The Solution
In order to help users make informed nail polish purchasing decisions, Kathy and I designed a mobile app that offers a centralized platform for reliable user reviews while offering robust discovery features that enables users to explore a vast array of nail polish options with ease.
THE PRODUCT
Home page
Home page shows polishes friends have recently reviewed and trending polishes.
Reviews
View detailed reviews from community members.
Color Picker
Find nail polish shades based on images.
Profile
Profile page displays user's favorite polishes, polish collection, reviews, and curated lists.
Discovery
Imagine this:
You’re exploring the beauty section of a department store when you come face-to-face with a kaleidoscope of nail polish shades. Your mind is racing, trying to find the perfect shade amidst a plethora of shades and finishes. With so many options, the inevitable sense of choice paralysis begins to set in…
Chipping away at polish choices:
Kathy and I interviewed six females in their late teens and early twenties, including nail art influencers, students, athletes, educators, and librarians, to explore their nail polish purchasing thought processes.
Affinity Wall
Kathy and I created an affinity wall to contextualize our findings from the interviews.
Research
After conducting interviews and analyzing our date, this is what we discovered.
Consumers value long-lasting, user-friendly polishes
If the coverage isn't good enough on the first round of painting, then I have to wait for it to dry, and then I don't know if that type of nail polish dries quickly. Or it takes a long time so it could make the whole process really long."
I just don't like to spend too much time on it. Especially if I'm not that good at them. I don't want to spend too much time painting my own nails if it doesn't look good."
Reviews and trends sway purchases
I always ask people around me, or, maybe look it up online. Oh, what color is best or popular right now, or suitable for what I'm looking for."
Pain points: skin tone compatibility and choice paralysis
[Online nail polish shades] are never really too accurate, but it also depends on I the model wearing the polish cause depending on their skin tone it could be different so that could change your perception of the color."
I've seen it on like TikTok, girls will use it, and then I'll look at it. And then I'm like, I don't know if that would really look good with my skin tone."
How can we help nail polish enthusiasts find their ideal nail polish by effectively leveraging customer reviews in order to enhance their purchasing decision process?
Ideation
Based on the research, here are some goals we are helping users achieve.
Design Goals
1. To leverage the strong influence of social media and peer recommendations, the design should integrate features fostering community engagement.
2. Considering interviewees' focus on nail polish longevity and application ease, product reviews should highlight user ratings in these crucial areas.
3. Recognizing skin tone diversity, the design should enable users to upload swatches, providing valuable references for others.
Testing
& Iterations
Before creating the high fidelity prototype, we conducted 2 heuristic evaluations and 6 usability tests on the low fidelity prototype. Here is what we uncovered.
For the initial design, it was unclear which friend reviewed which polish. This violates the heuristic of recognition rather than recall. I addressed this by incorporating the user's name and rating underneath the polish they reviewed.
The headings for the initial design were inconsistent on the product page and the nested review page, violating the heuristic of consistency and standards. I redesigned these pages so the headings look more consistent.
Absence of a back button on the review page violates the heuristics of user freedom and control and consistency and standards. To address this, I added a back button so users can return to the previous page.
5/6 users (80%) could not complete the task of leaving a product review, which involved clicking the "＋" icon and searching for the nail polish. Responding to user feedback, I relocated the "Leave a Review" action to the respective product page. This redesign, aligned with Hick's Law, streamlines the process, improving discoverability by reducing the number of steps users need to take to accomplish the task.
3/6 users (50%) found the 'find a similar shade based on the image' feature unclear. They mentioned that images often have many colors and asked how users could choose a specific color from the image. Addressing this, we introduced a page for users to select specific shades. This enhances user freedom and visual hierarchy to ensure users can focus on the exact shade they want.
4/6 users (66%) expressed feeling overwhelmed by the extensive nail polish collection page. To enhance their browsing experience and minimize visual clutter, I redesigned the polish collection page to show fewer polishes to mitigate cognitive overload.
Reviews from friends:
Get reliable recommendations from your inner circle.
Community insight:
Leverage community reviews for informed purchases.
Leave reviews:
Share your opinions. Rate products by its value, ease of application, and longevity.
Robust discovery features:
Browse by brand, color, and finish.
Find similar shades based on an image:
Upload an image, choose a shade, and discover matching polishes.
Track your polishes:
Keep track of your nail polish collection and curated lists.
Reflection
This is my first time working on a collaborative UX project. The most difficult challenge for me was the time and time zone constraints. In the later half of the project we were in a 16 hour time zone difference. Coordinating meetings and aligning work schedules became difficult and this led to some delays in real-time communication. Although we both prefer working on this project in-person together, working asynchronously emphasized the importance of efficient documentation and clear communication.
The best part of working on this project with Kathy was that we held each other accountable and she brought diverse and valuable ideas for our project. We both worked on every aspect of this project together, from conducting user research, to creating wireframes, and implementing iterations based on usability testing. Sharing responsibilities helped accelerate the progress of this project significantly. Since Kathy comes from a strong visual design background, I had the opportunity to learn a lot from her and deviated from my usual UI style.
Looking back, one thing I wish we could have done differently is making a user flow and sitemap. When we were doing usability testing, it was clear that we had an information architecture problem. We skipped this step due to time constraints and we thought that drawing sketches was enough. We were mistaken. We both realize that user flows helps us visualize and understand the sequence of steps a user takes to accomplish a task, and thus can reveal potential pain points and areas for improvement.
