Sephora | Skin - Type Finder

Background

Sephora is a French multinational retailer of personal care and beauty products. It features nearly 3,000 brands, including its own private label, Sephora Collection. Sephora offers a wide range of beauty products, such as cosmetics, skincare, body care, fragrance, nail color, beauty tools, body lotions, and hair care.

Sephora used to have a feature that allowed customers to select their skin types, to receive personalized product recommendations. However, many people are unsure about their skin type, so this feature would benefit those who are uncertain. Additionally, the product ingredients on the detail page would be displayed in percentages to help customers determine if the products would be beneficial for their skin.

Goal & Challenge

The purpose of this case study is to enhance the app by introducing a skin type identification feature. This addition aims to provide customers with a better understanding of their skin condition, allowing for personalized shopping experiences, individualized product recommendations, and alerts regarding specific ingredients based on their test results.

1. Research

Research Goal

To understand the core audience of this add-on feature, in order to create best shopping experiences for them.
Research different skin types and their characteristics.
Research about skin care and cosmetics ingredients and how they would apply to different skin types.
Design an add-on feature that integrates with the existing app.

Methodologies

1. Secondary Research

Gain more information about different skin types and their characteristics, research about how to conduct questionnaires to determine different skin types.

2. Competitive Research

Research about competitors' websites and learn how they define problems and find solutions

3. 1 on 1 Interview

To gather information about people's ethnography, as well as their needs, goals, and motivations, and their expectations for this site.

Competitive Research

1 on 1 Interview

2. Define

Personas & Empathy Map

I have developed three personas based on my research and user interviews. The personas cover the pain points identified during the research and interviews:

1. Lydia Ross: An accountant who is busy with work and life and has no time to take care of her skin.
2. Sophie Kirby: A real estate broker who meets clients every day and suffers from sensitive skin.
3. Celia Luis: A beauty influencer who buys every new beauty product in the market and tries them out.

Lydia Ross

Sophie Kirby

Celia Luis

Module Plan

The personas were created to represent users' goals, motivations, and pain points.
The module map focused on the app's needs based on research, while this module map guides the flow of the add-on feature.

3. Design

Low-Fidelity Wireframes

I have developed low-fidelity wireframes for the new add-on feature, ensuring seamless integration with the existing application.

Branding & UI Kits

Responsive UI Frames

I added UI elements to the low-fidelity wireframes to create the UI frames for this additional feature.

4. Test

Prototype

To comprehensively evaluate the design and functionality of the add-on feature, I carefully selected 5 participants representing a diverse range of occupations and backgrounds. I meticulously crafted 3 distinct scenarios for my testers to complete, and closely observed their reactions and interactions through the utilization of Maze and Zoom meetings. This comprehensive approach allowed for a thorough examination of the app's performance and user experience across a variety of user demographics and scenarios.

View Prototype

Affinity Map

I conducted the usability test using Maze for the first time and found the experience quite helpful. The website effectively showcased my prototype concisely and clearly, allowing me to gather valuable feedback from testers.

One key insight from the test was that some testers noted that the quiz section's color and user interface (UI) differed from the existing app. While I intended to use more vivid and fun elements to make the quiz section stand out, it was suggested that these elements may need some adjustments to better integrate with the overall look and feel of the existing app. This feedback will be crucial in refining the design and ensuring a seamless user experience.
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5. Conclusion

The goal of this project is to develop an add-on feature for an existing app. This feature should enhance the app's functionality and seamlessly integrate with it.

The most challenging aspect of this project is creating a skin type quiz, which requires extensive research to ensure the accuracy of the data. I dedicated a significant amount of time to studying the differences between various skin types and determining how to classify each type. Additionally, integrating the add-on features with the existing app presents another challenge. The original Sephora app used only black and white, so I chose a blue color scheme to distinguish different categories and tie everything together.

There's still a lot to do for the next step:

Phrase 1:

Refine the Accessibility for the text in the first feature.
Emphasize the finder option on the home page

Phrase 2:

Add an "End screen" to the flow
Emphasized ingredients on the product page

Phrase 3:

Add feature "Apply to my product filter"