HairHub App Case Study
Create a solution to help people to find the right product for their hair type
TEAM:
Colin Ho, Joanne Ng and Joyce Sueko
DURATION
2 weeks
My ROLE
- Contextual Inquiry
- Survey & Conducted 5 Interviews
- Competitor Analysis
- Value Proposition Canvas
- MVP
- Personas
- User Journey
- User Flow
- Sitemap
- Iterations and Testing
Tools used
- Typeform
- Google Forms
- Microsoft Excel
- Axure
- Sketch
- Invision
Every year, new hair products arrive in stores, giving customers a large range of items to choose from. Every person is different, and not every hair type is the same. With all these options, how can a person find out which products will give them the look they have been searching for?
Read more details on Medium: Check it out
Project Objectives
Understanding of the motivations in the decision of choose a hair product.
Understand how people behave in the shopping experience.
The Assumption
“Customers find it very difficult to find the right product for their hair type.”
Contextual inquiry
Exploring the Environment
We observed 5 beauty supply stores and interviewed different potential prospects in a quickly chat to understand their pain points on choosing products for their hair type. We were able to gather some insights:
CUSTOMERS DON'T KNOW THE PRODUCTS RESULTs BEFORE BUYING
It's hard to choose the right product just by reading the package.
BITE THE BULLET AND TRY IT OUT OR LOOK FOR MORE INFORMATION
They want to understand the benefits of the product before purchasing.
Research
Findings on Interviews and Surveys
With 163 responses and 6 one-on-one interviews, we were able to find out where they look for advice, what challenges they face when taking care of their hair, what frustrations they face in their research for the right product, and their shopping behaviour.
Here are our key findings from the surveys and interviews:
Competitor Analysis
We analysed the platforms mentioned at the interviews with the purpose of understanding and highlighting what kind information the users are looking for:
As we wanted to understand more about how the big brands deal with user needs, we decided to analyse those brands. The key findings were:
DEFINE
Value Proposition Canvas
With the research previously conducted, the next step in the process was to define the purpose of our solution.
We identified the 3 benefits for the users based on their motivations when we created the value proposition of this product, there are:
Minimum viable product
The customer needs:
- Easily find products filtered by hair type
- See before and after photos
- See review of products
- Look details of the products and instructions how to use it
- If the user needs help, she/he might use the message board to ask for advice
“The critical point is making a decision on which product to purchase.”
Personas
During our data synthesis, we identified two kinds of people with similar behaviours, values and ambitions.
The primary persona was based on customers who put more effort into maintaining their hair. These customers are open to sharing their knowledge and experience with others, and they tend to research products in-depth.
The secondary persona was based on who doesn't want spend time on research but want to find the right product quickly and easy and wants to get good deals on products.
IDEATE & DESIGN
Through a design studio process, we came up with a few potential ideas that could be possible solutions to the pain points without being committed to a single design.
3 Days and 10 Usability Tests
We quickly designed the initial iteration of the app. We were then able to test our directions with users.
Task scenarios:
1. You have curly hair and you want to find the right product for your hair.
2. You've tested a good hair product and you would like to share your experience with this product.
Guerrilla Usability Testing
First Iteration
“Users want to find how to get advice and see the highest rated products.”
At the landing page, the user is able to ask for advice and see products with good rating, then proceed to the product page and shopping process.
Through testing we discovered the landing page has a lot of information that does not lead the user to the right hair product for them.
Second Iteration
“Users want to land on the profile page and be able to access their questions, previous purchases and reviews.”
According to some feedbacks we got, the app needed to allow the user to create an account and access their information through a profile page.
After we tested it, we noticed this information is not relevant to find the right product.
The right solution needs to be straightforward.
Third Iteration
“Users want to find relevant content to find the right product for themselves.”
We created a solution that is relevant to their decision to choose a product with personalised landing page, showing them product review from ordinary people and before and after photos.
Final Prototype
Our final prototype relies on creating a better experience on finding the right product for any type of hair, saving time on research and creating a community.
Takeaways
As my first assessment group project. I realised how important is to be analytical in all steps. We need to be very focused in what insights we want to get from it, so with this clear idea in mind start it.
The important thing is observe the behaviour of the user, most part of the time what they say it's not really what they really do. So, observe and get some insights from that and iterate.
Hair care is hard. People spend more than 3 months until they find the right product. Definitely, it is not an easy task. It's important to empower the users for them to make better and smarter decisions.
Next steps
Get more details about their hair condition
Bring even more personalised product recommendations and information
Profile page
Integrate social media
Add gamification to encourage members to add reviews
Add an ingredients list for users conscious about the components they use on themselves