Independent Design Project
Settle:
Discover Your Perfect Match,
Don't Settle for Less.
A cosmetics-shopping app with personalized color-matching.
Role
UX Designer
Team
Solo Designer
Duration
Jan - April 2024
Tools
Figma
Inspiration
The global fascination with K-beauty is evident, yet there’s a gap in consumer knowledge about product suitability. During a visit to NYC many years ago, a Sephora employee recommended a U.S. product’s lip shade popular for Asians--which didn't suit me at all, highlighting a common issue: the lack of personalized color matching. Shortly after in Korea, the personal color trend revolutionized how consumers choose cosmetics, prioritizing individual color profiles over popularity. As a college student back in the U.S., I've seen the roles reverse: K-beauty products are now sought-after, with online markets catering to this demand through international shipping. Yet, many buyers still mistakenly choose shades based on popularity, influenced by misconceptions about brand rankings. The personal color concept, while present, remains underutilized and obscure to many, or viewed merely as an “Asian trend”, undermining its usefulness. I decided to bring these discrepancies together through a conceptualization of a cosmetics app that brings the personalized K-beauty trend to the global market in a more accessible way, and allows users of all cultures to easily engage with it.
The Problem
Global consumers have trouble finding the products that work best for them because:
The globalization of the cosmetics market introduce too many unfamiliar products.
People can't test every product to see if it suits them.
Online reviews or images can be misleading.
Products can show differently on people with different skin tones.
Research
User Interviews
I focused on interviewing users that primarily shop for products online, and who don't have any expertise in beauty products or color theory (hence they would represent the "usual" cosmetics shopper). The key findings are as the following:
Users want a chosen standard to refer to when continuing their shopping.
Users prefer this “standard” to be personalized to themselves.
A popular method of determining this personalization is quizzes/surveys.
Market Alternatives
I did some market research to see how the current cosmetic shopping apps are dealing with personalization and product recommendations to users. I discovered 3 major companies that use personalized products as a key selling point.
IPSY - Users fill out a brief quiz and receive a personalized bag of products.
Sephora - A skin-type analyzing algorithm recommends products and routines.
Prose - Users fill out a quiz and a customized product is created for them.
However, these apps had some major restrictions.
IPSY - “Type” information is not provided to the user which prevents them from doing their own shopping.
Sephora - The recommendations are limited to skin care products.
Prose - The products are too personalized—it’s difficult for users to find alternative products in the general market.
The Vision
Incorporate diverse cultures to create a universally applicable solution.
Introduce an objective standard to assess a user's personal "type".
Make the assessment fun and easy.
Let the user stay informed.
Apply the standard to the general market.
Solution
An app that provides information that can be applied to other products while shopping.
Adapt the K-beauty seasonal color type trend to fit global diversity and use it as a form of assessment.
Users naturally participate in this assessment as an introductory quiz.
All users receive a free report of their results that includes recommended products.
All products on the app are categorized based on seasonal color types.
Design
Initial Explorations
Personal Color Quiz
Since a key asset of this app was the personal color quiz and information of different personal color types, I decided to make the quiz a part of initial user onboarding. Before they actually start shopping, users would have to complete the quiz and find out what their personal color is, and their journey in the app would start with a list of recommendations that would fit their color type.
Instead of laying out the quiz questions on a continuous vertical scroll on the screen, I decided only to display one question on the screen and have the user complete it before moving on to the next one. This was because I didn't want users to "predict" their own results by looking forward into further questions so that the app can give the most accurate results to each user. Also, each question contained multiple images as samples to choose from, so displaying them individually had a better visual view.
Personal Color Information x Products
The next step was to make the comprehensive information about personal color types available to the users, so that they can not only see what their color type is but also compare themselves with other color types to gain a better understanding of the range of different products and compatibilities. This led to creating a separate page where all of this information would be displayed, and sub-pages for each color type that contains recommended products for each type.
To make navigation to products easier, I decided to link from these recommendations directly the product details page so that a user can quickly view and purchase a recommended product without having to search for the product all over again. Unlike the details page of already-existing cosmetics shopping apps, I decided to mark each shade of a product (e.g. lip tints) with their corresponding color type so that users can explore different shades more knowledgeably.
Search Filtering
I also wanted to create a feature that would help users to discover products that would suit them that are not on their recommended products list. In order to achieve this, I decided to design a search filtering feature that allows users to filter search results with color types, subtypes, and product categories.
Revisions
More Interviews!
After completing the initial prototypes, I conducted a new series of user interviews and received feedback on my designs. The key points of the feedback were narrowed down to the following:
Users wanted to see more information at first sight.
Users wanted more representation for diversity.
Users wanted more real-life images of products and their application images.
So, I decided to make the following revisions in order to contain more information and make it more visible.
Layout changes
More visible signifiers
Carousels to incorporate more images
The Final Prototype
Users take the personal color quiz as soon as they open the app, and they're given a report of their results. The report contains a recommended list of products that match their color type, and users can navigate to that specific product and explore it more, or search for other products that interest them using the search filter. Every product and every shade is categorized with a color type so that users can easily determine whether it will suit them or not.
Outcome
This was the first 0-1 design project I ideated and developed, so I had to really jump into the process of product thinking to fully designing the interface. This was a project that started from a personal need as well as a need that I found among my college friend groups, but as I did more interviews and received user feedback I was able to discover that the discrepancies between beauty products worldwide are actually widespread issues among many individuals. It was interesting to design for such a large user group, and in the process I found that even with the mindset of designing for a global audience, there are things that I will inevitably miss out on. This project helped me learn that user feedback is a very crucial element in design, and especially so for 0-1 product thinking.