Elysian: Streamlining your salon booking and style discovery
Introduction
📜Context
In our busy lives, looking good often takes a backseat as we hustle through our daily routines.
Many users find the process of booking salon appointments using app inconvenient and confusing and some apps often lack transparency and efficiency which leads to frustration.
Additionally, discovering hairstyles that suit individual preferences can be challenging. Users need a streamlined, user-friendly solution to easily book appointments, select specialists, and explore personalized style options.
Why this problem?
This will help users to provide a simple, user-friendly experience where users can explore different styles, find the right specialists for their needs, and book their appointments effortlessly.
But wait, people can visit salons without booking from an app right ? They can use phone call or direct visit to salon also.
How did I figure out that this problem required a solution?
Whenever I visit a salon I have faced some issues —
🎯Key objectives are-
1.Enhance booking efficiency -
Streamline the salon booking process to increase user efficiency by providing real-time availability and simplified reservation steps.
2. Style exploration and inspiration -
Inspire users by incorporating a hairstyle exploration feature that showcases trending and personalized styles.
3. Personalized specialist connection -
Facilitate a personalized experience by allowing users to add their favorite specialists.
🔎 User Research
I have gone with secondary research for this problem as this was the only way to find out what problem users face in limited time.
To design the salon booking app, I delved into user experiences through articles, competitive analysis and app reviews. To understand what current problems users are having and what features and experience apps are offering right now.
🔐Key insights
What users are facing in the current existing apps-
Pain points
Who are the users?🤔
- Young Adults: People who are tech-savvy and actively engage with beauty and fashion trends.
- Working Professionals: Individuals who have busy schedules and need a quick and efficient way to book salon appointments.
User persona
To design the salon booking app and to make it truly user-centric, we need to know what, why and how of the users.
It will help to understand what our users’ goals, frustrations, and preferences are.
🪜Information architecture
📝 Wireframes
The pen and paper sketch is the best part I love, it helps me to ease out the iterations. While sketching, my mind gives me freedom to find out the ideas.
🖼️ Inspirations(Moodboard)
✨Introducing Elysian
Elysian is a mobile app that helps users take appointments for their salon services in nearby areas, select their stylist, and explore new styles.
User Onboarding
Picture an introduction so smooth it’s like meeting an old friend. Upon entering, the login/signup screens act as your gateway to the Elysian universe. No complicated paths — just a straightforward entry to a world of beauty and style.
Home screen
Take Inspirations and Salon card
This section helps pointing users towards the latest trends and timeless classics. With a simple tap, explore a world of new styles.
Explore
Welcome to the “Explore” screen- where trends, inspirations, and face-scanned styles converge to redefine your salon experience.
Style Discover
Now after uploading the image, the next step is the app will take help of AI and detect our face for suitable hairstyles.
Appointments
Think of it as your personal salon timeline, keeping you in the loop with all your upcoming, past, and cancelled appointments.
Profile Section
Let’s understand the flow of booking
First lets see how a particular salon page looks like. We will enter here by tapping on any salon cardfrom the home tab.
Seamless booking flow
Continuing the booking flow after the adding services to the appointment screen.
Know your specialist
This screen flow is your backstage pass to finding the perfect stylist who understands and enhances your unique beauty.
Recheck your date and time slots by coming back after adding your best specialist. Also know more about the availability of your specilast.
Checkout and Booking Summary
As you reach the final steps of your salon adventure, the checkout screen and booking summary are your last stops to ensure a smooth and delightful experience.
One of the major improvement in my design
After doing usability testing, I found out some UI and UX flaws in home screen. Also need to change the scanner into a person’s face inside scanner image, but I wasn’t able to found during the time limit.
Enjoy Elysian by diving into the prototype:
Behind the scenes at the design journey of Elysian..
Here, I proudly present the iterations showcase, where you witness the evolution of the salon booking app. Also this is just one page there are more iterations!
Constraints
- My earlier choice was to design a live image capture of our face which will bring the suitable haristyles. But due to limited time and I was having enough resoures on how to design that feature.
So I came up with uploading image from gallery or either by capturing from camera step. - After finding a particular hairstyle we can save that and it will be added to the favourites directly, so that we can access it later.
Key learnings
- User feedback and iterative design are must to enhance user experience based on preferences and needs.
- Know who is our target audience.
- Priotize on which feedback to work on first and not rely on every feedbacks from others, think which is important.
🎉 That’s a wrap!
If you have any feedback, feel free to drop it in the comments, and I will surely look into it. Also I am open for Product design roles, feel free to send me message on Linkedin or Twitter.
Once again, thank you for being part of my odyssey - Stay Beautiful, Stay Elysian!
