Breaking Down Your Cosmetic Products — Designing an App That Tells Users What’s Inside (concept)
“Put that down!!” my mom yelled to the 10-year-old me as I discreetly applied her new foundation that I stole from her vanity. “All the chemicals in makeup are bad for your skin when you’re young,” she said, continuing to lecture me on all the “adverse” effects that makeup will bring upon my face.
As young as I was, I didn’t understand why my mom was so adamant about delaying me from wearing makeup as long as possible. Little did I know, moms are always right. Ever since I started wearing makeup, I’ve been in many situations where my skin would not like what I was layering on top of it. Forming a large pimple on my nose the night before my Winter Formal in high school was not something that I had wished for. I also was not expecting my face to resemble a large tomato after applying a product that caused my entire face to flare up from redness.
After several unpleasant experiences, it didn’t take long for me to realize that the primary cause of these problems rooted from the chemicals that composed the products. However, I also realized that it was hard to determine which product was the cause of these bad experiences, without knowing much about the effects of different chemicals.
Reading the long list of foreign names of chemical ingredients on the product label did not get me anywhere, so I decided to search some of these names on Google. Google was great at informing me about the effects and uses of these chemicals; what it did not provide much was a source that centralized all the pieces of relevant information to one place. I had to manually search each chemical to see if any had properties that were harmful to the body. I recognized room for improvement in this research process, and thought that a mobile app would be a great centralized source that would streamline the process of researching about the consumer health of cosmetics products.
The Problem
- I want to find out if the chemical ingredients in my cosmetic products are harmful or not
- In order to do this, I have to search on several different resources on the web to gather information about consumer health of these products (information is scattered)
- Chemical names are hard for me to comprehend and I’m mainly interested in the effects of the chemicals
- FDA regulations on cosmetic products have not been updated since 1938
I wanted to design an app through which users could check the chemical components of the products they use or are considering to purchase, and be able to understand the effects of these ingredients without knowing much about the chemistry behind them.
I want to promote transparency in consumer health and also target personalization in the information users obtain.
First, I needed to understand the users and what kind of features would be needed in order to create a smooth and effective user experience for the app.
Market Research
Competition: Think Dirty
- A product comparison app for cosmetics
- users could scan barcode to know more information about the product
- informs users about potential toxins in their products
Pain Points
- faulty interface (i.e. after I add a product to my list, I cannot view the information when I click on it)
- chemical rating system is not explicit and transparent (I had to go to settings and then search further to see what their rating system was based on)
- keyword search is not intuitive — difficult to search for specific product
- inconsistency in rating of products (ratings change regularly)
Competition: SkinSafe
- users could scan barcode for product information
- specialized in cosmetics and other household products
- clean and simple visual interface
Pain Points
- faulty interface (crashes while loading information)
- lack of personalization — difficult to filter products containing personal allergen code
- limited database
User Research
I conducted user interviews and surveys of people are users of different cosmetic products.
(keep in mind the potential bias that’s present due to a lack of resources since this an independent side project)
Key Insights from Interviews:
- Most people are unaware and unmotivated to spend the effort to research into the safety concerns of their current and future products
- Most individuals retrieve health information about their products from Youtube videos or articles online
- Information about health effects of chemicals they learn from the web is quickly forgotten and overlooked over time
- Personal referral of products from friends and acquaintances is one of the strongest reasons for people to consider purchasing the product
- People are not willing to compromise quality of products for cheap prices
- Researching into the health properties of different products is limited to Google keyword searches of [product name] + “ingredient reviews”
- Process of researching into health properties of cosmetics products is not streamlined
Defining the People Problem
- Most people have limited chemical knowledge to be able to determine the health properties of the chemical ingredients of their products accurately
- Process of researching the overall health risks of a product on the web is not streamlined enough — information is scattered and unreliable
- Most people are too complacent with their current lifestyles that they are unaware and unmotivated to check the safety risks of their products
- Existing apps lack personalization of individual user’s experience with using cosmetic products
User Personas
Background Description:
Lizzie Apani is an elementary school teacher from Los Angeles, California. She cares a lot about environmental causes, and strives to live a lifestyle that is natural. She has sensitive skin, so she is cautious about trying new products and doesn’t have the budget to be able to buy and test out different products. She has very limited knowledge about what kind of chemicals may be harmful to her, but she does know that parabens are chemicals she needs to avoid because of her past experiences. She is motivated to make her daily routine as natural and organic as possible, but can’t afford to spend too much time and effort to research which products would be fit.
Background Description:
Sharon Parker is a college student in Boston, Massachusetts. She wears skincare and color makeup daily because she cares greatly about how she is presented to others. She is mainly interested in the effectiveness of her products, and is unaware of the chemical health properties of the products she uses. She knows that it would be good for her to use products that are more natural for her body, but it isn’t easy to give up products that she likes for their effectiveness. The only health information she has about her products are things she heard from her friends or information she learned from Youtube videos. She is unmotivated to research more information on the web, but would be willing to try if the process of gaining chemical information about her products is more streamlined and centralized.
Background Description:
Lynda Shao is a 2-year survivor of breast cancer. Her history of cancer has transformed her lifestyle to be as minimal of chemicals as possible. She is cautious and intentional with her purchase decisions of products, and is also interested if products are animal-tested or not. She strives to use natural and organic products, while also wanting to consider price and quality as well. She is not teach-savvy, so she has a difficult time knowing what to search for on the web to get the information she wants about a certain product.
User Journey Map
With the personas created in mind, I empathized with users by walking each step through their journey of trying to slowly reduce harmful chemicals in their cosmetics products
Exploring Design and Features
Going into brainstorming for the app, I came up with 4 HMW (How Might We) questions that formed from the pain points in the existing experience.
- HMW inform users about chemicals in products comprehensively and effectively?
- HMW streamline and simplify the process of researching the chemical ingredients of cosmetics products?
- HMW encourage people to stay motivated in using chemically-clean products?
- HMW increase personalization of the experience to each individual?
User Flow
Initial Sketches
Medium-Fidelity Wireframes
Building these initial mockups, I made a bit of changes from the time I drew the raw sketches. I wanted to incorporate a way to visualize the chemical composition of a product, since visualization of information helps people understand data more intuitively and efficiently. The “Product Information” page would show a bar of different colors that each represent “good,” “OK,” and “bad” chemicals.
High-Fidelity Mockups
For the visual interface of the screens, I wanted to incorporate more of a bright and vibrant feel to it.
The bar visually shows the chemical composition of the product, and therefore allows users to see the general health risks of the product at one glance. It is a more intuitive way to present information that could be cluttered and confusing to the user.
In order to better guide users towards making well-informed purchase decisions, I wanted to build a feature through which they would be able to visually compare two products. They would be able to compare different pieces of information that matter when making purchase decisions. From conducting user interviews, I was able to recognize that most users believe price is an important factor in making their decisions, so I included it in the comparison page.
Prototype
Final Thoughts
Some things that I learned from this personal project:
- Assumptions about the user are inevitable, but must always be recognized and considered
- A lot of the cosmetics products I use are not chemically clean
- Not everyone has the same experience as me regarding a product, service, etc.
- A well-structured design thinking process is tremendously helpful later on when wire-framing and prototyping
In conclusion, I really enjoyed working on this project especially because I have always wanted to research more into consumer health of cosmetics products. I hope that from the things I learned through this project, I would be able to expand my vision for design and use my skills to design more digital solutions that optimize the user experience of products and services.
It’s a shame that this is just a concept, and for now I might have to stick with existing resources to learn about the health properties of my products. I want to continue my journey on flushing out a chemically-clean vanity one day, and hopefully by then I won’t have to deal with anymore pimples or redness that surprise me at unexpected times.
