Abstract: Myavana Social App
A woman's path to hair nirvana.
The Brief
“The goal was to leverage science and technology to provide women of color with a personalized hair-care experience that takes the guessing out of the equation and delivers hair nirvana.” — Candace Mitchell / Co-Founder of TECHTURIZED INC.
Myavana needed to be smart, personal + expressive.
Myavana approached The Empty Space (TES) with a challenge — to help transform it’s current application experience to one that is more contextual, personal and more expressive than ever before––in less than 6 weeks.
The Solution
Like any consumer facing mobile application, the service and ideas created from the provider HAVE to be conveyed effortlessly once they are in the hands of the consumer.
Myavana’s platform relies on its interface + user flow.
So we took the core features of their app, restructured the app’s architecture and created a slimmer, faster and efficient interface + user journey.
Product Features
“The best interfaces just work.”
User Profile
The user profile is the window to each user’s personality, hairstyle and helps to identify commonalities with each other as part of a global hair community. Adding looks, and viewing your personal favorites aim to give back and show love to hair that speaks to you the most.
Photo Feed
The photo feed (as part of the discovery feed and user profile) is where the magic happens. View the latest content as single images or in a 3x3 grid. We gave users a better experience to view, comment and save their favorite looks from the app’s community.
Adding a Look
Myavana’s bread and butter revolves around the community to share their hair, and how they keep it all together. While the main focus are the photos, users can add a description in a pinch and show others what hair category the look fits in.
Photo Editor
In Myavana 1.0, users had a hard time sharing their looks because the photo functionality of the app didn’t allow for them to adjust, center an crop their photos. Version 2.0 addresses that issue.
Discover Feed
Discovery of different hairstyles, their stylists and the products used to create them are the essential features and product offering of Myavana. In version 1.0, there were too many segmentations, often jumbled and the iconography used to convey them were ill-advised at best. To deliver the right punch, we used better photos, and a proper set of custom icons.
Process Breakdown
An Opportunity Arises
Candace Mitchell, Chanel Martin and their other two co-founders set out to tap into the $9 Billion dollar market of Black Women’s haircare products and services with an idea of community and self-love.
Ideation: Bringing The Past To Present
Myavana approached The Empty Space to revamp their current service offering with a redesign worth building upon.
Designing A Complete Experience
We took the best of the current experience and cut out the fat. We analyzed the backend processes to build a native iOS application that leveraged the most knowledgable dev community for efficiency, usability and unobtrusive UI.
Delivering Tools For Future Growth
We left Myavana with a system; a blueprint for success to build upon. Providing them with type guidelines, image assets, sample code, a UI kit and color palette — their team can take what we have made for them today into Myavana’s ultimate vision tomorrow.
Results of Work
25% Increase In New Users
Caribbean, East + South African Countries Were The Highest Adopters
Raised 1m Dollars In Series B Seed
What’s next?
Unfortunately, our efforts were short-lived.
“ While we were shocked to learn of Myavana’s deactivation due to the company shifting its focus to their Hair DNA product offering, we remain optimistic that the app will return to the app store and that we will be the ones to do so.”
Lessons Learned
For an app redesign + pitch deck and a promotional campaign for a 6-week project deliverable, it was a favorable experience for me as a leader leading a 4-man team into the startup accelerator environment. I learned how to be an effective communicator, team player and morale-booster. I became a mentor to help guide out team to achieving a modicum of success and it was in the early identification of our strengths and weaknesses that we are able to pull off a project this substantial in our first month of being in business.
Ameer Carter is co-founder of the mother/son dual purpose consultancy KM&A, bridging the gap between design and industrial & organizational psychology to inspire businesses to build better selves, thoughtful leadership and products for others. We are currently scouting projects within Fashion, E-Sports, Education and Manufacturing industries and AR/VR environments.
For all contact, reach out at ameer@kma.agency
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