Improving skin health through community, journaling, and personalized routines
Design for America ✴ UX Project Lead ✴ Winter 2023 - Summer 2024 ✴ Figma + FigJam
Project Overview
A passion project with tons of collaboration!
Glowwie is a passion project I completed over the course of nine months. My role was a design team lead, where I actively led and participated in the research, ideation, and design phases, including conducting user research, wireframing, and prototyping. My team included two UX researchers (Sean & Sanaa), and three UX designers (Claire, Xenia, and Kelly).
Background
I love skincare, but there’s a story behind it.
Like many other people my age, I’ve had my fair share of skin insecurities. Since I was twelve, I’ve struggled with cystic acne. My breakouts started popping up faster than my spot treatment could eliminate them and, shortly after that, became so severe that I began to see a dermatologist. My skin never responded to the treatments. And, my reflection in the mirror seemed changed—not only by discoloration and marks but with humiliation and disgust, too.
I especially struggled to find a solution that worked for me, especially when it came from those who didn’t understand my concerns and didn’t share my struggles.
Context
Design for America is an organization that empowers students to tackle social challenges through human-centered design.
Before this project, I was involved in a club on campus called Design for America. DFA is a registered student organization where students take on important challenges in their lives and the lives of others through design.
In my first year as a DFA student, I had the opportunity to learn about the design process and the powerful impact design can have on social issues. This experience inspired me to take on a leadership role in my second year and create a solution that addressed a problem meaningful to me and many others.
Problem
Encountering rapid skin changes during their formative years, many teens and young adults struggle with low self-confidence and feelings of isolation.
After discussing with the team, the main problem revolved around the lack of skin-confidence in early teens and adolescents. In addition, we also realized that there is a lack of comprehensive resources to help these individuals feel more educated, supported, and confident in their personal journeys with skin health.
Solution
Enter Glowwie, a digital app designed by our team at Design for America, that aims to ensure individuals feel more educated, supported, and confident in their journeys with skin health.
The app provides users with a tailored skincare experience, in which they can share their skincare journeys with others, connect with others with similar skin types, curate personalized routines, and track their progress for better, healthier skin.
Competitive Analysis and The Gap
The competition is missing the vital aspects of community, user customization, and trust when giving the best advice tailored to one’s skin.
To begin our research, we conducted a competitive analysis of a variety of digital apps (such as Basic Beauty, Charm, Trove Skin, and Skinlog), along with skin services.
Community, customization, and trust. What does this mean in terms of skincare?
Community: One of the main problems that I dealt with, and my team members had also faced, was that we felt alone during the whole process and we wanted to connect with others who had similar skin types and concerns.
Customization: Despite having to input personal details about skin issues and skin types, the apps did not have a tailored output which could adapt to users’ needs.
Trust: Skincare comes at a price, and we felt as though many platforms would try to promote and sell their products rather than give the best advice tailored to a user and their skin.
Survey and User Interviews
Further understanding our problem space with surveys and user interviews…
To learn more about users’ skincare needs, perceptions, and behaviors, we distributed a survey via Google Forms. We got over 100+ responses, and here’s what we found:
Subsequently, we conducted in-depth interviews with 10 individuals who engaged with our initial survey and resonated with our problem space. We found four key things:
People struggle to find the right skincare products, routines, and lifestyles that work best for their skin types.
Skincare advice is most trusted when coming from people who have similar skin attributes like ethnicity, skin tone, and age.
Repeatedly experimenting with mismatched skincare products is both financially draining and emotionally exhausting.
Skin plays a major role in self-perception and poor skin can take a toll on mental health and confidence.
Affinity Diagramming
Wrapping it all together with affinity diagramming…
To ensure we hit all of the user pain points, we combined key user quotes into an affinity diagram, where we uncovered four key themes. These themes were incorporated into our problem statement below!
Problem Statement
How might we design a solution for adolescents and young adults that empowers them to receive guidance from and build community with others to support their skincare journey?
User Persona
Meet our primary user persona, Riley Smith! She represents a culmination of all of the individuals we interviewed.
Design and Ideation
Choosing the best platform and the most important features for our product!
In the design and ideation phase, our goal was to create the most accessible solution possible for our target users. Since our goal is to build a community centered around skincare, we chose a digital platform or an app because it allows us to connect people from diverse backgrounds and locations. After that, we began brainstorming features and prioritizing them (see the FigJam below!).
Based on this, we decided upon the following features:
Community: Sharing experiences to create community and giving and receiving advice
Journaling and Tracking: Journaling for physical and mental health, and product tracking
Tailored Content: Personalized insights based on weekly journals
Profile Matching: To learn from others with similar experiences
Wireframing and Design Concept
After we decided on our features, we started visualizing what our app would look like, with lo-fidelity wireframing and a design concept!
Because our app is tailored towards skincare, we wanted the word “glowy” to be reflected in the design. This can be seen through the soft aesthetic and subtle gradients we chose. We also named our app Glowwie because of this!
Usability Testing
We then conducted user testing sessions to gather insights with the same individuals we interviewed.
We performed usability testing with the same interview participants to refine our design based on their feedback. Here are the changes we made!
The Final Design
Presenting Glowwie!
Impact
Why does our solution matter?
We revisited our initial group of 10 users to gather feedback on our revised design and ensure it addressed their pain points. If Glowwie was real...
Lessons Learned
What I’d do differently next time.
Reflecting on our journey, there are a few aspects I would approach differently.
Make a design system: While I initially valued creative freedom, I realized that a well-defined system would streamline our process, ensure consistency, and create a more cohesive experience for our target audience.
More user testing: While testing with the same group provided valuable insights, a broader sample might have been better for us to gain a fresh set of perspectives.
Collaborate with dermatologists and mental health professionals: This was a bit out of scope given our lack of connections to licensed dermatologists and mental health professionals.
Conclusions
A vote of confidence to my younger self who struggled with her own skin insecurities :’)
As I worked on this project, I learned so much about leading a team and designing a solution based on user needs and data points. However, this project itself almost served as a healing experience for me, and as a vote of confidence for my younger self who struggled with her skin insecurities. Working with this team empowered me to be open about my struggles and helped me feel like I’m not alone. That, to me, is what makes this project so valuable, because it allowed me to turn my negative experiences into something meaningful and impactful, not just for me, but for anyone else struggling too.
