USER RESEARCH | INTERFACE DESIGN | SERVICE DESIGN BLUEPRINT
A collaboration with Vanitee, a local beauty app created for beauty seekers.
Vanitee is an app for beauty seekers to find beauty services. In a same way, it is also used by beauty providers(salons and freelance artists) to list their services to beauty seekers.
This project aim to understand beauty providers’ needs through a series of research methodologies. We want to bridge the gap between them and Vanitee, and to enhance the whole app/service experience.
This live-client project is completed in a short span of 3 weeks at General Assembly.
I worked closely with 2 other UX designers to plan a timeline. Under the strict time constrains, I was able to:
• Conduct Contextual Inquiry as a mystery shopper
• Conduct Competitor Analysis to find out how they approach design problems, identify standard features and best practices and look for opportunities.
• Interview stakeholders to have a clear understanding of the deliverables, their current situation, and business goals
• Interview beauty providers to gather insight on who they are, how they use the app, the problems faced, and put ourselves in their shoes.
• Create Personas to summarise the user research, and help the team to focus on their pain-points and needs.
• Create Merchant Journey Maps to help us understand merchant’s behaviour, build empathy and convert pain-points into opportunities. It also gives the stakeholders a visual understanding of the beauty providers’ journey.
• Create a Service Design Blueprint to help Vanitee clarify the frontstage and backstage structure.
• Design screens, to further explain our solution.
Final Reflections
As a research based project, I love how UX research allows me to put myself in the shoes of beauty providers to understand who are they, and empathise with them to create solutions that are useful and meaningful. If there’s more time, I would love to look into material design, to create a more consistent User Interface and Interaction Design.