Skinsight
Helping users get the most out of skincare and cosmetic products within their recommended shelf life.
UI.UX
Michelle Murvai
Process:
Design Thinking, Usability Testing, Branding
Scope:
10 weeks
Toolkit:
Adobe Creative Suite, Figma
The personal care industry presents unique challenges to users when it comes to getting the most value out of their products. Skinsight provides users with a simple solution to scan batch codes and set custom reminders, reducing cosmetic waste and providing the assurance that their products remain safe and effective.
Problem space
In a vast cosmetics and skincare market worth close to $12 billion, products sold in Canada are not currently required to include specific expiry information.
Users often have difficulty knowing if their products have expired, and if they are still effective or may potentially even harm their skin.
Design Solution
I designed an end-to-end product experience that included user research, wireframing, usability testing, a high-fidelity prototype, and brand development for both the mobile app and accompanying marketing website.
I conducted two rounds of usability testing with separate groups of potential users. Feedback from these tests guided changes to both UI and functionality, prioritizing clearer visual cues on the expiration tracker and the ability for users to view the detailed product card in their favourites list after scanning.
Task Flow
Most user stories naturally grouped themselves around the central epic of quickly and easily scanning a product code, checking the expiration date, and being reminded of this information in the future.
While users can generally find some basic batch code calculators online, the process of manually typing in each individual code, or looking up the same product again and again, was a major pain point. Many users from my interviews were not familiar with these tools at all, and preferred to do a patch test on their skin instead.
Their primary concern was product performance—such as smooth makeup application or benefits from active ingredients like AHA / BHAs or Vitamin C—and were frustrated if they weren't able to finish products before they had noticeably gone off.
Process
My design approach was iterative and I continually circled back to my user's main pain point of wanting to maximize the value of potentially expensive products, and their reluctance to part with them even if they couldn't exactly pinpoint when they were first purchased.
Usability Testing
I conducted two rounds of usability testing with separate groups of potential users. Feedback from these tests guided changes to both UI and functionality, prioritizing clearer visual cues on the expiration tracker and the ability for users to view the detailed product card in their favourites list after scanning.
Visual Identity
The Skinsight brand was developed to be bright, accented, and grounded in a deep neutral green to convey trust and assurance.
Focusing primarily on product textures and images of real skin and skin tones, I chose imagery without any filters or effects applied. My mood board captures a sense of clarity with visual energy in a modern and gender-balanced UI that was intentionally designed to be accessible to all skincare lovers.
Outcomes
Condensing the full end-to-end design process in 10 weeks was a challenge, and next steps would be to further explore interactivity and build out a user onboarding experience and batch code search function.
The app can also be further developed to include more categories of personal care products—including fragrances, haircare, and nail products—and align with cosmetic brands as “tracker of choice” for pro makeup artists and retail spaces.
It has potential to be expanded as a tool for retail spaces to track the freshness of floor products while individual users can benefit from linking restock reminders to online retailers such as Sephora.
Although the functionality of scanning product codes is a major boost for users, I would like to explore how we may sync email receipts with the app to automatically generate an estimated product age based on purchase date.
