Individual Project: BeauT - Beauty Product Tracker

Design a mobile app to prevent from using old beauty products

Individual Project

BeauT - Beauty Product Tracker

Duration

2 months

Design Role

User Research

UX Design

UI Design

Prototype

Overview

Problem

Tossing away expired yet unfinished products is the most difficult and unpleasant process for many beauty product consumers.

Solution

I designed a beauty product tracking app that calculates and tracks the expiration dates of cosmetics. In making tossing as a “must-to-be-done” process, BeauT helps users to form a good habit of cosmetic storage and usage. Users no longer need to be frustrated about using expired products or guilty about discarding old products.

/Getting started

When you use beauty products...

Have you ever...

complained about using expired products but still using them?

Have you ever...

felt you are never able to finish the mascara within 3 months?

Have you ever...

tried to throw some products away but totally forgot when you purchased them?

Context

Many people are aware that all cosmetics have expiration dates. However...

The goals of this project:

Benefits to Users

Throw old products in time = less chance to hurt skin.
Automatic tracking of product expiration dates.
More motivated to deal with old products in time.
Learn to spend wisely on cosmetics.

Benefits to the App

Become the to-go app for average beauty product consumers, beauty YouTubers and over-buyers.
Grow database of popular beauty products in each region, with potential to collaborate with other beauty selling platforms such as Sephora.

75%

of consumers don't routinely finish their cosmetics before expiration date or at all.

80%

of consumers are aware that cosmetics have expiration dates and yet still have problems with old products.

82%

of consumers who experienced break out due to the usage of old products still feel guilty about throwing unfinished products away.

Reference

Discovery

/User interviews

I can't finish the products before they expired,

but I don't discard them right away either."

To further understand what made throwing old products away so difficult, I interviewed 5 people who claimed they had trouble dealing with old beauty products. I asked them to describe the following:

1) their process of discarding products;

2) their mindsets/emotions on throwing unfinished/emptied products away;

3) their effort/methods on organizing beauty products in daily life.

Where did this procrastination come from? How do I find a solution to eliminate people's procrastination on TOSSING?

🧐

5 users with average age of 26 years old

As I was synthesizing why people don't throw old products right away...

Lack of Knowledge

"The products don’t look bad."

Lack of Tracking

"I don't exactly remember when it expired."

Feeling Guilty

"It’s too expensive to throw away when the product is barely used."

Nostalgia Purpose

"I stop using it but I simply leave it in the drawer...I would keep it until I move out."

I found out...

Guilt is the most frequently mentioned word throughout the interviews. It is the rising of strong guilt makes the process of discarding the least enjoyable thing ever. On the other hand, having completed an entire product satisfies people as if it is a “moral celebration.” Videos on empty products have became extremely popular on YouTube in recent years.

In fact, many people still have the mindset of...

Empty products =

Great satisfaction

Toss the unfinished=

Waste money

I realized it is this mindset prevented people from tossing expired beauty products. Thus, how to help users to get rid of the guilt and shame caused by unfinished products became crucial to my design.

/Redefine the problem

How to help users deal with old products easily without feeling guilty or wasting money?

Track effortlessly

Feel in control

Reduce guiltiness

Simplify and break down the data input steps, and enable a flexible tracking process.

Increase visibility of each product status and provide an overview on expiring products.

Help users to realize tossing is a must-to-do, and build a habit of tossing old products in time.

Define the End-to-End Experience

To ensure delivering a smooth experience, I broke down the product and experience into segments. They include the key steps in a typical user journey from adding a product, logging the data, organizing and categorizing the listing, and tossing the product.

Tracking Flow

At-a-Glance

The design goal is to reduce the labor of manual input while embracing different scenarios during the tracking process. A form that is too lengthy or asks for more than a few minutes to fill out risks user fatigue: imagine you’ve opened 5 products today and try to log all of them in the app. A form that doesn’t allow pause-and-resume causes problems for people who want to finish later.

In adopting efficiency, simpleness and flexibility as the design strategies, I designed 3 sequences for tracking a product: adding a product, logging data, and predicting expiration date.

1

Add

2

Log

3

Predict

Three ways of adding a product

In order to make the searching function more visible and easy to reach, I placed “Search” as one of the main tabs. However, there are some cases that the cosmetic brand one tries to search is new to the market or imported from another country. In this case, if the brand is not recognized by either scanning or searching, the alternative is to input the product information manually.

1

In app search

2

Scan barcode

3

Add manually

"Toss Now"

At-a-Glance

Through research I discovered that most people are simply not motivated to toss expired products in time. The longer they keep old products, the less guiltiness they would experience. However, it increases the possibility to continue using old products.

To educate users that tossing away doesn’t equal to wasting money, I decided to add the “Toss Now” page on the main tab. It’s natural that users want to ignore the fact that their half-finished products have expired, A “Toss” tab adds an extra amount of emphasis to inform users that tossing an unavoidable and required process.

1

Notify

2

Take an action

3

Discard

Tossing Interaction Explorations

To reverse users’ mindsets and expectations of using up products before tossing them, I designed the “Toss Now” tab to help users understand that tossing is a must-to-do process for everyone.

The first iteration: The "Calendar" Tab

As I realized the necessity to provide a calendar for users to view the future expired products, I designed a multifunctional calendar tab for checking expiration dates of the products and creating skincare routines and tool cleanse tasks.

I stepped back and took another look of the core values of this app. What really motivates users to download and learn this app, and spend so much time on tracking every product here? Half of the time, users don’t want to miss the expiration dates of their products, and for the other half, they just feel difficult to throw old products away in time, by themselves.

Since “adding a product” and “tossing a product” are the two main interactions of the app, why don’t I make them equally visible and accessible?