July 2020
Solo Design Sprint completed in 1 week
Tools: Figma, Pen & Paper, Zoom (for user testing)
The Sephora Ingredient Explainer & In My Routine Feature are tools that allow customers to learn more about the ingredients that are in the products they buy.
I led the design of the entire feature of the Sephora website using Google’s Design Sprint method. My long-term goal is to ensure customers will feel more confident and well-informed about the skincare products they buy online from Sephora. The goal of this project was to provide a tool for shoppers to easily learn more about a product they are interested in buying without having to leave Sephora’s website.
Backstory
Like many others during the start of the pandemic, I had a lot of free time on my hands. I spent a lot of time on YouTube, discovered skincare videos, and the rest is history.
I learned that skincare is actually a very personal thing to shop for. It’s not like makeup, where there’s no rules about what you can wear. Everyone can rock red lipstick, but not everyone’s skin can handle ingredients like salicylic acid or retinol. I found myself frantically taking notes (I even made a Google Doc cheat sheet for active ingredients) and researching what worked for my skin for hours on end.
While shopping for new products, I found myself cross-checking ingredient lists on Sephora with websites like EWG and INCIDecoder. Switching tabs and referencing my notes on Google Docs was a pretty arduous process. So, I decided to tackle the complicated skincare shopping experience and create a solution myself.
I’m in the customer’s shoes already!
Proto-Persona
Because I am already a Sephora customer who would definitely use this tool if it existed, I was already in the customer’s shoes and used myself as the proto-persona to start ideating. However, I needed to talk to other members of the target audience to get a sense of their pain-points while shopping for skincare.
Target Audience Input
I spoke to these 5 women about their experiences shopping for skincare. My conversations with the target audience for this feature led me to the following opportunities:
How might we educate the customer in the simplest way possible?
How might we ensure customers actually look at the ingredients?
How might we personalize the feature based on the customer’s current routine?
How might we…
I identified the major pain points of the skincare purchasing process from my interviews with the target audience. Now, I can reframe these pain points as opportunities for my ingredient explainer feature.
Map
This map shows an overview of the experience of buying skincare products as it stands today. I created this customer journey based on my interviews and by sending out a survey asking people how they shopped for skincare. I chose the customer looking at ingredients as the focus for this project because interviewees mentioned that researching ingredients was a time-intensive process for them.
Problem Statement
Customers shopping for skincare are often overwhelmed with the sheer amount of choice available to them, and they feel hesitant about buying new products because they don’t know if they will work for them.
Why does this matter?
This leads to lots of time and effort expended as customers have to research products on third-party websites to verify what ingredients are best for their skin. Many customers may not end up buying a product due to the amount of effort required to research what works for their skin, causing companies like Sephora to lose potential purchases.
Ideations
I focused on how the tool could educate customers in the simplest way possible because I did not want them to have to spend a lot of time researching their products on their own. To quickly generate a number of different solutions, I started exploring ideas with low-fidelity sketches.
Prototyping a Successful Solution
After choosing a direction, I set out to more explicitly define design goals and success criteria:
Hypothesis 1: Customer will utilize the ingredient explainer before adding product to cart.
Hypothesis 2: Customer will find it useful to see how a product interacts with their current skincare routine.
Hypothesis 3: Customer will feel more confident about their skincare purchase after learning about ingredients.
Assumed User Journey
Our user’s journey begins with the customer looking for a new Vitamin C serum on Sephora.com and ends with the customer feeling confident about her purchase after utilizing the new features. Other important moments include:
User clicking ingredients in the list to learn more about them
User inputting their current products to see how this product will work with them
Prototype
I generated a realistic prototype to bring our solution to life and get high-quality feedback from users with Figma. Click on the Ingredient Explainer and In my Routine tabs to try out the solution yourself. You can also click the arrow keys on your computer to navigate through the prototype.
Testing and Evaluating
I identified 5 target users, led recruitment & scheduling, and assembled a research script to ensure I got high-quality & unbiased feedback. Interviews were 20-30 minutes long.
User Testing with Laura
Laura’s favorite feature of the prototype was the “In My Routine” tab. This validated my hypothesis that customers would find it useful to see how a product interacts with their current routine. She also suggested that it would be nice to have “suggested products” integrated with this feature.
“I would find it useful to be able to input my skin type on the “In My Routine” feature to see whether the product would be suitable for me”
User Testing with Gurveen
Gurveen mentioned that she liked being able to hover over the “irritancy” and “comedogenicity” labels to learn more about what they meant.
“I like that this feature breaks down complicated skincare terms into everyday language that I can understand”
Examples of Interview Questions
My interviewees’ answers allowed me to get a sense of how comfortable my users were shopping online and learn about their experiences purchasing skincare items.
So, were my hypotheses validated?
For the most part. However, after listening to feedback from usability testing, customers preferred the “In My Routine” feature more than the Ingredient Explainer. It turns out that learning about ingredients does not necessarily increase confidence about skincare purchases.
Key Takeaways
After completing interviews, I synthesized my notes & summarized key takeaways to inform next steps.
#1) Users liked being able to see what products would work in their current routine more than learning about ingredients
The most positive feedback I received was for the “In My Routine” feature. Users liked that it was accessible on the Sephora page itself, so that they did not have to Google the information separately. They also appreciated the explanations that teach them why it’s not possible to combine certain ingredients.
#2) People want guidance about which products to buy
People are overwhelmed by choice and said they would like to see product suggestions based on their skin type. In interviews, 3/5 users talked about how many options were out there and that it was difficult to know the difference between products.
#3) Reviews are vital in the purchasing process
5/5 of the users I tested the prototype on wanted to read reviews before purchasing the Vitamin C Serum. They said that it’s usually an important step in researching a product because they like to know how other people with similar skin types feel about the product.