book me beauty

 As I started exploring my way into User experience design, I came across this design challenge website www.crowwwn.com.

What excited me was the timeline of every challenge. There is a weekly prompt to design a unique solution to a problem. One who is ready to participate, submits a design by the end of the 7-day period to enter the competition. All submissions are posted at the same time at the beginning of the week. You have 7 days to submit and collect votes. At the end of the 7 day voting period, the designer with the most votes (likes) wins.

As a novice looking to build her portfolio, these challenges would keep me honest, and allow me to apply the theoretical concepts I was learning in my HCI course. My friend Pallavi Koppar too was in the same boat. The two of us decided to collaborated and entered the competition together.

Week 2 Challenge

This week’s problem is something I have personally struggled with. Making salon appointments is one of the most tedious things in the world. And there are very few websites and apps that allow a seamless experience from start to finish. This problem, for this reason alone excited me.

We sifted through the internet to see what problems most users face while booking salon appointments. A lot of the problems appeared to be backend issues leading to timeouts and sometimes even overbooking. We looked at a bunch of different apps and websites when we started our research. We went through the experience in all these locations from start to finish. We even looked at apps like classpass and yelp to understand how appointments are made in general and what we can learn and eventually incorporate into our idea. The gist of all our findings were:

• Most salons are overpacked with images, offers, sales etc all on the same page leading to a lot of visual clutter. Simplicity of design was key.

• Salons that couldn’t afford designers had no idea of branding and marketing. Creating some sort of identity for the app was essential.

• A lot of people were regulars at their local salons and preferred a way they could go to the same stylists or people. Familiarity was a key thing to note in the app.

• For people who were looking for salons, most people relied on word of mouth or google reviews. So rating was also a part of the experience we wanted to retain.

With these findings, we began our ideation process.

As we began our ideating process, we looked at some key user personas:

Unity - A busy, working, single female who believed in visiting salons once a month or on a regular basis. She had a favorite stylist, a favorite manicurist, a favorite facial artist and even a favorite masseuse. She would look for appointments with these people. Her decision making was based more on the salon availability of these individuals.

Abhijeet - Abhijeet is a customer engineer. His job requires him to interact with clients on an everyday basis. He like to look chic and suave for this job. He goes into a salon, gets groomed and is out. Its all about availability and pace for him. No nonsense, no fuss.

Anita - She just moved into a new city and is trying to find her go-to salon. She’s in scout mode at the moment, looking at reviews, judging every app and their customer experience. Her time is money and her money is business for the time she is in the city.

These personas led us to a certain specific flow for our app which we will discuss more in the wire framing section.

As we moved into actually designing the app, we first wanted to curate the mood we wanted the users to feel as they used our app. Something minimalist in nature, fresh, calming and still chic and earthy. This led us to then create the brand identity for the app.

With all the branding and moods established, we drew out our idea for the user flow. We settled on trying to show the user experience in 3 slides. For the purposes of this exercise, we assumed that the app was already installed on the phone and the sign in process was already complete. The app registered the users name and it is post this point that the experience starts.

We start with the onboarding page, that sets the tone for what service the user is looking for.

The booking page allows the user to pick the date, time and stylist they want to work with.

The confirmation page, confirms the point and allows you to add any service should you need it.

As we began to design our app in further detail, adding icons and services, we realized that while the three pages worked well functionally, they did so in isolation. There was nothing tying them together. For our final product, we decided to really drive hard the idea of branding into our design. This finally led to :

“ Remember calling your salon and being asked to hold. Yes, so do we. It should not be so hard to feel and look your best self. Here is a seamless experience to book your appointment within minutes. Select the category you are looking for, pick the service and go straight to the calendar to choose the day that works best for you. Bonus, you can also choose your favorite stylist/aesthetician and Voila! Your booking is confirmed, you can directly add your calendar. Also, learn more about beneficial add ons and other special offers to be up-to-date.”