competitive Research: what’s out there?

To determine the design and feature set, I primarily looked at content sharing platforms. Most of our users discover Beauty Advisor through Instagram, so we wanted to. I also looked at applications that are more forum-based to cater to the community aspect of Beauty Advisors.

user research: where is our audience coming from?

With a well-established community of users in the application, I noticed that 40% of our users are from mobile platforms. When asked about pain points, the majority expressed frustration in trying to share content as well as navigate to the all-important advice section.

ideation and planning: what are the main components of this application?

1. Content Uploading: An easier way for mobile users to upload images and videos into Beauty Advisor

2. Explore Stream: Include immersive features to easily find inspiration on a variety of topics

3. Advice section: The core of Beauty Advisor. The app has to foster engagement between all types of users.

initial design: translating web into native app

The main goal for the design was to make an easy to navigate application with easy access to our most utilized features.

final designs

With Beauty Advisor having so many different features, I've broken it down into several different sections below, with video examples of each feature.

Onboarding

The goal here was to be quick and simple. To choose between becoming a regular user and a professional user, I just gave them a simple "either / or" option.

To make the experience feel more tailored to their interests, we prompt users to fill in what they like to read about. I also added a page to suggest who to follow so that they don't have to search through users and hinder their initial experience.

Explore Beauty Advisor

The explore function had to be minimal and informative at the same time. On the stream, only the photos appear. Filters above refine the search, but overall the screen is kept sparse of information.

The slide up menu for photos has the most important information (user written information, products used) on the top. I also added any related advice questions to the bottom of the menu to further streamline the experience. 

Get Advice

On the main page, I placed the advice in different categories, with the screen displaying each question as an article to click on. The second screen has a more stream-like feel to it, with advice questions pertaining to the category chosen.

When viewing a specific topic, the details of the question are underneath the photo. Below that, I placed the discussion. Everything was streamlined in the discussion, with replies popping up right below the main question in discussion.

Read All About It

I separated the main story menu into three sections: Featured Stories, Recent Stories, and Trending Stories. Each section is accessed through different types of menus as to make sure the three are distinguishable from one another.

When viewing the story I kept it simple, with just related articles appearing at the end. I added a feature to follow the author at the very top, as well as a like button to save the story for future reading.

Finding Pros

The last feature of Beauty Advisor is the option to directly contact Professionals registered on the website. I added a filter so that users can find professionals locally, making the whole experience feel much more catered to the them.

I wanted all the valuable information shown in the searches; so featured work, location, and distance are all shown alongside the name of the featured Professional or their company.

Upload Process

I wanted to make sure the process was comprehensive and simple. When uploading a photo, tagging products had to be easy and familiar. In uploading a video, trimming a video and editing the thumbnail had to have that same ease and familiarity. 

Filters: A closer look

With so many filters in Beauty Advisor, it was hard to streamline the filter process. The Explore Stream filters were the hardest with its many sub-categories. I placed each category in drop down menus and had each sub-category in an active/inactive switch.