Lacquer Lovers

There are so many nail polish brands and colors out there, so selecting the perfect one can be challenging. Lacquer Lovers is a community driven mobile app that caters to the unique needs of nail polish enthusiasts.

Role
UX Designer
UX Researcher
Timeline
Dec 2023–Jan 2024
Skills
User Interviews
Prototyping
Team
Kathy Wang
Yvonne Nguyen
Tools
Figma
Voyant Tools
Problem

It's hard to find the right nail polish color

Nail polish buyers encounter obstacles such as limited shades in stores and inaccurate color representations online. Hence, discovering the ideal shade amidst the abundance of brands, colors, and formulas poses a significant challenge.

Solution

Help users quickly find colors that suit them

This app provides a centralized platform for user reviews and several discovery features allowing users to effortlessly explore a wide range of nail polish options.

Overview

Feature Highlights

Color specificity

Extract colors from camera roll

  • Eyedropper tool for extracting colors from photos
Reviews keep users informed

#1 priority for purchasers

  • Helps users decide whether they should buy
Community for crowdsourcing

Social profiles

  • Make lists and manage personal collections
Research and Insights

Discovering needs & preferences

6
interviews
30min
sessions
20
preferences ranked
Shoppers need quick access to reviews with try-on images to assess color compatibility
83% need skin tone swatches

to gauge how it might look on them

💅💅🏻💅🏼💅🏽💅🏾
67% had bad experiences

with colors that looked different from online

🤨
4/6 buyers look for reviews

across multiple sites before purchasing

⭐️
5/6 don't want to waste time

discovery should be fast, as nails aren't a necessity

🕣
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"Online nail polish shades are never too accurate...depending on their skin tone, it could change your perception of the color"


Research and Insights

How can we do better than competitors?

We compared similar platforms based on strengths, weaknesses, and gaps to adopt or improve on in our designs.

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Takeaways

‍Community input trumps brand perception
AR try-on is cool but not valuable to users
Try-on pictures are crucial for decision-making

Subreddit “laqueristias”
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Lacquergram
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Ulta Beauty
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Ideation

Pain points to features

Since finding colors is the key user goal and try-on pictures provide the solution, these informed the key features.

Reviews

To address concerns about real-life appearance, users can share swatches, rate, and review

🫶

Social profiles

Personal profiles to increase social engagement and build community of reviewers

👤

Eyedropper tool

Extract nail polish colors from their environment with image uploads

❤️🩷🧡💛💚💙
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Advanced search

In addition to eyedropper tool, search by brand, color, and finish

🔍
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Low-fidelity Prototypes

Ideating core flows

We each brainstormed several ways to design the app. These are key user flows that saw the most significant changes after our discussions on the pros and cons of each approach.

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Core flow #1: Home
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Socially engaged explore
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Reasoning: Clear distinction between friends and community reviews

Core flow #2: Review
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Easy access from nav
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Reasoning:
‍Easy access to key feature from global nav

Core flow #3: Color picker
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Color-specific search
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Reasoning:
‍Ample control over color
Heuristic Evaluation

Which friend reviewed what?

After finishing our high-fidelity screens, we proceeded with a round of heuristic evaluations to identify any usability issues before proceeding to usability testing. Below are the modifications we implemented.

Before
Problem: Users don’t know which friend reviewed each respective polish, which indicates an absence of visibility of system status
After
Solution: Add usernames and their reviews to support the image with relevant information
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Make colors easier to identify

Before
Problem: There are several colors to choose from and adding swatches would fulfill recognition over recall by making them easier to identify
After
Solution: More supporting information (color swatches) to promote recognition over recall, and number of search results for visibility of system status
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More freedom in color selection

Before
Problem: There are several colors to choose from and adding swatches would fulfill recognition over recall by making them easier to identify
After
Solution: More supporting information (color swatches) to promote recognition over recall, and number of search results for visibility of system status
Usability Testing

3/6 flows had low completion rate

Following the resolution of issues identified during heuristic evaluation, we ran 6 usability tests, dividing the sessions evenly between myself and my teammate. Below are key changes made based on test results:

Task: Leave a review for Cirque Color's "Ruby"

"I can't find where to start"

Before
Problem: 83% of users could not complete the task. They either returned to home or clicked on search to find the product the product first
After
Solution: Since users start by searching for a specific product before leaving a review, we decided to keep the “leave review” button solely on individual product pages
Task: Upload an image and view polishes

"This button is misleading"

Before
Problem: 83% of users failed on the first and second try. Half of those users instinctively misclicked on the plus sign in the navigation, and one user asked “where is upload?” then could not locate it
After
Solution: Remove misleading plus sign and replace it with camera icon, which enhances visibility of photo upload feature






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Task: View your polish collection

"Am I on the right page?"

Before
Problem: 67% of users were confused about the meaning of this page, and were not sure if they had completed the task or not. One user mentioned that there were too many images and expressed a preference for a layout with only two images per row.
After
Solution: We added more context (i.e., ratings) to the polish collection and nested them beneath the social networking display of follower/following to make the personal significance more prominent.




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Prototypes

User Flows

Extract colors from environment

  • Users search by color, so this provides another avenue for doing so
  • Users search by color, so this provides another avenue for doing so

Social Profiles

  • Curate lists and track personal collections
  • Follow friends and collectors with good taste
  • Incentivize image uploads which help purchasers

View and write reviews

  • Reviews make users more inclined to purchase
  • Metrics determined based on interview feedback (longevity, ease of application, value)

Browse by color, brand, and finish

  • Methods of exploration chosen based on interview feedback

See friends' reviews

  • Community drives engagement and encourages reviews
  • Inspired by reddit laqueristas which thrives on image swatch uploads alone
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Prototype

Try it out!




Final Thoughts

Reflection

I had fun building this project with my colleague and am happy with how much it changed from our initial drafts! I definitely became more efficient as a designer, and honed my skills in user interviews and usability testing. As next steps...
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‍I wish we could have...
  • ‍Tested again: we performed one round of usability testing and made changes based on that, but we did not test again after that
  • Established metrics: maintain records on task completion time, and number of misclicks so we could quantify the significance of the improvements we made
  • Asked more questions during usability tests: I wish I asked more "why" questions
‍I wonder...
  • We did NOT intend to create an e-commerce app, but it now bears a strong resemblance to one. This makes we wonder: Should we add purchasing functionality?

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