Rayner Loi and I have decided to take the weekends off to participate in Henkel’s Digital Innovation Challenge 2017. This article documents our journey of tackling the challenge statement by proposing a fun and innovation solution.
Background of Henkel Beauty Care Group
Henkel Beauty Care is one of the largest cosmetic companies in hair cosmetics. With broad experience in the development of breakthrough innovations in the fields of Hair Colouring, Hair Care and Hair Styling.
Challenge Statement
In the beauty care market, consumers increasingly look for customised products suited to their haircare needs. How might we assess the needs of Henkel’s consumers through digital channels and physical stores, and provide customised solutions to them.
Before diving straight into prototyping a solution, we thought it’s important that we adopt a user-centric approach by first understand the problem in depth and agreeing on which line of Henkel product we should specifically place our focus on.
So the question is… Which line of Product should be our focus??
Soap, Shampoo, hair dye or perhaps hair style?
Hmm…. as a young male working adult, I want to look fresh and ready for work every morning especially if I have to interface with clients. That would mean that I would have to style my hair. We all grow up being told that hair spray, wax, and gel can be detrimental to the health of our hair if not taken care properly. Hence, we buy specific shampoos to maintain them.
The same principle applies to dyeing of hair, make up and the list goes on.
Let’s admit it, we all want to look our best and this comes with a huge cost.
Let’s try to break this down further.
After careful consideration, we’ve decided to specifically narrow our focus to providing a customised solution for consumers’ who specifically buy hair dye products from Henkel.
Qualitative Research
As a UX designer, I’m mainly interested in understanding how people use Henkels’ products, what problems they may have, and what works differently for them. I seek to gain insights about the intent of people’s product usage through patterns in the data and measure the quality of experience.
We went out to conduct interview with 4 of our friends who dye their hair on a regular basis and a hair dye promotor working from Watson
Here’s some example of the feedback that were given to us.
With all the data collected from our interviews, we were able to synthesise them and put together a fictitious persona which represents the common patterns of the needs and goals of our interviewees. / hair dye consumer
Introducing Sally
Sally is a 25 year old marketing executive working in a PR Firm. As a marketing executive, image/looks places a very important aspect of her job. She needs to be sure that the hair dye colour she put in her hair brings out the best out in her character and looks so as to not only impress her corporate clients, but also her friends, and followers on Instagram
Journey of Sally
To help better contextualise and illustrate some of her pain point, we further our analysis by mapping a journey map of her.
From this exercise, we’ve found out that DYEING HAIR IS A HUGE COMMITMENT!!!!
Defined Problem Statement
Consumer fear of getting it wrong!!!
While a hair dye product may looks good on an influencer or on the model on the packaging, potential consumers are often unsure as to whether they would look as good because they isn’t any tangible way for them to visualise themselves in the new hair colour unless they actually take the plunge.
At the same time, there is simply no effective and efficient way for them to get proper feedback from their friends whose opinions they value greatly.
This huge gap results in brands missing out on a huge potential market.
Design Opportunity
We’ve decided to place our focus on these 3 design opportunities.
Our solution
SnapBeauty is an Augmented Reality mobile application that allows users to simulate in real time, different hair colours on live video.
On-boarding Process
Upon logging in, user would be taken through a simple on-boarding process where 4 questions would be asked so that we can provide the best customised solution to their needs.
AR Calibration Process
A simple tap on the screen would begin the AR calibration process. Leveraging on AR capabilities found in smart phones, the user’s facial structure, hair length and style will be mapped to then allow for real time visualisation of change in hair colour
Users can now browse from an array of hair dye products from the different Brand. For example, if the user were to select Schwarzkopf and this particular colour, she would be given a real time visualisation of her hair in the new colour.
Given that we know the user’s natural hair colour, SnapBeauty would be able to best help the user achieve this look by recommending either an off the shelf colour or by mixing 2 colour together.
The user will then be presented with a before and after look. She can now made a direct purchase and have this product delivered to her doorstep, or use the poll function to share it to her social media platforms to get the opinions of her social network.
Crowdsource Opinion
This we feel is the cornerstone of SnapBeauty — the seamless integration where users can easily get opinions from their followers about their potential new look.
With SnapBeauty, consumers who previously feared getting it wrong can now feel confident in their purchase decision as they now have an accurate and realistic visualisation of what the end result would be.
At the same time, with the social media function, they can easily get the opinions of their friends and followers before taking the plunge.
For the brands, SnapBeauty allows them to better engagement with potential consumers who are on the fence as to whether they want to venture into hair dye products. The app offers an innovative and fun way for brands to woo consumers to their products and potentially convert on them.
Now, we also know that hair beauty brands face stiff competition in retail stores where consumers are bombarded with a vast array of brands on the shelves. SnapBeauty allows brands to separate themselves from their competitive as their provide their potential consumer with a better retail experience.
SnapBeauty also empowers brands with data-backed insights as now brands can better understand their consumer’s preferences and their opinions about the suitability of their products on certain individuals. We feel this data would be valuable for hair beauty brands.
Implementation of this feature might not be viable but let’s pause for a second and imagine the possibility with Instagram Poll.
AI Predictive Model
What we are really excited for however, is the potential SnapBeauty has beyond just AR visualisation of hair colour. After collecting huge amount of data of users’ opinions on what hair dye products would best suit certain individuals, we can then create an AI predictive model that provides recommendations to users on which hair dye product would best suit them. Imagine, with a touch of a button, the app recommends the user a hair dye product based of what thousands of other users think individuals like her, based off her facial features, hair length and style would look best in.
Given that the recommendations are based of opinions of the crowd, which consumers value more these days, users would sense the authenticity of the recommendations as opposed to feeling that brands are hard selling their own products.
Going back to the roots of why we decided to focus on Henkel’s Hair Dye Product
The second thing we are really excited for is SnapBeauty’s ability to empower brands to up-sell more effectively. Now that Schwarzkopf knows that Sally recently dyed her hair purple, and her current state of hair, Schwarzkopf can now easily up-sell her Colour Guard Shampoo and Conditioner best suited for her hair care needs. The possibilities are endless.
In Conclusion
With Snapbeauty, every girl can now discover the joy of dyeing their hair without the fear of ever getting it wrong
