LNL Beauty Case Study

This project was part of a semester-long class on UX Design. My team and I got to work on this real client project with Little Nail Lady Beauty or LNL Beauty. She is the owner of two nail salons and wanted a rebrand of her page and a redesign of the current booking process.

Research

Our research focus included the following:

  • Understand the ways in which customers would like to customize their beauty/salon-going experience.
  • Identify current factors that cultivate empowerment and confidence in users.
  • Identify current trends that determine the beauty experience of the users both while using the platform as well as in the salon.


  • The target users were women between the ages of 28 and 35, career women, college graduates, and millennial women and mothers. We designed a mobile site for LNL Beauty, as a rebranding of its previous booking process and customer experience.

    Affinity Diagrams and User Needs

    After conducting the focus groups, we recorded the raw response data in our affinity diagrams. We identified common themes and organized the sticky notes into these categories accordingly. After discussing amongst our team we were able to determine six main user needs. They are as follows:

  • Easily book appointments.
  • Trust the nail salon.
  • Trust the nail tech’s experience and skill.
  • Ensure that their service expectations are met.
  • Be able to get the nail style they want and like.
  • Feel confident and clean after the experience.

  • Some breakdowns of the data were that people often do their nails at home and that they don’t buy nail products often. Most clients prefer a classic and neutral nail style where practicality is a priority. Also, among our focus group participants, most were more likely to be interested in taking nail art classes by themselves rather than with a child.

    The opportunities in users’ current experiences included most choosing to call to book appointments. Some also had kids and younger nieces and nephews, which relates to the ‘Mini and Me’ classes that would be offered by LNL Beauty. When looking at a new nail salon, users noted that they look for reviews and testimonials and that the salon shows adherence to proper hygiene and cleanliness practices. Additionally, some often get their nails done for a special occasion and would like to customize the color scheme of their nail art.

    ‍ We took all of these breakdowns and opportunities into consideration when designing our interfaces. The main takeaway from our research is that most if not all users used their phones to book appointments. Therefore, we decided to focus on designing mobile interfaces for this project.

    Ideation

    Personas

    We created the following user personas to represent the main user needs.

    Design Concept

    After brainstorming and voting based on the defined user and client needs, we identified the core features of our app design:

  • The home page is an Instagram-style grid of nail art. Some of the nail art will feature nails of previous clients.

  • The user can book specific designs by clicking on pictures on the home page. Pictures offer filter options.

  • Users can link Pinterest/Instagram posts during the booking process, add comments and specify the location.

  • There will be a location. There will be a booking page that lists services and how long they take, as well as starting price.

  • There will be a nail quiz which will offer options for special occasions, ask lifestyle question, suggest color schemes and designs, be 5-10 questions, and have multiple choice questions with images.

  • There will be a page with reviews/testimonials of previous clients.

  • There will be a FAQ page which mentions hygiene/sanitation protocols.

  • Storyboards

    Task Flow

    We made a user task flow that shows the flow of the application and the potential ways they can navigate it.

    Design

    After defining the features that it needed to include we started sketching up some low-fidelity wireframes which we printed out to do a paper prototype user test to test three different alternatives of the booking appointment process.

    Flow Diagram

    Result

    After revising and testing once more we got good feedback and we made our final interactive prototype in InVision, and created a video sketch. P.S. After revising the project a few months later, I thought the UI needed improvement so I went ahead and redesigned the aesthetic part of the app and made another prototype in Figma (the one embedded below).