UX Research
Like all great digital products, Glow&Co's development started with research. Through competitive analysis, conversation mining, user surveys, and user personas, I gained insight that would eventually inform Glow&Co's brand voice and design.
Goals
Identify our end user—their goals, motivations, expectations, and pain points
Determine the language, terminology, and jargon that resonates most with users
Learn more about the subscription box market to discover ways that Glow&Co can offer a unique and optimized subscription box experience
Methods
Competitive Analysis
My competitive analysis included:
Popular beauty and lifestyle boxes like IPSY and FabFitFun
Boxes geared toward consumers of color like Tribe and Cocotique
Boxes centered on clean, sustainable beauty like Nourish and Petit Vour
Using Airtable, I analyzed each competitor's UI, content and design patterns, product offerings, and subscription models, gaining better insight into the subscription box market.
Conversation Mining
I used Airtable to analyze customer reviews, social media comments, and beauty box subreddits to discover our user and get insight into the specific terms, phrases, and language beauty box subscribers use.
User Surveys
I sent the survey to users in my network and posted it to a predominantly female Facebook group
The survey received 25 responses from women aged 18-60, with the majority of participants between 25-34 years of age
Participants included Black, white, and Latina women
User Interviews
Image by prostooleh on Freepik
I interviewed two participants, both 30-year-old females, one Black and one Latina. Both are beauty lovers, but one is more experienced than the other. Both have subscribed to IPSY in the past.
Key Findings
Swipe through the slideshow below to see a summary of the ten key findings from my research.
User Persona
Based on my research, I created a User Persona to represent one of Glow&Co’s potential target users. Swipe through the slideshow below to learn more about Maya.
Final Thoughts & Next Steps
I received wonderful insights from my research that will ultimately help Glow&Co offer a unique and optimized user experience. Glow&Co plans to do so by:
Allowing users to personalize their boxes while maintaining the surprise and discoverability factor that users love about beauty subscriptions
Filling a gap in the beauty box marketplace by offering exclusively Black-owned clean beauty products, and targeting a deeply underserved audience who is eager for products catered to their identity and experience
Creating a community of supportive BIPOC beauty lovers who will happily share their love of all things makeup and skincare
Ensuring that users are getting a good value for their money and making sure cost isn’t a prohibitive barrier
Offering flexibility and solutions to common pain points including cost and wastefulness