All Ours Company and App Design

Worked in a four-person group to create a company focused on addressing the inequality in cosmetics and taking away the stress of beauty fatigue for our users.

Role

Designer, Researcher, Strategist

Company

University of Washington,
Communication Leadership

Platforms

Mobile

Areas

Research, Strategy, Branding, Design

Software Used

Figma

Background

Our group developed a company that would aim to address the inequality and lack of representation in the cosmetics industry. “All Ours” celebrates diversity and empowers personalized beauty journeys with minority-owned brands. Our skin and hair analysis camera tools and quizzes make finding the perfect products effortless, ensuring everyone feels confident and beautiful in every shade, tone, and type.

Approach

We developed our project from a user experience design perspective, including in-depth experience with user research, usability testing and iterating on the product with real-life users. By the end of the 9 weeks allotted, our group constructed a map of out product’s full customer journey, developed personas with use cases, designed a working prototype, and built a proposal with requirements for the concept. 

Market Research

  • Conducted research into the current cosmetics market, focusing on POC consumers and diversity commitments of brands.

  • Found a surprisingly untapped market for an app that helps users find curated products specifically created with POC buyers in mind and made from minority owned brands.

Persona and User Journey

  • Developed a persona based off our research.

  • Identified possible pain points for current consumers of cosmetics.

  • Created a plan to address all these pain points and ease the customer’s journey.

Lo-Fi Prototype

  • Moved initial sketches into a low-fi prototype.

  • Further developed branding and company identity to fit mission and goals.

  • Conducted user testing to find areas of improvement.

Initial Sketches

  • Built out screens for each frame of the app and the information architecture.

  • Refined features and pages to fit the customer journey.

  • Work shopped ways to present information and features.

High Fidelity Prototype

Lessons

The main challenge for this project was working creating our own company, brand identity, and app within 9 weeks. Our four-person group achieved this by structuring our work, having open communication and being welcoming to improvements and feedback. This project was entered in the University of Washington Communication Leadership Screen Summit and won the Audience Choice Award. This showed how impactful it would be to have this product on the market and the desire within the community.

Future Changes

  • Conduct further user testing to refine frames and find how users interact with the app.

  • Meet with minority-owned cosmetic and beauty companies to develop partnerships.

  • Stress test the AI component and refine the structure and usage.