Conception

Despite having various degrees of experience with skincare products, our team realised that we all have similar issues when sourcing out products for our skincare routines. There were way too many products out in the market to choose from and finding the optimal one for our skin is too time consuming and costly. This is compounded further by the fact that we have varying needs based on our skin type and skin issues we may be facing (acne, dry skin etc) that can have adverse reactions to certain products. The core of the issue we feel lies in the cumbersome nature of researching for skincare products. There are multiple websites each with their own guides but a centralised resource for all things skincare is yet to exist.

Given this gap in the market, we decided the focus of our project was to fulfil this need. We first identified the following groups of people to form the main users of our eventual product:

i. Inexperienced users who want to learn more about skincare.

ii. Somewhat experienced users who have some background knowledge.

iii. Experienced users with extensive knowledge on skincare.

We also identified the following use-cases outside of our main target groups:

▪ Users who want to develop a skincare routine.

▪ Users looking for specific products and reviews.

▪ Users who need help keeping track of their routines.

▪ Users that want to keep track of the products they have tried in the past and their effects.

▪ Users who want to sell products that they minimally tried but did not work for them. Similarly, users who want to buy such products.

Based of these usecases, we eventually came up with some preliminary features that would solve some of the problems faced. Namely,

Personalisation

Users would be able to input their own profile or take a survey that can generate personalised information like skincare products and routine suggestions,

Users can then save their routines for reference and be reminded to carry them out, similar to that of like a timed exercise (Tabata) styled app.

Users can also record their past experiences with products to keep track of what works and what doesn't. By curating this information, we could potentially identify trends in the data such as what common ingredients or a particular brand that causes the user to have adverse reactions.

Community

We also plan to provide a platform for users to share skincare related recommendations, tips and experiences with other users.

User recorded experiences (with products including details such as length of use, skin type, etc) can also be made public and shared with others.

Centralised Guide Repository

Another feature that would be highly beneficial would also be a guide repository complete with comprehensive resource for everything skincare.

The guidance can ease those inexperienced with skincare into the skincare community with detailed guides for different types of products.

This centralised repository is also easily navigable to obtain information of skincare routines as well as functions of products. This would work hand in hand with the user's profile to curate products that matches their skin type and concerns.

Key idea is that the navigation should be intuitive and natural to the user - user should be able to obtain the information they need without going through a mess of nested links.

Other considerations/ Ideas

Some other ideas and considerations we had that were not fully developed on but poses interesting propositions in future phases:

Gamification of habits (washing face, not picking or touching face)

Diet, stress, climate, pillowcase and other confounding factors tracking
Linking with dermatologists
Marketplace for trading slightly used
Japanese vs Western philosophy