I enrolled in UCLA Extension’s User Experience Design course to broaden my design thinking and become a stronger strategic and creative partner.
Challenge
Develop an app for potential salon customers as part of a User Experience course.
Objective
Provide users a quick and effortless booking experience.
• Conducted observational research and insight generation
• Created user personas and journeys
• Evaluated information architecture
• Designed a user interface
• Produced a prototype with Figma
• Organized usability tests and analysis
School: UCLAx
Research
Competitive analysis: I downloaded several salon booking apps and documented what they did and didn't do well.
Interviews: these conversations helped me understand that a trip to the salon was about more than transforming your hairstyle — it was about transforming your state of mind.
Personas: creating these profiles helped me turn "users" into real people.
User journeys: creating a visual for the the end-to-end user journey helped me understand how my product could help people achieve their goals.
Information architecture and user flows: creating these visuals gave me a high and low level view of how people would interact with my product.
Design & Prototype
Sketches: I wanted to make the stylist profile as important as the salon listing.
Having a dedicated stylist profile sets Saloni apart from its competitors since other apps only focus on the business itself and not the people who work there.
Wireframes: The wireframes and early prototypes of Saloni were faithful to the original sketches and included features like the stylist-curated Spotify playlist, which was eventually left out.
Final prototype: the go-to-market version of Saloni gives users access to everything they need to make a decision and book an appointment at a salon.
During the interviews, I discovered that people were more loyal to stylists than salons, so the stylist profiles within Saloni can also be transferred to different salons.
To stay connected with a stylist, a user simply has to favorite a stylist’s profile and they can follow them if they ever choose to work at another salon.
Retrospective
During the intensive 10-week course, I gained hands-on experience in developing compelling user experiences from the perspective of a product designer.
In the end, I earned an A in the course, but my greatest accomplishment has been broadening my design thinking and leveraging my skills and experience to build stronger partnerships with my product designers and other cross-functional partners.
