Sweet Vetiver
Sweet Vetiver is a collaboration project between my mother - Margo, and myself. She has been making homemade soaps for years, using quality natural ingredients, and her knowledge of essential oils. It started in 2013 as a hobby, making the soaps that she likes, using them for personal use, and giving her soaps away to family and friends. Three years later it has turned into a small business. Selling her soaps at local markets, and for people who make orders for her to send them. For some customers, she makes her soaps based on their skin type, ailments, and tastes. As her business is starting to grow, she realizes that she needs an online presence, and possibly a way to streamline the customization and ordering process. While she enjoys working with her customers one on one, Margo realizes that she doesn't have the time to work with everyone. So I told her that I would work with her on the digital user experience of her soap making business, and create the online presence she needs to reach more people.
Ideation
I started this project thinking about the personalized service that Sweet Vetiver offers. The soap customization service is what sets them apart from others. I was thinking about how I can simulate the consultations that my mother has with her customers. Hopefully they can have as much fun as she does when she is creating soaps. The application should provide customers with information and knowledge about the products to make informed decisions, and give them the control in creating their own products. The user flow to the left is an initial idea of how the user would interact with the application, of course there would be some changes in the final design.
I had the opportunity to conduct interviews with my mother and a handful of her clients. Their input gave me insight on their needs, and what they would like to have in an online experience. The main thing I took away from the interviews is that people really value the personalization that Sweet Vetiver offers, and the wealth of knowledge that Margot has about essential oils skin care. My challenge is to figure out a way to provide these attributes digitally.
Sketching
Before doing anything digitally, I created the wireframes using pen and paper. I looked at other applications for inspiration to draw from, to create the user interface. The challenge is to keep the design clean and simple, yet still provide the sometimes complex information for the user to "build" their own soap for their needs. The original idea was to create a mobile application, but after doing interviews and other research, I found that most people purchase products using web applications on their desktop or notebook computers. With this new data I made the decision to focus more on a web design, rather than a mobile app.
Problem Solving
The biggest challenge was trying to figure out how much choices and control to give the users. There is a fine balance here. As the designer, I wanted to give the user as many choices and information as possible, without over complicating the design and confusing them. I wanted it to be understandable, but not simplifying it too much to where I was editing out useful data. In these wireframes, I am solving the problem of the categories and stages needed to produce the customized soaps, and also how the data is presented, and how the user interacts with the choices and filters.
Finalizing
I consolidated the categories into three main areas. Sweet Vetiver soaps have a basic set of ingredients that all of the soaps are made of. Based on the other factors, more ingredients are added to the mixture. Here I am trying to solve how the user chooses the Aromatherapy blend which is usually made up of three different oils; a top note, middle note, and a base note, each having a very specific role in the soap. I am also trying to figure out how the user cycles through the Extract choices, and how they can edit the soap that they are in the middle of creating.
Creating the soap happens in three stages. The user starts from the Home screen and logs in. Everyone starts with a base level unscented soap. Once you go through 3 stages of Skin Type, Aromatherapy, and Extracts, the user would have created a customized soap. A full ingredients listing is provided, and then the user can check out and make a purchase.
Digital Wireframes
The landing page gets the user familiar with the service. New and existing customers can access the Sign In or Registration pages from here.
Once signed in, the user can see what's in store for the creation of making the soap.
When I was originally creating the choose your Skin Type screen, I was going to make it where the the user cycles through the different skin types which filters the types of oils. I then decided to go with a chart where all of the skin types could be seen and accessed. People that I showed mentioned that this method is faster and easier.
Next the user can choose the scents that they would prefer. This page also explains how they would blend together. I also added a way for the user to go back and edit the soap that they are creating.
In the third stage the user can pick one more ingredient that is a non essential oil. These are just extras that the user may or may not need, but are just fun additions to the soap mix which might add color, textures, or aromas.
Once the soap has been created the user can see a full ingredients listing of their creation. Some changes were made to the original wireframe, to place more emphasis on the ingredients listing, rather than the soap images.
Finally on the checkout page, the user can edit their shopping cart and make the purchase.