Overview
In the summer of 2015, I interned at Intel as a User Experience and Innovation intern along with five other students. The purpose of this internship was to use design thinking to create a solution-based approach to a complex problem of our choosing. We split up into pairs and started brainstorming innovative solutions to various problems. Each of us were responsible for all aspects of our projects, including design, research, and prototype implementation. Here’s what my partner, Uma, and I came up with.
Tools
Flinto, Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Forms
Skills
UI/UX Design, Wireframing, Storyboarding, Prototyping, Persona Creation, User Testing, UX Research
Problem
Finding the perfect foundation is a difficult and frustrating process for anyone because it is nearly impossible to accurately match face makeup to skin color and type.
Need
To give users confidence, independence and maximum control over the makeup selection process
To help users find a few products that actually work, build a collection of solid, reliable staples, and ultimately minimize the amount of time and money spent on finding the right product
Solution
A mirror-like device that scans a user’s face, determines their skin color/type, and generates either a perfectly customized 3D-printed foundation or a list of recommended products that are sent to the mobile application. Within the app, users can also take a photo/manually enter their information to get a list of existing products, rate products, view how others rated products, browse through makeup tutorials, and purchase existing products.
Process
Empathize
During this first phase, our main tasks were to get to know the user and really understand their wants, needs and objectives. This meant putting aside our assumptions to gather real insights about them on a psychological and emotional level. We did this by observing and engaging with people through interviews and online surveys.
Interviews
On our first day of research, we sought out to find our users and get to know them. In our case, this meant starting with our fellow employees, so Uma and I drafted some questions and ventured out to the Intel Cafeteria. During our interviews, we tried to make people feel like we were having a conversation rather than drilling them with questions. This made them more comfortable to share their thoughts and opinions, and ultimately gave us a better understanding of our users.
Online Surveys
Although the interviews provided us with valuable information and insights, we needed more. Using some of our initial questions and some newly crafted ones, we created online surveys through Google Forms and shared them on Facebook for our friends, families and the public to fill out. The questions at the beginning of the survey were very basic, used to gauge whether or not this person would be considered a potential user, while the rest of the questions were used to determine the user’s makeup habits, difficulties and desires.
Define
Once we had a holistic understanding of our user, we started thinking about the difficulties and barriers that they face. We combined the insights that we collected while listening to and observing people, and analyzed any patterns that we noticed. During this phase, we conducted more research and created personas to define the problem that we needed to solve.
Persona Creation
After synthesizing all of the data that we collected, we formed a general idea about our users and how they differ from one another. Based on this research, we created two personas to help us develop a solution that would meet the goals and needs of our users. Our primary persona featured a person of color who uses makeup occasionally to convey personality traits and exude confidence. Her main difficulty is finding makeup that matches her skin tone. Our secondary persona features a makeup enthusiast who is in the market for new, personalized products and a community of makeup users to connect with.
Ideate
This was the fun part. Now that our problem was clearly defined, we could start brainstorming creative solutions. During this phase, all three groups worked cross-functionally to approach each problem from varied outlooks. This was particularly helpful for us because Uma and I, both being females with prior makeup experience, had much different insights from the boys who had never even heard the word “foundation” in the context of makeup. Through talking to them and conducting more interviews and online surveys, we gathered a solid amount of data to help us ideate a solution to our problem.
Prototype
Alright, this part was pretty fun too. During the prototyping phase, we got the opportunity to actually bring our solution to vision. Using all of the information that we gathered from the past three stages, we built interactive wireframes and storyboards of our mobile application using Flinto.
Unfortunately, due to time constraints, we were not able to implement a functional prototype or minimum viable product. That being said, through iterations of usability testing, we were able to produce a paper prototype of the mirror and a mockup of the mobile application.
Test
During this phase, we reviewed our prototype and started user testing. From the beginning of the process, we made sure that our users were involved every step of the way, so this part was no exception. As we revised and adjusted our prototypes, we went back out to the Intel Cafeteria to show it to users and see how they reacted. We watched them interact with the application and got first-hand feedback that we later incorporated into each design iteration.
Outcomes
At the end of the internship, all three groups presented their projects and prototypes to various Intel employees. We each went through our design thinking process and explained the need for our solution.
Challenges
Budget and time constraints
Finding enough people to interview when we were limited to the Intel campus