Selca Hair Studio is a business originally from Seoul, South Korea but has been looking to expanding its business in the sunny California of Los Angeles. They are looking for ways they can make it easier to book appointments with their hair stylist.
Design and create a functioning prototype of a responsive book website for Selca Hair Studio.
80 Hours with 4 weeks
User Research, Interaction Design, UI, Branding, Prototyping, Usability Testing
Figma, Illustrator, Photoshop, Zoom
Allow users to customize their booking experience
Determine availability of hair stylist
Many hair salons that allow booking on their website had a basic form that did not allow them to choose their appointment. The user is left to wait until they are the salon can email them back. It is a struggle when the user has to waste time remaining and potentially losing a client. There are very few apps available to allow users or hairstylists to help with appointment booking.
Most of the users who participated in the interview and survey told us that they would call the salon/barber or go straight to the business for a walk-in. Those who chose to reach the salon over the phone were frustrated with the booking process. Their main complaint was that they would have to talk to the salon worker and at the same time check their calendar. The struggle for the user was multitasking while checking their calendar on the phone. Some users had a hard time hearing the person over the phone due to the noisy environment and often felt rushed about making a decision. Users expected the salon to have some form of making appointments.
Survey Participants: 55
Interview Participants: 5
Booking at own available time
Cost of the haircut
Be able to book on my phone or laptop
Calendar Feature
Hard to multitask on the phone
Feels rushed to book an appointment
Knowing what who is available
Contact form is not a Booking form
Everyone lives a busy lifestyle, and getting a haircut is essential whether you go to the salon or trim your hair at home. We need to make time to set aside what is necessary for our lives. Users still have a hard time to schedule and plan even for a simple appointment. Most were concerned about cost while a few didn't mind to pay more for their hair.
After gathering research and the findings from the surveys and interviews, I used the information collected to help define our targeted user. Creating a persona and an empathy map helps us know how the user will think and behave.
At the end of the first week, I worked on the interaction design for the website. From the interviews, I knew that users wanted to be able to book through the website. So I looked into the flow a user would go through to book an appointment.
The user flow helped me identify pages that I would need to create for my wireframes. I had made sub-actions within the same page to allow the user to be time-efficient for their booking process.
After finishing the wireframes, I conducted a usability test to understand better what was confusing or clear. I shared a low-fidelity prototype with 5 participants. This process helped me identify areas to improve on to move on the high-fidelity later on.
One problem that many participants had was on the calendar page. It wasn't clear that you needed to click on a range of dates to see the available appointment slots. Following the calendar screen, a couple of participants went forward with the "guest booking" button and expressed they didn't know why there was a login option. I gained valuable feedback for images or was the participant thought would go in certain areas.
Taking the insights from my usability test, I made changes to move towards the high-fidelity prototype. This process helped me prioritize and create the necessary revisions before another round of usability testing.
Observe user impression
Observe how user completes the task
Observe pain points
Collect feedback for improvements
High Fidelity Prototype of Selca Hair Studio
In-person testing using Figma prototype
Remote testing using screen sharing platform
5 Participants
Recently booked an appointment
Hi, my name is Tuan, and thank you for taking the time to help me today. I appreciate your time and feedback. Today, I am conducting user research to help Selca Hair Studio build a simple and easy booking website and app. There are no right or wrong answers, so feel free to share your thoughts. This study will take no more than 30 minutes.
Thank you for allowing me to learn more about your experience booking the appointment and how the haircut went. This information will help me build a better experience for my user research.
The user will be booking an appointment with their hairstylist Tina. They will be booking an appointment for a women's haircut with a balayage on April 18th at 10am.
Will the user be able to complete the task
Discover any pain points
Discover other opportunities for future iterations
100% expected to complete the task.
All the participants completed the task without any issues. They all appreciated the clean feel of the website and felt it was very inviting. Some participants who were part of the early user testing were impressed by the improvements. There was less confusion in this round of testing. A couple of people suggested a feature to integrate with their phone calendar to remind them.
While working on the 4-week booking project, I completed enough pages for my user flow. The time constraints helped me prioritize what was the most important for each week. Researching and listening to my participants, I felt like I shared a similar struggle. It seemed like the pandemic echoed the problem of being able to book an appointment efficiently. I wanted to make the whole booking process to be easy and less frustrating. Hope to revisit this project for iterations.
© 2022 Tuan Diep
