UX Design & App Development for A Connected Beauty Device

Leveraging deep UX design, mobile app development, Bluetooth, cloud and testing experience, Cardinal Peak provided product design services for a connected beauty device. The result was an award-winning mobile application that improves the user’s experience of the skincare device, offers robust features including BLE connectivity and shares usage information for future product enhancements.

Challenge: Connect a Skincare Device to Its Mobile App Over Bluetooth Low Energy

Our client is a global beauty and wellness company that designs and builds integrated beauty and wellness products to improve their customers’ wellbeing. They asked Cardinal Peak to develop a multi-platform mobile application that connects to their beauty device over Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). The device needed to reliably pair with both the iOS and Android mobile app to enable interactive cloud-based features for customers.

Solution: UX Design & Mobile App Development Services

Cardinal Peak provided app development services for the consumer-facing mobile app using React Native to offer both iOS and Android apps while maintaining a single code base. Working with the client’s creative team, our team guided the UX design of the mobile app including determining requirements, defining use cases and refining the user interface design. On both iOS and Android, the mobile app connects to the beauty device via Bluetooth to control treatments and collect usage data.

Cardinal Peak’s consultants delivered:

• Consumer mobile app development for both Android and iOS in React Native
• Requirements definition for rapid prototyping including refining the UX/UI design, in collaboration with the client’s UX team
• Bluetooth device engineering, including developing a BLE GATT test simulator and client apps for ODM certification
• Cloud design and integration
• Project management and quality assurance, including integrated system testing

User Experience Design for a Smart Beauty Product App

We worked closely with our client’s Chief Product Officer and engineering team to refine key product features and deliver them for customer release. Our team included a developer and a UX designer. Together, they expanded the client’s UX and user interface design to improve the customer’s experience using the device and mobile app. They provided the client team with a deeper understanding of UX design including identifying what-ifs and edge cases. The UX design was built with Figma, a framework to facilitate the design process.

Typically, our UX team builds a fully clickable example of the mobile app. This interactive prototype allows us to get customer feedback and better understand user requirements in order to refine and improve the application. Our clients share their existing user and technical requirements and our UX experts expand them. Our UX designers, developers and QA engineers do further research, ask questions and make recommendations to capture additional user scenarios and opportunities. The goal being to drill down deep enough to understand the real requirements.

For this project, our team helped the client develop UX requirements for rapid prototyping. Leveraging our domain knowledge of UX best practices and industry standards for mobile apps, our UX designer pushed for a single design theme with common styling and navigation across the mobile app. Since different features within the app were being developed by different client teams, originally, they lacked consistent design and function.

Usage tracking within the mobile app tracks how often and how long the beauty device is used. This is a benefit for customers to establish routines and maximize the benefits, but also extremely important for our client to analyze user information to learn more about use and future opportunities. Special features of the mobile app include:

• Gamification – users can earn award badges, such as “perfect week”
• Skincare consultation – get recommendations on daily routines, skin type and products
• Selfie timeline – capture and compare self-portraits over time
• Shade finder – take a photo for a custom recommendation for matching foundation color
• Simplified shopping – buy products related to the beauty device or skincare recommendations

Our team developed the selfie timeline functionality. The app takes photos and stores them locally for users to see their “before and after” progress over time. This is especially key for our clients’ direct sales model; representatives share their own and customer’s before-and-after photos for digital marketing.

The selfie timeline encourages users to take a picture every few days to see their progress. To facilitate this and ensure that the multiple selfies lineup, the app uses an overlay of the most recent previous selfie photo. Users can line up their features with their own face – ensuring more precise alignment and better before-and-afters than simply a template or outline on screen.

During development, our UX designers realized quickly the importance of magnification and a zoom function – so users can monitor improvements in fine lines and wrinkles. While comparing selfies, users can zoom in and out of side by side images, or use the slider overlay to see a composite image of two selfies.

Bluetooth Connectivity for a Smart Skincare Device

Our team also worked on the beauty device’s Bluetooth connectivity. As a Qualcomm design partner, Cardinal Peak has a deep understanding of Bluetooth. We developed the processes and capabilities to wirelessly pair the device and update embedded firmware. This includes developing the screens for pairing devices, creating custom treatments and usage tracking.

End-to-End System Testing for Connected Beauty Device Development

As part of the project, Cardinal Peak provided complete end-to-end system testing for the connected beauty device development from edge to cloud. We built two test simulator applications – one for application developers and another for ODMs. We developed a BLE GATT specification for ODMs to follow during manufacturing to ensure that resilient BLE connectivity designs are implemented on the device side. These simulators streamline and enhance device testing to ultimately improve product quality.

Results: Award Winning Mobile App Design and UX

Congratulations to our client and the full UX and development team because the app won the 2023 digital marketing award for “Best Mobile App” from the Direct Selling Association. The app was recognized for innovation and simplifying the consumer shopping experience. This accolade is the result of great user design and a focus on testing and quality.

Whether your organization has a UX team or not, Cardinal Peak can work with you, and your team, to build mobile apps and help to flesh out detailed UX/UI requirements. If you are looking for UX design and mobile application development services, reach out to our experts today.