PRODUCT DESIGN

The Core Product: Personalized Oil Blend

The physical product — a proprietary blend of carrier and essential oils matched to the customer's skin profile — was itself a design problem. The type and proportion of oils in each blend needed to be determined by a decision tree algorithm fed by quiz responses. I worked closely with our research lead to understand the ingredient space, then designed the quiz logic to capture the right inputs without making the customer feel like they were completing a medical intake form.

Designing the Quiz Experience

The quiz was the most critical design surface in the entire product. It was simultaneously our primary conversion mechanism, our data-collection tool, and the moment when a customer decided whether to trust us. Getting it wrong on any of those dimensions would break the business model.

Design principles I established for the quiz

1. Progressive disclosure over front-loaded complexity. Asking too many questions at once would cause a drop-off. I structured the quiz in short thematic sections — skin type, lifestyle, goals, sensitivities — with clear progress indicators so users always knew how far they had to go.

2. Questions that feel like a conversation, not a form. The language was written to feel like talking to a knowledgeable friend, not like filling out a medical intake form. Every question was paired with a plain-language explanation of why we were asking — reinforcing transparency as a brand value.

3. Visual answer options where possible. For questions about skin behavior (e.g., how skin feels after washing), I used visual reference cards rather than text-only options to reduce ambiguity and improve answer accuracy.

4. A results report as a deliverable. Rather than simply confirming the order, the quiz concluded with a personalized skin profile report — explaining the customer's skin type, the key ingredients in their blend, and why each was chosen. This transformed the quiz from a purchase funnel into a value-adding experience in its own right, reinforcing trust and reducing post-purchase doubt.

Iteration process

Early versions of the quiz were too long and clinical in tone. Users in testing described feeling like they were "filling out a form." I restructured the flow into conversational, single-question screens with visual answer options where possible — reducing perceived length and increasing completion in subsequent testing rounds.

Usability testing results (8 participants)

• Quiz completion rate: 88% (7/8 completed without assistance)

• Average perceived ease of use: 4.4 / 5

• Most cited positive: felt personalized and trustworthy, not generic

• Primary friction point: uncertainty on combination skin questions → resolved by adding an "I'm not sure" option with a brief contextual explanation

GO-TO-MARKET STRATEGY

As Product Designer & Strategist, my contribution extended to go-to-market design — specifically, the customer acquisition funnel and the user journey from first awareness to first purchase.

Launch markets

San Francisco and Los Angeles, targeting a combined addressable audience of approximately 1.1 million people who match our demographic profile (millennials, above the city average income, organic product consumers).

Customer acquisition channels

• Instagram paid social — primary awareness channel; targeting overlapped with known Sephora and Whole Foods shoppers

• Influencer affiliate program — organic product reviews from nano- and micro-influencers in the natural beauty space, with affiliate links providing measurable attribution

• Referral program — $10 credit for both referrer and new customer on successful referral, designed to leverage the word-of-mouth behavior we identified as a primary purchase driver in research

Information Architecture

The e-commerce site was structured around a single conversion path: Land → Understand → Trust → Quiz → Purchase. Every page was designed to move a user forward along that path, with the quiz as the central pivot between awareness and conversion.

I designed the IA to minimize decision fatigue before the quiz — keeping the pre-quiz experience simple and trust-building — and to maximize clarity after, when the customer needed to understand their result and feel confident enough to commit.

As a founding team member, I contributed to the financial modeling alongside our business strategy lead. Key model inputs

TAM

(global skincare spend)

$24.6B

• Average direct cost per product: $27 (blended across two product tiers)

• E-commerce beauty retention benchmark: 36%

• Projected organic monthly growth rate: 10%

Revenue projections were built bottom-up from marketing spend and conversion assumptions, with seasonality factored into both production forecasts and ad budget allocation.

Sales funnel design

Mapped across six stages — Pre-Awareness, Awareness, Interest, Decision, Purchase, and Post-Purchase — with specific design touchpoints and content strategy for each stage.

Distribution

Direct-to-consumer only at launch, preserving margin and enabling direct customer data collection to continuously improve the quiz algorithm and formulations over time.