Head Designs
Overview
My Role
I worked on this project as the sole Product Designer and Developer. Main areas of responsibility:
- UX analysis (flows, personas, a site map, and wireframes)
- Design (website and branding)
- Lo-fi prototyping (basic flow and interactions)
- Front-end development ( wordpress website custom theme and template)
Goals
- Communicate Head Design's passion for naturally textured hair
- Update the site’s design so that users can easily navigate and learn all that Head Design has to offer
- Create an experience where the user can be engaged and feel empowered about their multi-textured hair.
Challenge
User Needs:
When searching for a natural hair salon, you want to learn as much as you can about their services and their credentials from other clients. The task is how to engage and convert clients from their experience on Head Designs website.
During COVID, a new strategy of operations for the salon and the website had to be implemented for Head Designs to survive. I am currently updating the user research and creating new strategies to keep the clientele engaged and create revenue.
Metrics (Pre Pandemic)
New Clients
30%+
interest shared
80%+
Site monthly visits avg.
1K+
Page views
55%+
Discovery
Combing Through
Hair Salons | Love of hair artistry  | Head Design  | Strut  | The Curl Lab  | Hairapy Session  |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
COVID 10 updates or protocol | |||||
Consultations | Only for hair extensions | ||||
Services list w/ description and time | |||||
Reviews | |||||
Blogs / Articles | |||||
On site appointment scheduling |
Insights
- The competitor’s site designs and layouts are very flat and lack character and expression.
- Our survey found that salon reviews are in the top 3 aspects that a person looks for when choosing a salon. So we must include that on the home page.
- We also discovered that it is helpful to put the time and a brief description of each service.
- We found that all of the sites mention COVID, but not all mention how they implement COVID protocols. So we are making sure that we communicate how Head Designs is complying with the current mandates.
Define
natural hair journey?
Personas
There natural hair movement among the secondary personas age 30-40 is on the rise. I wanted to make sure the site was visually appealing and informative to both the secondary and primary personas.
Primary Personas
A Regular
Hair Education
Hair Care
Secondary Persona
A Regular
Hair Education
Hair Care
tertiary Persona
A Regular
Hair Education
Hair Care
Wants quick fixes to their hair issues. Or has unrealistic haircare goals.
Iterate & Create
ReCreating the structure of design
After removing old or irrelevant pages from the Content Inventory in the discovery phase, uncovering user’s pain points, and problem-solving opportunities, we created a revised simple site map layout. This also helped define our redesign scope and strategy.
Site Map
Head Designs Updated site map
* Head Talk landing page was recently added to the site map.
Wire Frames
The original Head Designs homepage and website featured irrelevant content and links. The homepage needed to be strategically restructured and responsive to meet today’s users.
I wanted to introduce and communicate Head Designs’ main business features visually and clearly to users for the homepage.
- Hero - The main informative area to feature an image or video.
- The first section is "Consultation," which is the foundation of Head Designs' salon service. The rest of the sections are strategically layout based on their importance based on user research.
The about page is often the second or the third page viewed after the Home page or the Service page. The original website was missing the about page.
I wanted to showcase Sheila’s history as Head Designs owner and founder and her community involvement.
For the first draft of the service page, we included sections of information that users may need.
Through user testing, we later simplified the page to just FAQ and services.
There was a discussion on whether to have the service booking process on the website or external through a third party. From a business and comfort level, we decided to use a third-party booking process.
Viewing a hair salon’s gallery is one of the top 3 things people view before deciding to book an appointment at a salon.
Having the images categorize is a feature we are working towards.
Validate
Are we going in the right direction?
- I redesigned the consultation section and removed the “Texture Specialist” section. The consultation section was taking up too much real estate. The texture section was not needed because users were clicking on each circle and do not link.
- In the new layout design, I minimized the COVID and hours area and made the consultation linear. I moved and reworded the textured specialist info to the about Sheila page.
- Now, 50%-75% of users will view consultations and services.
Validate
Implement
Validate
Implement
