Contactless counselling
With the ongoing pandemic, SK-II had to find an alternative way to conduct counselling sessions for its customers (new and existing). The existing counselling method was called “Magic Ring Test”. In this process, a hardware (Camera) was attached to user’s face to click a picture which was used to analyse in detail.  

User / Self Led journey
The existing  counselling method was initiated by the Beauty Counsellors at the SK-II Counters, as the hardware could be operated only by them. With the pandemic going on SK-II wanted a counselling tool which could be used by the user’s themselves (without any assistance from the the Beauty Counsellors). The challenge was to build a tool which had an intuitive interface and could help the users understand their skin conditions. As the human interaction was reduced by this tool, the challenge was to inculcate similar level of trust in the tool as the users had in the brand.

Saving Results
‍The challenge was to create an experience, whereby the results of the skin analysis can be saved to a user’s profile, for future visits. The existing counselling did not allow the users to save the result and re-use the results on their next counselling for comparison.  

User engagement
‍The Challenge was to create a bridge to interact with the users and engage with them on a regular basis. Existing counselling methods did not engage the users on an ongoing manner. To keep them updated on the new products, promotions and their upcoming appointments. 

As the project started during pandemic, the project was based the ongoing research and learnings from the competitors.
- Offline and online counselling (basic for free and in-depth as paid)
- human conversation and free samples
- Questions were asked for Skin concern, external stress in life, skincare routine, 
- Explanation of product of interest and full line up product introduction and sampling
- Social connect for receiving campaign news
- Some brands focus on creating a personalised recipe for a new user.
- No differentiation in experience between New users and existing users.

User flow

Getting to know the user 💆

The user will be asked a few questions related to her name, birth year and month, skin concerns and skincare routine before the skin scan happens on the Mini Magic Scan (iPad Application). Users are also asked if they are new to SK-II to provide them with a more immersive user experience.

A picture is clicked by the iPad for scanning. After analyzing through millions of data points, it reveals if your Skin Age is younger, same or older than your biological age. The results are then revealed in three Facial Zones (Eyes, cheeks and mouth) of the user’s face. Kira Kira points represent the healthiest skin points whereas the user needs to pay more attention to vulnerable zone points. The Beauty Counselors at the stores, celebrate the kira kira points and help the users understand the skin details better. 

Skin Scan and their Results

Revealing the skin scan results

Together with the Beauty Counselors, the user will be able to better understand her different facial zones. However, a short tutorial was also designed for the self exploration journey of the user to understand in detail the skin analysis. 

Product Recommendation

Post the skin scan results, the iPad helps the user by personalising the recommendation of SK-II’s line of boutique products as per user's skin concerns and skin results. The experience recommends a hero product + 1 product as per the combination of skin concern and skin results. Also, it recommends a trial kit with promotions.

User Engagement & user rating ⭐

In Japan, the app also prompts users to become LINE friend by just entering their phone number and their results are saved in the SK-II Database for future appointments to compare. The experience captures important user data that allows the Beauty Counsellors to personalise the shopping experience for the user.

These details are stored in another applications (SK-II SPA), where the Beauty Counselors will be able to review user’s past purchases, product experiences, needs and routines to give the user a personalised shopping experience.

At this point the session at Mini Magic Scan finishes wherethe user will be encouraged to rate the experience.

Style Guide

Hi-fidelity interactive prototype

Here is a high fidelity interactive prototype of the Mini Magic Scan created with Adobe XD for the sign offs (legal, design and development)

Learnings from consumers 🛍️

10 Japanese young executives (Age 25-35)
- Counselling flow - self guided and call beauty influencers as needed.
- Initial details can be self led journey in contactless way however, the human touch of the beauty counsellors can remove the mental barriers and strengthen the engagement.
- Giving a demonstration of the product while using the scan creates conviction and confidence at the right stage for user to make a purchase decision.
- Need to have better visuals on how would a product help her with skin concerns.
- Customers preferred contactless counselling vs the human touch (contact counselling).

Learnings from store managers 👩💼

- Skin concern mapped to the product recommendation was super helpful and accepted.
- Contactless , positive counselling was highly accepted by the Beauty Counsellors at stores.

Launch

Impact 🎆

- Mini Magic Scan gave users a platform to try skin counselling without any barriers.
- 2.5x target users experienced the skincare counselling on first week of launch 
- 2x target users signed up as LINE friends with SK-II during the first week of launch.
- Enabling to view the results on their LINE app boosts satisfaction for the whole experience vs other brands .

Iterations

Challenges and solutions

After launch, the team realised that the product recommendation flow, needed to be redesigned because of the following challenges.

Navigation between recommended products
Challenge: There was no flow to connect and navigate between the three recommended products.
Solution: A new user flow for the product recommendations screens was designed such that, all the recommended products can be seen a thumbnails, easily accessible to the beauty counsellor for navigating in between the products.

Focus on product images and brand ambassadors
Challenge: The product images were shown as thumbnails, not triggering any emotions for the users. The brand story / ambassador endorsements was absent too.
Solution: A new - two tab navigation was designed to shift the focus to the product introduction and image. The benefits of the product were provided under another tab easily accessible to the users. (About and Benefits).  
‍
Multiple Call to Action buttons
Challenges: There were many call to action buttons on every screen, which was confusing the users.
Solutions: As the navigations between the products were moved to the thumbnails, only one call to action was placed on the screens.

Spot the Mini Magic Scan