Qualitative research on Cross Disciplinary Team | Expert Interview | Competitive Shopping & Analysis
The iconic beauty-organization company Caboodles worked with Smart Design to create a new product line aimed at active girls and young women in partnership with US Olympic gymnast Simone Biles. Our multi-disciplinary team set out to deep dive into understanding the beauty and makeup routines of active girl on the go.
Process
The project mission was to develop design directions and strategy for a new beauty and lifestyle product line for the Simone Biles and Caboodles partnership. To make a successful product, we set out to discover and understand the needs and motives of the target consumer: active girls and on-the-go women. Our research was very immersive and hands-on so we could tap into the root of this target consumers' day-to-day life and the role her bags and beauty play in it. Our research involved co-design sessions with fashion experts, active girls and on the go-women to uncover and understand their process of traveling between activities while beginning to develop color, material and finish preferences.
Trust the Experts
In order to understand current fashion trends and manufacturing processes that are involved in fashion-forward product design, we consulted fashion experts from around New York. Working with them gave insight into how to approach the design aesthetics and functionality.
Bag Tours
Working with women from the Smart Design office, we had participants talk us through their makeup bags and how they get ready in the morning. This uncovered commonalities, work arounds and functionality needs for the new designs.
Immersive Sessions
To fully empathize and understand the relationship between women and on-the-go beauty, we took to the streets, subways, and gyms with our research participants to get the full picture of what they need. Bag tours and show&tell were an important part of this research portion to observe user workarounds and see how bags/containers are being used in context.
My subway session planning
Subway bag tour
Coffeeshop Bag Tour
Co-Design
In Office Co-Design
We continued bag tours and co-design sessions with participants in the office. We provided material swatches and inspirational imagery so participants could create their own IRL (in real life) Pinterest board to uncover their personal style and aspirational active lifestyle. Participants then talked us through competitor samples as well as working prototypes.
Competitive Sample Shopping
We did competition shopping around New York to see what options are available on the market for active women and girls on-the-go. We brought stand-out product examples back to the office to use in our research sessions with our participants.
Post-Project
This project was completed after my time with Smart Design had come to an end. I was fortunate enough to lead all of the qualitative sessions with both experts and participants during Phase 1 and Phase 2 of research, as well as participate in initial brainstorm sessions to ideate potential design directions and prototypes.