DESIGNING WITH THE SKINCARE USER – A collaborative exploration
DESIGNING WITH THE SKINCARE USER dives into the topic of skincare packaging design and how it relates to different stakeholders, like skincare users, designers and the broader cosmetic industry. Does today’s skincare packaging care about the user’s values and needs?
WHAT?
We know that, globally, skincare design is ruled by profitability. This project is about designing with the user, whereby the user’s values and needs become central to the design process itself.
WHY?
My motivation is to explore the change of how user’s values could impact the design of skincare packaging. This project aimed to challenge the current state of the art of the product and the system in the skincare packaging field, to meet user’s values and make their experiences more sustainable.
HOW?
I collaborated with 18 skincare users to create a collaboration design process that led to 3D packaging embedding their values. Users expressed a difficulty to lead a sustainable lifestyle while consuming skincare and that packaging puts more emphasis on beauty than on health.
THE DESIGN PROCESS: PUTTING THE USER AT THE CENTER
THE STARTING POINT
I started the process by analyzing today’s skincare packaging, discovering that user’s experiences with the products are compromised by intentional design choices (e.g., using the word “perfection” on the packaging).
IDEAS AND LESSONS LEARNED
Many ideas and suggestions emerged to improve packaging in response to user needs. Then, I iterated the ideas through sketching and prototyping.
Additionally, I co-hosted a skincare packaging design workshop and learned about the importance of designing with users in order to create sustainable outcomes.
“I learned that it is the designer’s job to come close to the user to iterate, not only the design, but also the way of designing”.
PUTTING IDEAS INTO PRACTICE
Three main ideas of skincare packaging were selected to represent the values and needs of users and were visualized as 3D images. I used 3D rendering to create realistic outcomes that can contrast to the solutions from the cosmetic industry. My aim is to express and highlight the social impact of sustainable design.
RETINOL+SUNSCREEN
Retinol is an anti-aging product. It makes the skin sensitive to sun exposure. Users may not know that it would require following up with sunscreen. In today’s stores and websites, retinol and sunscreen are usually found separately. Here is where design can make a positive change: by designing a box that has space for two products, consumers can be guided to make a safe usage of retinol.
PERSONAL PACKAGING
Instead of buying one-time use packaging, I propose a set of personal skincare packaging, made with durable materials, that can cycle back to the system to be refilled. I designed the lids of the packaging to have a tracking number that can be traced in order to receive the packaging back.
“The outcomes of this project question the practices that we often unconsciously endorse in our society and the culture we have around skincare consumption”
FOSTERING CHANGE
SUSTAINABILITY
In this project I was able to get a full vision of holistic sustainability, by discovering the relations among culture, society, economy and ecology, for example, how these four aspects are affected if we wrote about realistic skin results on skincare packaging.
+CHANGE AGENCY
I grew my design agency by having flexibility in the roles and methods used, allowing for a personal interaction and understanding of the state of things. As a 3D artist, I was able to translate the sustainability aspects to a 3D model.
ENCOURAGING PARTICIPATION AND DISCUSSION
My hope is that this project will foster discussion in the field and that my work might serve as a reference to future works as well as be an example of how to build a sustainable user-centric design process.
