I was hired as the only designer on the marketing team of a small luxury skincare brand. The team consisted of an expert marketing consultant, two other marketing assistants, and myself. We all reported directly to the CEO. We also worked our customer service esthetician. Going into this project we had no developers.

This case study is the story of how I took the problems I was presented with, conducted research that uncovered deeper issues, and how I recommended solutions.

The company esthetician reported to the marketing team that customers were complaining that the online quiz determining skin issues was not giving them accurate results. The marketing consultant suggested that we reword  the questions. The CEO theorized that users were not educated enough to answer the questions correctly. 

I believed we needed to find the issues causing the inaccuracy problem with the skincare quiz and then look for solutions. So I began by doing what research I could.

The company had never done user research before. They had never had a dedicated designer before. I was working in new territory with a very limited timeline and budget. 

Our marketing consultant believed in the importance of the research and design process but she was contracted to leave in 14 weeks. The CEO did not immediately see the value of exploring the problem so the project became something I could only work on after finishing my regular work. The company would also not be dedicating any money towards finding or implementing a solution until a design was finished.

Another key constraint was a lack of access to users. The CEO did not want me to contact any customers or site visitors. This stipulation combined with the lack of budget meant that I was creative with my research methods.

I began by searching our previous customer service tickets and emails and found direct comments about the quiz. I knew that these customer service complaints were not wholly representative of our users experiences but they did cluster around a few clear pain points. After receiving a comment, our customer service approach was to address these complaints by conducting an in-person or virtual consultation with our esthetician.

I interviewed our staff esthetician about how she determines skin issues during in-person consults with customers. The issues she looks for and the products she recommends are the same as the ones that the online quiz was supposed to identify and recommend. I compared the questions she asks to those in the quiz and found that they were completely different.

I then conducted a version of an observational study and user interviews. I observed company employees taking the quiz. Most of these people had taken the quiz before, most were very educated about skincare, and all of them had trouble understanding both the interface of the quiz and the wording of the questions. I interviewed each of my users about their experiences taking the quiz. They mentioned the struggles they had taking the quiz and understanding the questions but they also brought up issues I had not seen just from observation. They noted that some of the questions were clear but felt very judgmental and that those questions made them want to quit and not finish the quiz.

At this point, our CEO asked to see a comparison of what competitors in the industry who had online quizzes were doing. I collected examples of competitor quizzes and identified user interface and architectural patterns that they were following. I also asked to see the original logic that was used to make the current quiz. 

When the original logic behind the quiz was found the issues with the results became very clear. Because of the way the branching logic was drawn, out of the nine skin types a person could have only eight were possible results and the quiz was weighted heavily towards just two of them. This explained a whole host of problems we were having including the complaints we were receiving from customers about the quiz

The research I had done so far validated that parts of the quiz was giving users inaccurate results and negative experiences. I saw that the in-person consults were more effective in determining the customers skin types. So, I made a quick sketch of what the logic of the quiz would look like if it followed the structure the esthetician was following in her in-person consults.

From there, I tried to redesign the branching logic of the quiz to mimic the process that in-person consults followed. Through the design process I found that the questions and possible results of the quiz were too complex for a branching logic structure to follow. I determined that we would need to design a scored logic quiz.

Scoring logic could solve the problem of inaccurate results but it created its own problems. Designing and testing new logic would take time. To make matters worse, we did not have a developer and to change the logic we would need one.

With this knowledge, I presented my findings to the CEO and marketing team. I presented the UI patterns I had found in competitor quizzes, showed the team quotes from the customer service tickets, explained the discrepancy between the in-person consults and the quiz’s logic, and I detailed how our desire for accurate results required us to create a new logic structure for the quiz. 

I recommended that we proceed in designing and testing a new accurate quiz logic but that we also proceed with some basic edits to the current quiz. The wording and CSS of the quiz was something I could change. I pushed that we make some quick edits for basic usability, sensitivity issues with the questions, and clarify the most confusing parts of the quiz. We could not immediately make an accurate quiz but we could solve for some of our users’ pain points.

My proposal was accepted and I was able to design a new quiz. We were able to move forward with the research I had done but, if I could have gone deeper with this project I would have preferred to interview users outside of the company. I also wish I had been able to work on a design team during this process. That said I was able to work with many non-designers on my team. I learned how to talk about and present design research with team members in different roles. I learned how to balance my on-going projects while pushing for a new product with thoughtful design and how to ask for buy-in to a project along the way. This process was also a great practice in conducting quick research and using the methods at hand to get the best possible data.