Designing the Future of Skincare
Heyday is a single service, retail concept similar to Drybar with the mission of "taking the facial out of the spa and into your life". In the spring of 2022, after launching a new middleware, iOS app, and web booking experience, we shifted our focus to revamping shop software. At the time, one system managed appointments and in-store sales, while another handled intake records and treatment details. This fragmentation left estheticians without a holistic view of clients, forcing them to switch between tools throughout their day.
Beyond inefficiencies, the software struggled with reliability issues, exacerbated by inconsistent in-store WiFi. Meanwhile, the business was undergoing transformational growth through franchising, making technology a key lever for ensuring a consistent experience across locations. With the shop experience—especially treatments—at the heart of business success, we saw digital transformation as an opportunity to drive meaningful impact on the company’s overall performance.
Role:
Design Lead
What I Did:
UX/UI
User Research
Prototyping
Design System
The Vision
Empower estheticians to improve the customer experience through contextually relevant client insights, better data entry and an overall improved workflow.
Contextual Insights
We gave our most valuable team members new super powers by connecting the dots for them, providing information not just data, and delivering insights in the moments that matter most.
The Products to Avoid feature addressed a key pain point for estheticians by reducing cognitive load and manual effort, minimizing errors, and enabling them to focus more on their clients.
Sales numbers are crucial for both individual staff performance and business success. To support this, we surfaced insights into client buying habits at key moments, enabling better recommendations and follow-ups.
Improved Data Entry
Our research showed that the treatment record experience needed to be reliable, flexible, and seamless to support multiple workflows—allowing estheticians to focus on what they do best: making clients glow.
Two key features enhanced reliability and flexibility: 1) reducing the need to toggle between treatment records and profile information, and 2) enabling auto-save, allowing estheticians to complete records whenever they have a spare moment.
Improved Workflow
We not only enhanced the in-treatment experience but also optimized the overall staff workflow by integrating the booking calendar, improving team communication, and adding performance management levers.
Highlighting missing treatment records was key to improving performance conversations, giving managers real-time visibility into an area they previously lacked insight on.
Design System
We built a flexible, extensible design system that scaled with our innovation pipeline, adapted to frequent product changes, and integrated seamlessly with a headless CMS.
Process & Outcomes
The design and research timeline was structured into two phases: discovery and definition. During discovery, I led generative research through stakeholder interviews with senior staff and initial user interviews with estheticians, providing foundational insights. From there, our design iterations explored various page layouts, content hierarchies, features, and frameworks, refining the product experience.
Throughout the project, we collaborated closely with the Director of Skincare and her team to ensure the app reinforced the right behaviors and mental models for estheticians. Weekly design reviews with cross-functional stakeholders kept teams aligned, provided feedback, and secured buy-in on key product decisions. Finally, we partnered with our shops to develop a phased rollout strategy, effectively managing change and ensuring a successful launch.
The Team:
Design: Nate Baker
Product: Nandhita Kumar, Dan Cerney, Alison Turka
Engineering Lead: John McKinney
/01
03
Rounds of user testing
/02
18
Staff members participated in testing across NY, LA & Philly
/03
7%
Increase in treatment record completion rate
/04
1.6%
Increase in Esthetician NPS scores
/05
1.2%
Increase in overall NPS score
