INCREASING INCLUSIVITY IN A POPULAR SHAVING COMPANY
Dollar Shave Club Case Study
MOBILE APP DESIGN · USER TESTING · RESEARCH
Overview
The Dollar Shave Club took the ever growing desire for convenience and put it into razors. Combined with humor and charisma, their success skyrocketed. Decreased attention spans made DSC the ideal company for those wanting to get razors without having to put much effort into it. This subscription feature had DSC’s customers consistently coming back for more.
TEAM
Solo UX Designer
MY ROLE
Conceptualization, research, designing, prototyping
TIMELINE
June 20 – July 10 2022 (3-week sprint)
TOOLS
Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop
Video Overview
Problem Space
Gender stereotypes associated with colors are taught and reinforced since childhood in Western society. Gender reveals, baby showers, and gendered baby clothing and accessories. That said, it’s unsurprising that women generally prefer pink, purple, and red, while men generally prefer black, blue, and green. In fact, these stereotypes have run so deeply to the point where one study has shown that when men wear pink, they are more likely to have subconscious feelings of low self-esteem, and implicit self–feminine associations when compared to men wearing blue.
Source: National Library of Medicine
It’s easy to assume that Dollar Shave Club’s dark website suggests the company markets toward men when psychologically, men prefer dark colors and women prefer soft colors. Furthermore, it’s unsurprising to learn that DSC used to be a men’s shaving company before gearing more towards unisex marketing. But with recent movements in the LGBTQ+ and women’s rights communities, gendered products now face immense criticism and pushback.
Source: Jstor
PROBLEM STATEMENT
How can we retain the clean and modern look of Dollar Shave Club, while altering the initial impression of the site to appear more progressive and inclusive?
First Steps
Upon taking a look at Dollar Shave Club’s competitors, we find that most (if not all) subscription-based razor services are gendered. This makes it even more likely for the consumer to assume that DSC is also gendered. How can we highlight the fact that DSC stands out as an inclusive razor brand?
Hypothesis
We may find that gender stigmas play a large role in intimidating customers away from DSC and towards other brands. We can adjust the UX of DSC in order to have it subtly appear as a gender neutral brand, carrying razors suitable for every body. Doing so may allow users to feel more comfortable.
Next, I conducted some user interviews to gather more specific data.
Based off of these statistics, I determined a few important things:
Rather than creating a mobile app, I planned to create a mobile website as I found that this would be a much more likely choice for users.
Because the dark colors were associated with a men’s service, changing the prevalence of the colors would be beneficial.
Keeping the site to only minimal and necessary pages would be valued by users.
🪒 Onto designing! 🪒
Sketching, prototyping, & wireframing
After creating my personas and user flows to help visualize what screens were most important to the user, I began sketching.
I opted to do a quick Crazy 8s activity, sketching out each frame in under one minute, due to the time constraints of the project.
The objective of my Crazy 8s was to find (1) how we can make the mobile website more accessible to get to any page you need to get to, and (2) how we can make our website show that we are more inclusive and can address our customers’ needs.
Once my sketches were complete, I jumped straight into high-fidelity prototyping, once again due to the time constraints of the project.
For my final wireframes, I changed the first picture users see upon opening the site from a picture of a man to a gender neutral photo. Numerous interviewees noted this large image of a man shaving his facial hair, so this was the first thing I wanted to change.
A lot of the color choices I made actually came from my initial research. I changed the bright pink, which was feminine leaning, to a maroon red because I found that red is a very gender neutral color (see right image below) for adults. Furthermore, with the original design primarily being cool colors, I wanted to balance it out more and have both cool and warm colors to appeal to both genders (see left image below).
Source: National Library of Medicine
Source: National Library of Medicine
Video Overview
Final Sentiments
Looking back on this project, I have to wonder if I leaned into the marketing standpoint too heavily. However, UI and marketing are often intertwined with UX, as they often have a direct effect on the user experience.
If I had more time and were to revisit this project, I think I’d like to focus on changing more things. Rather than just reordering the prevalence of certain colors, I would change the main color of the website to red because my research found red to be the most gender-neutral color. I would also like to do more research into typefaces and potentially change that as well.
I feel that there is plenty of room for further research and improvement, but a three-week sprint, this will do.