Project Overview
2024 Thesis
UX/UI
is a mobile application which empowers individuals to make eco-conscious choices, fostering a more sustainable future for the beauty industry. It has multiple functions to prevent wasting beauty products and to provide information about sustainable beauty to users. This app encourages users to share responsibility in sustainability as a starting point, while seeding the intention for systemic changes.
Project Statement
Consumerism and valorization of beauty, together with the rise of social media platforms, influencer culture, and fast-paced trend cycles, lead to increasing criticism of the beauty industry’s environmental cost. More than 120 billion units of beauty plastic packaging are disposed of each year, while less than 10% of them are ultimately recycled, according to Zero Waste Week.
While beauty brands are implementing sustainable practices such as recycling programs or refillable options, individual efforts can be a significant part. According to Banuba, people purchase 11 bottles of shampoo per year on average, but at the same time, only 56% of them said that they do not recycle them. Also, even if they recycle their products, they don’t clean them out properly, which can cause failure of being recycled.
Through the interview, I gained insights into consumer behaviors, attitudes, and perceptions regarding the consumption and disposal of beauty products. It helped me to understand how individuals interact with the beauty industry and discard their beauty products.
I want to emphasize that individual responsibility and sustainability awareness are critical by creating an intervention. YOOJI, a mobile application, empowers individuals to make eco-conscious choices, fostering a more sustainable future for the beauty industry. It has multiple functions to prevent wasting beauty products and to provide information about sustainable beauty to users. This app encourages users to share responsibility in sustainability as a starting point, while seeding the intention for systemic changes.
The Unethical Aspect of Beauty
As a result of consumerism of beauty, its tendency of negative environmental impacts becomes problematic and cannot be ignored. Over 120 billion plastic packaging units are wasted yearly from the cosmetics industry, according to Zero Waste Week. As a result, roughly 72.843 square meters of forests are destroyed annually by landfills.
© Vogue Business
At the same time, the chemical from beauty products can cause destroying coral reefs,
fish populations and algae.
Even though more beauty brands are putting a lot of effort to reduce plastic usage or establish zero-waste goals, there are still many cosmetic companies continuing to utilize non-recyclable plastics.
Many people have misconception that all plastics can be recycled, but it it not ture. There are seven different kinds of existing plastics.
Among these, only two types of plastics are considered recyclable: 1-PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate and 2-HDPE (High-Density Polyethylen).
3-PVC (Polyvinyl Chloride), 6-PS (Polystryene), and 7-OTHER are not be able to recycled ever. Also, 4-LDPE (Low-Density Polyethylene) can lead to ruin the whole recycling process, and 5-PP (Polypropylene) actually can be recycled, but only around 1-3% of it is recycled because of its expensive recycling process.
Furthermore, the Plastic Soup Foundation reports that 87% of the ten best-selling cosmetic companies' products include microplastics. This covers all potential synthetic polymers, whether they exist in water soluble, semi-liquid, liquid, or solid form.
The European Chemicals Agency estimates that over seven kilograms of microplastics from cosmetics and personal care products find their way into the environment. Additionally, not all synthetic polymers qualify within the
category of microplastics. It does not address water-soluble, semi-liquid, or liquid polymers; instead, it solely covers solid polymers.
Survey
The survey aims to gain insights into consumer behaviors, attitudes, and perceptions regarding the consumption and disposal of beauty products. It helps to understand how individuals interact with the beauty industry and discard their beauty products.
40 people participated in this survey, and it was able to obtain the following results.
Have you finished beauty products?
55% of the reponses answered that they were not able to finish their beauty products. It is able to assume that many people struggle to finish them.
How do you deal with the product when you don't like it or think it's not right for you after trying it?
According to this data, only 5% reponded that they recycle their beauty products. 40% said that they just throw them away into the trashcan.
Also, for others, they left the following responses:
Many of them said that they feel it’s “wasted” to throw away their unused products.
Interview
The interivew was conducted with three people to gain more quantitative data which provides valuable insights in consumption and disposal behavior with beauty products. At the same time, it allowed to understand their needs, prefer- ences, and challenges witin beauty industry, and also, it is able to gather requirements which ensure that the final product meets the certain expecta- tions of the user base.
After interviewing them, it was able to obtain following insights:
Requirements
Based on the insights from the survey and interview, it was able to devise the following five main requirements for the mobile application YOOJI:
Flow Diagrams
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Wireframes
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Design System
Typography
Gotham Light
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Gotham Bold
Gotham Black
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Colors
Logo
Components
Set your sustainability profile.
After creating account, users can set their sustainability profile, which the system can realize their sustainability goals. It requests to choose their sustainable values and sustainability certification which is optional. Based on users’ sustainability profile, the system finds matched sustainable beauty products and brands.
Track your recycling process and collect points.
Users are able to collect points from plastic collecting machine in beauty stores and track their recycling process. These points can be accumulated through bringing beauty containers to our collecting machine and redeemed for various rewards such as small-sized samples or discount coupons for specific beauty stores/brands.
Manage your beauty products' expiration date.
Users can track their beauty products’ expiration date and set the notification for upcoming expired products. The system find the product’s information automatically with the serial number, or users can manually type their product’s information.
Check the location of beauty stores
offering recycling programs.
Users can easily navigate the location of beauty stores where have recycling programs, such as collecting empty containers or refillable option.
Find the contents related to sustainable beauty.
Users can get educational contents related to sustainable beauty, and find their suitable products which are aligned to their sustainability profile.
Pratt Show 2024
Thesis show
