Overview
What began as an in-person and party-oriented direct selling opportunity, Mary Kay founded its business on building relationships and connections with customers. Independent Beauty Consultants (IBCs), over 3.5 million worldwide, are the lifeblood of Mary Kay’s operations, and streamlining their work process would have profound effects on Mary’s Kay’s business outcome.
Problem
The needs for Mary Kay are two-fold:
- A digital channel — so customers can shop all their favorite skin care and beauty products, conveniently engage with their Mary Kay Independent Beauty Consultants (IBC), and engage with the brand through a positive, consistent experience.
- A digital tool — one that empowers IBCs to create deeper, more personalized connections with their customers, streamline operations, increase dollar-per-hour, and find new leads.
The new App will also allow a customer to stay up-to-date with push notifications on the latest trends and product releases, and easily reconnect with another IBC if their IBC leaves her business.
Approach
Mary Kay came in with a well-defined brand guide, a clear vision for the feature list, and established operational processes and systems that connect everything together.
We kicked off with a 2-day discovery to align business and user needs, surfaced gaps and opportunities, and scoped a roadmap for the MVP.
From there, we worked closely with Mary Kay stakeholders and brought developers into design reviews early to check feasibility, and user-tested to validate assumptions and guide further refinement.
Keep Consultant Top-of-Mind in the Experience
The digital storefront had to work as an extension of Mary Kay Consultants — open 24/7, so customers can shop anytime while knowing their Consultant is a tap away, from landing page through checkout and delivery.
We designed a calling card that sits at key moments in the shopping flow, guiding customers through unfamiliar steps and inviting a call or text for beauty advice. Each Consultant gets a profile page, and their photo makes the experience feel like shopping with a friend.
A new user may not have a designated Consultant yet, so we applied systems thinking to show contextual information based on user state. For example, the shopping bag has three states:
- Cold — no Consultant chosen yet
- Warm — a Consultant chosen, but not registered or signed in
- Hot — shopping with a Consultant, signed in
Each state prompts the customer to connect with and buy from a Consultant in their area as they navigate through different flows.
As the user moves through checkout, we worked with Product Managers to map out various scenarios and edge cases, including accounting for Consultant designation, payment method (online or in-person), and delivery method (drop-ship or personal delivery). The app seamlessly handles the flow based on the customer’s shopping preference, and the Consultant shows up in the appropriate places, in app or in person, to finalize the sale and cultivate the relationship.
From Handwritten to Always Current
Beauty Profile
Consultants hosting local beauty parties used to pass around a handwritten survey at the door to learn what attendees like. This meant Consultants had to think quickly on their feet as data came in. That manual process needed a digital home.
Customers can now find a local Consultant in the app and tap through a short beauty profile, giving her what she needs to give the best product and beauty advice online. Beauty party hosts can also invite guests to fill it out before a party, so the session is tailored before it starts.
As a customer’s needs change, they can communicate with the Consultant in real-time by updating the beauty profile, making it an invaluable tool for the Consultant to continue to support her customers and grow her business.
Beauty Routine
After getting to know a customer, Consultants used to send them a personalized beauty routine via email. Often printed and taped to a mirror for easy reference, the routine was easily lost, tarnished, or out of date.
Using product data, purchase history, wishlist, and favorites, we digitized the process and made the routine a personalized, editable guide with a clear order of application — plus a PDF export for customers who still want one by the mirror. The product suggestions are tappable for purchase in app, and more products can be manually added if a customer decides to try something new. Multiple routines can be saved based on time of day, seasonality, and changing skincare needs.
A routine form starts empty, which gives the customer nothing to react to. I crafted eight illustrated section icons to give it structure from the get-go, with a touch of the brand’s personality rather than a generic icon set. I also added a day and night icon pair to make the routine easily scannable, so the customer knows what products to reach for as they start the day off or wind down for the night.
A Touch of Surprise & Delight
Mary Kay’s brand personality is confident, authentic, playful, perfectly imperfect. To extend that voice, I created hand-drawn illustrations and animated them for empty states like an empty shopping bag, celebratory moments like a placed order, and unexpected ones like the app going offline.
Gentle movement reads as sophistication, pops of color carry warmth, and the modern illustration style stays true to the brand guide — finishing touches that make the app engaging to use.
Outcome
The shipped app brings the storefront, the beauty tools, and the Consultant relationship into one place. Stakeholders were very excited to provide another tool that can empower Consultants to be an independent business owner.
