Sheer is a review platform designed exclusively for beauty services. It brings honest, verifiable insights about providers' professionalism, reliability, and service quality into one trusted place, empowering clients to book with confidence.
This project was completed as part of an independent study blending UX research, product strategy, UI/interaction design, branding, prototyping, and early business planning. The goal was to deliver a fully articulated, research-grounded product design with a plan to move the concept toward real-world implementation.
Beauty service clients depend on social media and various review platforms to evaluate providers, but these sources rarely offer complete, trustworthy insight into service quality, professionalism, or reliability. Because review quality is inconsistent, difficult to verify, and uncomfortable to leave honestly, users must piece together trust signals across platforms and invest significant time to reduce uncertainty, often with mixed results. This creates a booking experience that feels inefficient and risky, particularly when trying new providers.
There is an opportunity to reduce the uncertainty and the risks that clients feel when booking beauty services by creating a platform that has honest, verifiable insights about providers' professionalism, reliability, and service quality in one trusted place.
To empower beauty service clients with transparent, experience-based insights so they can book with confidence, clarity, and trust.
This project was deeply rooted in UX research. I conducted a survey that gathered over 60 participants to understand how beauty service clients currently find and evaluate providers, what frustrates them about the process, and what would make them feel more confident booking.
I also conducted in-depth interviews (IDIs) to dive deeper into the emotional and behavioral aspects of the booking experience, uncovering pain points around trust, transparency, and the social dynamics of leaving honest reviews.
These insights directly shaped the product's core features: anonymous reviews, real provider data (cancellation rates, response times), and leaderboards that surface the best providers in each area.
With a strong research foundation, I moved through ideation, information architecture, and wireframing before progressing into high-fidelity UI design. The visual direction draws from the warmth and richness of the beauty industry, with deep, warm tones, soft gradients, and elegant typography that feel both premium and approachable.
I prototyped the core flows in Figma, including onboarding, provider discovery via leaderboards, provider profiles with reviews and service details, and the booking experience.
Anonymous Reviews: Users can leave honest, detailed reviews without fear of social backlash, protecting their identity while maintaining review integrity.
Real Provider Data: Beyond star ratings, Sheer surfaces real metrics like cancellation rates, response times, and service consistency to give clients a complete picture.
Beauty Leaderboard: A ranked view of top providers by category (braids, nails, lashes, wigs) and location, updated weekly, monthly, and all-time.
Provider Profiles: Rich profiles with galleries, services offered, social links, ratings, and a direct booking flow.
Sheer pushed me to go beyond surface-level design and think deeply about product strategy, trust systems, and user psychology. The research phase was particularly formative. Hearing real stories from people who had been burned by unreliable providers reinforced why this problem matters and kept the design grounded in real needs.
This project strengthened my ability to take a concept from zero to one: from identifying a genuine market gap, through rigorous research, to a polished, defensible product design ready for real-world implementation.
Sheer holds a special place in my heart because it was born from a real need I've experienced firsthand. As someone who's navigated the frustration of finding trustworthy beauty providers, I know how much a platform like this could benefit my community. It's not just a class project to me; it's something I'd love to bring to life and put in the hands of the people who need it most.