Case Study
MiaMia is a data-driven platform that simplifies beauty through personalization.
We defined the product strategy, built the experience, tech stack, and designed the brand.
Kick Off
With every product we build, we kick off the project with a discovery workshop designed to validate and understand the problem we’re solving. We empathize with our user so that we can design to their needs. While defining our user, we set broad goals for the product.
On the outset, we answer the question of why.
Why are we building the product?
What purpose does it serve?
Why should the end user care?
One Place
Beauty is naturally social as people rely on friend's recommendations to discover beauty products. There was no dedicated platform to make this connection— essentially facilitating existing offline behavior.
In our research, we found the vast array of beauty/grooming choices inundates and confuses most people. Before MiaMia, people used a disjointed collection of blogs, Instagram, and friend recommendations. The existing digital beauty experience was not serving user's needs. People were craving personalization of products for their unique needs.
MiaMia solves these problems with a personalized, singular user experience. We collectively recognized that the solution had to be mobile as beauty research is done on-the-go 80% of the time.
The Pitch
With MiaMia's Founder & CEO, we built a pitch deck for her to tell the story of MiaMia and raise funding. Here’s a sneak peek:
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Custom
For our target user, the overabundance of choice is the new norm. The amount of products promising results, beauty tutorials, and societal expectations can overwhelm and intimidate.
With MiaMia, we empower our users to lead their own beauty journey.
During onboarding, we ask questions based on how much makeup the user wears, their skin tone, age, and main beauty concerns. As we enhance MiaMia, we can tailor the looks and products we show, so the app is more relevant to individual beauty needs.
Working with BL3NDlabs has been the best agency experience in my 20+ year career. In fact, they don’t feel like a typical agency and serve as a core part of the team. It’s difficult to find a singular group that can handle design, UX, UI, product development and strategy and BL3NDlabs accomplishes that and much more. I highly recommend working with them as they seamlessly helped make MiaMia a reality.
Illustration by @loveless_designs 
Polish
We designed the MiaMia brand to exude empowerment. We took a stand that resonates with MiaMia’s core audience within a competitive market. From the custom illustrations down to style guide assets, our team created a fun-loving and fierce look and feel.
Polish
We designed the MiaMia brand to exude empowerment. We took a stand that resonates with MiaMia’s core audience within a competitive market. From the custom illustrations down to style guide assets, our team created a fun-loving and fierce look and feel.
Illustration by @loveless_designs
Grapefruit #FF5F5F
Eggplant #18061D
Light Salmon #FBB398
Very Light Pink #FEE5E5
Blue Grey #8297AF
Pale Grey #E2EAED
Grapefruit #FF5F5F
Light Salmon #FBB398
Blue Grey #8297AF
Eggplant #18061D
Very Light Pink #FEE5E5
Pale Grey #E2EAED
It's pretty much the virtual equivalent of rifling through your friends' makeup bags, except those friends are beauty bloggers who stay making Instagram's popular page.
Hover to play
Build
We implemented a smart back-end solution to allow MiaMia to control their dataset while not having to manage it actively full time. We knew we had to present MiaMia with a low maintenance solution that would fit their operations budget. Leveraging reliable third parties, we automated tasks so the founding team could spend their time on high-value projects rather than menial tasks.
Iterate
With a lean team, we built and prototyped in continuous cycles. We conducted research sprints with core users to qualitatively test the overall concept and understand potential roadblocks to usability. Once we closed a research round, we evaluated the feedback for patterns. From there, we decided how to iterate based on that feedback.
Insight
We built MiaMia a back-end admin panel that allows for editorial control of the app, user-generated content moderation, and key data reporting. This quantitative data is incredibly valuable as we enhance product business strategy while we design for MiaMia’s users.
Bold Lip Looks
Beauty Concerns
User Engagement
Technology has changed almost every industry, but beauty is years behind. Because beauty is so personal, the power of MiaMia lies within the data. Understanding individual user needs, preferences, and influences will unlock key insights for brands wanting to connect with the modern user and empower users to lead their beauty journey.
One of the “12 Apps That Will Transform Your 2017”
tl;dr
Strategy
- Product Strategy
- Campaign Strategy
- Social Direction
Design
- Information Architecture
- Wireframes
- Product Design
- Creative Direction
- Brand Design
- Illustrations @loveless_designs
- Motion Design
- Usability Testing
Engineering
- Technical Strategy
- Prototyping
- Front End Development
- IOS Development
- Systems Architecture
- Dev Ops
- API Integration
Get It
We build best-in-class user experiences on solid, scalable tech stacks.
