Nova
Blonde
Turning technical innovation into a salon experience
How do you give customers a reason to try something new in a category built on familiar products and trusted stylists?
During a 12-week Advanced Human-Centered Design project, our team developed a go-to-market proposal for a haircare biotech startup. We explored how its innovation could translate into a distinctive position, a compelling salon experience, and a practical launch approach.
NovaBlonde is a pseudonym. Details have been generalized.
- My role
- Competitive analysis, strategic synthesis, and visual design
- Team deliverables
- Positioning recommendations, customer research, a launch playbook, and a staged salon experience
The positioning opportunity
I proposed making the company’s innovative technology central to its positioning.
My competitive analysis helped us look beyond conventional haircare branding toward beauty technology and premium treatments. The opportunity was to make the innovation understandable and desirable through the experience surrounding it.
From research to direction
Our team explored consumer expectations around salon services, messaging, design, and perceived value through an online survey and market research.
“Confidence in the treatment—safety, consistent results, and transparency—mattered alongside the look and feel of the salon.”
I contributed much of the overall synthesis, connecting our research and competitive references into a direction that brought scientific credibility together with a premium customer experience.
Making the positioning tangible
I created the project’s visual design pieces, translating the direction into materials and touchpoints for the proposed salon experience.
We considered the customer’s journey from arrival through treatment and departure: how they would discover the service, understand what made it different, and remember it afterward. The challenge was to make each element support a coherent impression of the brand.
The customer journey
Arrival
How they would discover the service.
Treatment
Understand what made it different.
Departure
Remember it afterward.
Prototyping the experience
For our final presentation, we created and performed a staged salon experience.
Rather than presenting the recommendations only as slides, we walked the audience through the proposed customer journey. Team members played the customer and stylist, while design consultants paused the action to explain the research and reasoning behind key choices.
This brought the strategy into a form people could see and experience.
The staged salon experience at our final presentation.
Outcome
We delivered a go-to-market proposal, launch playbook, visual concepts, and a staged salon experience that brought our recommendations to life.
The client responded enthusiastically to the final presentation and continued accessing our team’s materials after the project concluded.
My contribution connected competitive analysis, positioning, and visual design—helping turn a technical innovation into a customer experience people could understand and get excited about.