Curllective
Curl + Collective
A digital platform designed to help people with textured hair (curls, coils, and waves) find the right products more affordably, reduce product, financial, and environmental waste, and connect with a community for advice, shared experiences, and support.
August 2025 - December 2025
Empathize
Ideate
Design
Prototype
Test
Quick Overview
The Problem
People with textured hair often struggle to find products that truly work for their unique hair type, leading to frustration, wasted money, and trial-and-error routines. With thousands of products on the market and limited transparency around ingredients, results depend on expensive experimentation, often based on recommendations made by social media influencers.
How might we… help people with textured hair discover products that work for them while reducing trial-and-error, cost, and product waste?
The Solution
I designed Curllective, a digital platform that combines personalized product recommendations, ingredient transparency, and community-driven features to help people with textured hair make more informed haircare decisions. The platform helps users save money, minimize waste, and discover products tailored unique hair needs. It also serves as a dedicated space for shared experiences, education, and connection, empowering users to navigate their haircare journey with greater confidence.
Jump to design
Product Goals
Simplify personalized product discovery by helping users identify products, ingredients, and routines that align with their specific hair type and needs.
Reduce financial, product, and environmental waste by minimizing costly trial-and-error purchasing and encouraging more sustainable product choices.
Facilitate a supportive, digital community where users can share experiences, advice, and trusted recommendations tailored to curls, coils, and waves.
Empathize
Utilized Methods
Interviews & Affinity Diagram
Persona
Journey Mapping
User Discovery
I conducted four interviews to ensure this is truly a problem that needs to be addressed and understand all potential pain-points people may experience. My screener questions were designed to ensure participants aligned with my target audience: people who have textured hair (Type 2A- 4C) and who started a haircare journey with the last two years.
Data Synthesis
Key Takeaways
Many avoided their natural curls at first due to lack of knowledge, being overwhelmed by options, or continuous failure.
Product, money, and time are often wasted while people are going through the Trial and error phase, where everyone starts off.
Many rely on social media like TikTok and Reddit but struggle with influencer bias and lack of personalized advice.
Affinity Diagram
User Personas
Minh is a full-time nurse and a full-time dad. He and his wife, also a nurse, work opposite shifts at the hospital so that one of them is always home to take care of their four young kids. It’s a delicate balance: while one is pulling a 12-hour night shift, the other is handling school drop-offs, soccer practice, appointments, and grocery runs. On his days off the hospital, Minh is the parent, running the household and keeping the kids’ busy schedules on track.
With their routine built around tag-teaming both parenting and nursing shifts, the family car is crucial. Whether it’s hauling kids to school or racing to the hospital for a shift change, losing access to the car, even for a day, would throw their entire rhythm into chaos.
Journey Mapping
My research helped me make informed design decisions to solve this problem. I was able to understand the connection of maintenance failure and over 44,000 yearly crashes that lead to roughly 2,600 deaths and 100,000 disabling injuries yearly. People do not understand the necessity of maintaining their vehicle, because they do not know the severity of the issue. Also, the sudden interruption of the day and sudden expense is off-putting.
Ideate
Utilized Methods
Crazy 8's
Design Decisions
Customer Favorites
I aimed to replicate the warm, personalized customer experience within the website, ensuring that customers feel welcomed and understood just like in the cafe.
Meet The Team
Just as I observed the ease in which baristas connected with the customers, I also noticed the familiarity in the way the customers asked about the lives of the Comet Coffee employees.
No Online Order
Comet Coffee is all about slowing down and being present in the moment, so removing the “Skip the line. Order Online” option was an easy choice to preserve the café’s human interaction and atmosphere.
Crazy 8's
Design
Utilized Methods
High Fidelity Designs
Design System + Accessibility
Designs
Following the classes pace, we went straight from crazy 8's ideation to high fidelity designs.
Prototype
Test
Utilized Methods
usertesting.com
Data Collection
After creating my initial High Fidelity’s designs and executing some prototyping, I turned to usertesting.com for usability test and a comparison between the live website and my redesign. Then created an affinity diagram based on the feedback I received to help guide in my iterations. As I worked on incorporating the feedback, I kept a detailed log of the design changes I made.
Affinity Mapping
Design Changes
In Retrospect…
Due to the course timeline and assignment constraints, I moved straight from Crazy 8 ideation sketches to high-fidelity designs, skipping a full low-fidelity stage. If I had more time, I would have created low-fi wireframes to experiment with layouts and structure before committing to the final design.
I also would have liked to do usability testing with Comet Coffee’s actual customers and employees. Because the café has such a distinct “slow down” and low-tech culture that informed many of the design decisions, it would have been valuable to get feedback from real customers and stakeholders to validate whether the digital experience still felt aligned with the in-store atmosphere.