# Beauty Product Finder

## Motivation
* **Customized recommendation of beauty products based on skin (color, type, and struggles), age, and gender.**
* Users can choose to buy beauty products, including skincare, makeup, etc. based on research through the app.
* Modeled after the Korean app "Hwahae"
* Shifting the US beauty market focus from makeup to skincare
* There are not as many beauty product platforms in the US. Most people shop from Amazon, Sephora, Ulta, etc.
* **There is a lack of platforms to help recommend, compare, and cuztomize products.**
* **Key is to personalize**.

## Other Big Platforms
* [YesStyle](https://www.yesstyle.com/en/home.html): For people interested in K-beauty

## User Stories/User Journey
* "As a person who has to wear masks on a daily basis, I want to find a skincare product to improve my skin."
* "As a caucasian woman, I want to find good sunscreens to protect my skin from the sun."
* "As a Korean in the US, I want to find an app like Hwahae to shop in the US without having to ship products from Korea."
* "As a health conscious person, I want to find products that are vegan or organic to be enviromentally friendly."
* Login -> Filter by vegan/organic products -> Compare price -> Choose product ->

## Basic Features
* Recommendation by products that are ranked positively (5 stars)
* Recommendation based on:
- skin color
- skin type
- skin struggles (acne, ezcema, etc.)
- gender
- age
* Filter by:
- cruelty-free
- vegan
- organic/all natural
- enviromently conscious
- price
- brand

## Advanced Features
* List ingredients and accessible explanation
* Demystifying/clarifying ingredient information (usually chemical jargons inaccessible to the public)
* Answering questions like:
* Are there any harmful contents in this skin product?
* How do some ingredients improve the skin?
* Brand reviews by customers
* Complextion/skin type identifier (face scan)
* take a picture HDR and look at color value of the face
* https://www.neutrogena.com/skin360app.html
* Link to YouTube makeup tutorials that features the product
* section in the app that has the top videos and instagram people -- Kinda like a featured section
* Push products that have good ranking (4 stars+) by trustable, honest user reviews, encouraging good products
* How can we verify this? 체험단?
* User receipt as a proof?

## Screens

* Register/Login (optional)
* Let's decide later if we need this or not
* Sign in with FB, Google, Apple, etc.
* We have to make this as easy as possible. User should take least amount of steps.
* This is something we should decide on
* Do we require user login as soon as users download the app? Later on?
* Do we sell personal information? I hate that
* Face Scan (optional)
* Look for color, look for perfect match
* Look for skin type? (implementation exists)
* Is it more accurate to use face scan as opposed to asking users to manually identify, for example, their skin color? Or can this be replaced?
* Manual setup (give option to skip OR only have simple options to start out with)
* Ask users to idenfity relevant information for product recommendation
* Choose their skin color, type, age, gender, etc.
* Browsing screen
* Users receive customized recommendation based on self-identification
* User can filter products by categories
* Product detail screen
* User can view product name, brand, price, purpose, etc.
* User can view rankings and read reviews
* User can view ingridient information
* Price/quality? comparison
* Cart screen (some kind of saving function)
* Users can save and view products in cart
* Users receive notification if saved item has a price drop
* Checkout screen (have to figure this out later)
* Integrate one touch payment methods, including Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, etc.
* View purchased products (have to figure this out later)
* Profile screen
* Allows user to update information about their skin type/age/gender/etc.
* Settings Screen
* User can change language?
* View privacy information
* Account details

## Navigation
* Tab navigation...
* Flow navigation...
*

## Backend
* Amazon API
* Beauty product APIs (otherwise, would we have to reach out to individual companies to list their products on our app? We can figure this out soon/later)
* Face scan, identifying color
* Ranking/recommendation algo

## Aug 30 Meeting
* Need basic wireframing (both figma and a tableview on Xcode)
* Mark: figure out Postman & unofficial sephora API and web scraping
* YJ: learn to use Postman & get data from Amazon API

## Aug 16 Meeting
* make up apis
* sephora/amazon/ ulta beauty connect to their websotre
* camera intergration
* youtube api - returns top and instagram
* Scan your face for skin type
* recommend products based on skin type/color
* Scan for skin color and recommend products that are suitable/popular for the people group

# TODO by Monday (Aug 30)
* YJ: Start wireframing with Hyeonji
* Mark & YJ: work on screens

# TODO by Monday
* Read thru Hwahae's blog posts/news to see how they got ingredient information
* Found it on [this blog post](http://blog.hwahae.co.kr/all/view/hwahae-plus/2106/)
* EWG Skin Deep Database [here](https://www.ewg.org/skindeep/)
* Either find an API
* or web scraping
* Will write summary soon
* User story/journey - YJ
* Show this to the other 2 teammates, get feedback and help on user journey.
* create postman to conect to APIs to see which ones will work

# TODO by WED
- Api reaserch - MARK
- user stories - BOTH
- list of features - ERIN

# Information about Hwahae
* There is a huge emphasis on ***honest*** reviews by users
* Recently released the beta version that allows each user to "find THE perfect product (#인생탬)" [[Korean article]](http://blog.hwahae.co.kr/all/newsroom/news/6493/)
* customzied to user's skin type AND preferred brands
* **recommendation based on topic modeling (deep learning method) on 6 million+ customer reviews**
* Recommendation based on season (like summer) and currently trending brands on the app [[Korean article]](http://blog.hwahae.co.kr/all/newsroom/news/6434/)
* featuring "BEST & HOT" top 10 brands
* Hosts annual awards for top brands based on sales and customer review analysis [[Korean article]](http://blog.hwahae.co.kr/all/newsroom/news/5617/)
* Among 2021's award recipients, there was a **40% popularity increase in vegan, and cruelty-free products**
* Hwahae analyzes this as a result of increased public awareness on environmental issues during the COVID-19 pandemic
* Throughout the year, **organic skincare products** (that uses ingredients from olive, aloe, etc.) were popular among users
* Due to mask-mandate during the COVID-19 pandemic, users sought after **better cleansing products** that maximize moisturizing and calming effects while protecting sensitive skin
* Hwahae supports small and mid-sized companies by exposing small and mid-sized brands with positive user reviews on the app's main platform [[Korean article]](http://blog.hwahae.co.kr/all/newsroom/news/5526/)