problem

I <3 piercings

Growing up in Pakistan, I have been consistently been surrounded by jewelry. And piercings. It’s a very deep-rooted part of my culture. So deep that I was pierced before I even turned one. Hence, I am completely and utterly obsessed with the idea of decorating oneself.

A jewelry stall in Pakistan.

Me getting pierced.

Me showing off my piercings on TikTok.

But where I come from, we do things differently.

trigger warning trigger warning trigger warning trigger warning (hover to watch) trigger warning trigger warning trigger warning trigger warning

TikTok posted around the Pakistani piercing experience by a local content creator.

Still new to the US at the time, I did not know the details of the piercing process here. I assumed it was the same as back home – you go to the shop, you wait and see if someone is there, you get an impulse piercing that may or may not succeed, and you go home.

My professor then introduced me to a website called STUDS. I was amazed – this wasn’t another e-commerce jewelry shop, instead, it specialized in making piercing appointments too.

What if I brought this idea back home?

research

same piercings, different stories

After finding out about STUDS, I looked beyond the platform to see if there were similar models in the market. I soon learnt that this was commonplace in the US, with a range of jewelry companies operating as piercing schedulers too. Furthermore, I also noticed that each of these sites followed the same UI and try-on processes. I already had a strong foundation to build from.

Several jewelry companies fell under the STUDS buy-and-pierce structure – Mejuri, Astrif & Miyu, Maria Tash, Wildlike, So Gold Studios, and Iris Body among them.

Next came the interviews. At this point in the project, I hadn’t yet decided that the platform would be Pakistan-specific – that decision actually emerged from the research itself. Being an international student, I had natural access to two distinct groups of jewelry enthusiasts: Western and Pakistani. I conducted 10 in total – 5 with Pakistani users and 5 with US-based ones.

Some questions that were included in the interview session.

The interviews were semi-structured and conversational. I started with some open ended questions, asking participants to walk me through their relationship with jewelry, their daily pieces, what they never took off, etc. Slowly, we then moved into the ‘buying’ aspect of it, how much they interacted with it online, and where piercings fit into all of this.

“I feel like jewelry is a really significant part of who I am, I cannot leave the house without my jewelry, because I feel naked.”

A few things became clear fast. Almost universally, jewelry was tied to identity – heirlooms, culture, self-expression. What’s more, aside from the interviews, I gathered further secondary research using a Google survey. The piercing findings were particularly striking: 85% of participants got piercings on impulse, yet nearly all said they’d still prefer an appointment if one existed.

The turning point for me in all of this, however, was when I slowly began noticing a pattern between my Western jewelry wearers, and my Pakistani ones.

There seemed to be a clear contextual difference.

Pictured above, Michael and Ayesha’s distinct responses.

On their own, the insights weren’t leading me anywhere. But once I placed the Pakistani responses alongside the Western ones, things clicked – the idea of scheduling a piercing online was so alien to my Pakistani users compared to Westerners, simply because they had never heard of it. And yet, despite a lifetime of the candid in-person system back home, they were completely open to the idea.

Seen above, Ayesha and Eiman’s similar experiences.

What also stood out was how many more horror stories I heard from Pakistani users compared to Western ones. I think this is exactly why there was so much room for a platform like this in the country – some users had even resorted to piercing themselves for years on end, because the existing system just wasn’t safe or trustworthy enough.

The interviews also threw light on other issues worth incorporating into the product.

Ayesha, 24, independently asked for an aftercare card: “the care process, what to do if things go south, plus a warranty from the piercer within that time frame.”

Zeenia, 22, pointed to just how lacking aftercare guidance was back home. “In Pakistan they just tell us, ‘if there is an issue, put Polyfax (a local medicine), otherwise use olive oil and keep rotating the earring’ – which, for the record, was not something we were supposed to do.”

And Ayesha again, on the need for a pre-piercing form: “There should be a formal process because the person needs to realise that this isn’t a temporary thing; it is a permanent bodily modification.”

design

mapping out the wrong side first

And my first step to figuring out their positions was by mapping out their placements – I attempted to draw out a user flow diagram, trying to understand at what points the consumer would be taking what step.

Interestingly, this user diagram was exploring a completely different side of the product, i.e. the jewelry-buying side. Initially I had attempted to make this a scheduler/shop, just like the earlier platforms my research showcased.

However, upon finishing the diagram, I realized that this was a side of the platform that was not a core function, but instead, an add-on. And so, while my user-mapping did not assist me in the final features itself, it did give me a strong lesson in prioritization and was a good exercise in understanding user patterns. Following this, I was able to visualize a lot faster.

function before beauty

Because I now had a sense of the user’s thinking as they travelled through this website, I moved directly to the prototyping phase. Taking into account my PRD, I tried to include as many features as possible in the flow. The journey begins with a shop VS get pierced question, where we assume the user will click the latter. Following that, the website asks Pakistani users a series of questions that they normally do not have to answer when it comes to the piercing process, e.g. pain tolerance.

Through some initial user testing, I was able to get useful feedback at certain points of my flow.

I’ll be honest, as a newcomer in design grad school, this was my first time taking part in the wireframing process. I was very uneasy using clunky fonts and no colors before stepping into the whole thing. I thought it would make it unclear to the test users what my intentions were.

Yet, I quickly realised that this part of the process is so one can focus on the function, as opposed to the beauty of the product. Test users were quick to give some solid feedback, such as:

• The text being too large
• Some of the design feeling too overwhelming
• More interactivity required

making it fun

From the get-go, I knew I wanted this product to be loud. I began by assembling several mood-boards with the same aesthetic – dark colors, bold fonts, messy iconography.

I always wanted decorate to be LOUD

Snippets from my initial moodboards when brainstorming the brand’s identity.

The idea was that decorate was more than jewelry – as interviews suggested, the brand represented self-expression, diversity and boldness. Its imagery highlighted the fact that jewelry was not a mere addition, it was a part of who you were. So whilst the function was to increase organization and convenience, the branding would be completely opposite that.

And at the heart of this creative direction, lied one central element:

Because the branding was leaning towards this raw, unfiltered, mixed-media-esque approach, I knew texture was going to play a major part in the design. Thus, I sought inspiration from all the right places – scrapbooks, hand-drawn sketches, paper cuttings, and much more.

(As you could imagine, the Figma file for this process wasn’t looking pretty).

After much research, I focused on four types of textures – stickers, letter cuttings, paper, and tape.

Simultaneously, I was sketching logo ideas on the side. From the start, I had strong instincts about the iconography – ears, piercings on those ears, piercings and jewelry that resembled letters, or letters that acted as the jewelry itself.

solution

spill, slot, stack

Product overview.

Finally, the product came together: a platform where you can find your nearest piercer, tell them everything they need to know, slot your appointment, and keep tabs on it all from your profile.