Why This Problem Mattered

Redken was entering hardware for the first time, and the plan was to launch that first tool connected. We came in as strategic partners on the product definition. The challenge was not pairing a tool to a phone but coming up with a compelling, useful reason why we would want to. We developed an experience — a styling journey that starts with finding your style in the app and ends with you in your bathroom, viewing a tutorial as your phone and tool work together to make sure your styling is as safe and effective as possible.

My Role and Decision Ownership

I contributed to the strategy for the connected device and the app experience, and owned the design and delivery of that experience from there — framing the work around the full product system of hardware, connectivity, content, and app rather than a set of isolated mobile screens.

Turning the Brief into a Product Definition

The brief set out hardware, connectivity, and software, and a shared ambition to build something useful with them. Working through it with Redken and the hardware team, we defined the product against the jobs it had to do for the person holding the tool — and against the line running through them. Each job had to hand off to the next, ending at the tool itself.

Finding the Right Way to Deliver Instruction

While the hardware team built the device, my team spent weeks at L’Oréal’s New York research location working with customers on how they wanted to receive instruction. It came down to how a person learns: some wanted to watch a stylist do it, others to be walked through it a step at a time. The app had to cater to both.

At the Research Station

Participants styled start to finish, phone mounted on the mirror, Redken’s tools and products at the station

Two Ways to Be Taught

Video for people who wanted to watch the technique; paced step-by-step for people who wanted their own speed

Two rounds at the L’Oréal Professional Academy, 32 participants in all, tested it end to end — and surfaced what only a real setting reveals: how people divide attention between the phone, the mirror, their hair, and the tool in their hand.

Exploring the Design Language

I led the design team through design language directions drawn from Redken’s brand heritage. We presented three.

Concept 1 · Redken New York — Moodboard

Urban · Edgy · Energetic · Confident — from the Redken style guide and the brand’s New York attitude.

Concept 1 · Redken New York — Screen Designs

Concept 2 · Led by the Tool — Moodboard

Professional · High-End · Sleek · Modern — from the tool’s own minimal industrial design, color used selectively.

Concept 2 · Led by the Tool — Screen Designs

Concept 3 · Consumer First — Moodboard

Approachable · Bold · Uplifting · Casual — welcoming, with bold color that encourages rather than intimidates.

Concept 3 · Consumer First — Screen Designs

Redken selected Concept 2, and it became the design language the app was built in.

Defining the Content System

Looks and campaigns had to change on Redken’s schedule, not an app release schedule, so we also defined the content management system behind the experience — requirements, data model, and UX design — for the third-party partner building it.

• Look books — the styles users browse and select a tutorial from
• Marketing campaigns — seasonal and promotional content surfaced through the app
• Tutorial content — step and video guidance, plus the success criteria the connected checks measured against
• Profile information — the hair type data driving each mode’s temperature

Finalizing the Tutorial Attributes

That work settled the attributes of the tutorials Redken would create — how a step was structured, when a look called for video over a step card, and what each tutorial had to carry for the app to act on it.

Connecting the App to the Device

The hardware team and my design team then finalized the launch version together.

Profiles built around hair type

People tend to set a styling tool to its highest heat, assuming that is the fastest route to the result. It is not — excess heat damages hair and makes the look harder to achieve. So rather than ask the user to guess, the profile finds the answer with them: they describe their hair by thickness and natural wave or curl, and the app returns a starting temperature to try.

From there it becomes a short, guided calibration. The user wraps a section of hair around the wand for three seconds and checks whether the curl holds. If it does not, the app raises the temperature by ten degrees and has them try again, repeating until the curl holds — and that temperature is locked into the profile. The user can run the same calibration for each of the tool’s three modes. The result is a setting arrived at by evidence on that person’s own hair, rather than a number they had to know enough to choose.

Feedback in the app, at the mirror

The tool could report mode, temperature, and moisture, and the temptation is to put all of it on screen. The principle was the opposite: show feedback only when it helped someone protect their hair or move to the next step.

That resolved into three moments worth interrupting for: the tool losing its connection, the tool reaching optimal temperature and being ready to use, and the tool running past it — the one case where a warning genuinely protects the hair.