Digital Brand Launch

Gemz

Hair care for every version of you.

A digital experience for Gemz, a new water-activated solid hair-care system that lets consumers mix and match shampoo and conditioner based on what their hair needs that day.

Role:
UX Designer & Researcher

Project Type:
Web · Mobile Web · E-commerce

Timeline:
6 months

The Challenge:

Introducing a new product and a new way to use it.

Gemz challenged two conventions of traditional hair care at once.

‍New format: shampoo and conditioner were no longer liquids in a bottle, but individual solids activated with water.
‍New habit: instead of committing to the same shampoo and conditioner for months, Gemz could be mixed and matched from one wash to the next.

Our challenge was to create a digital experience that made this unfamiliar product easy to understand, intuitive to use, and exciting to explore.

Understanding Her:

Gen-Z Beauty enthusiasts are natural shapeshifters.

They reflect different sides of their personality through their aesthetic, trying new trends, experimenting with accessories and styles, and constantly evolving how they express themselves.
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For them, authenticity isn't about consistency. It's about being true to whoever you are right now. That mindset became an important lens for the experience: hair care shouldn't limit experimentation, it should enable it.

Four expressions of our audience

We captured this multifaceted audience through four personas, reflecting different expressions, needs, and behaviors that helped guide the experience.

The Insights:

Every day deserves its own hair style.

Three foundational insights helped define the bigger opportunity behind the new format.

Defining Gemz:

A new kind of hair care,
built around flexibility.

The brand strategy translated our consumer insights into a simple proposition: Gemz should give consumers more freedom to adapt their hair care to who they are and what their hair needs on any given day. Rather than promising one perfect formula, Gemz was designed around choice, experimentation, and self-expression.

The Opportunity:

Turning a new product into an intuitive shopping experience.

Gemz had a compelling proposition but it also asked consumers to understand an entirely new product format and a new way to shop for hair care. The physical product created the flexibility, the digital experience needed to make that flexibility understandable, discoverable, and shoppable.

Designing the Experience:

From first impression to repeat routine.

We mapped the experience across the purchase journey to define how Gemz should show up at each stage.

From strategy to structure.

We translated the strategy into wireframes, exploring how consumers could learn the new format, discover products, and move confidently toward purchase.

Building a flexible system for a flexible brand.

A modular design system brought Gemz's expressive identity into the digital experience while creating consistency across content, product discovery, and commerce.

Bringing Gemz to life.

Product education and how-to content explain what Gemz are, how they're activated, and how they fit into a familiar hair-care routine.

Consumer Validation:

Testing a new way to shop hair care.

We evaluated the experience to understand whether consumers could navigate the site, understand the new solid format, and confidently explore the Gemz system.