Role
Web Designer & Developer
Team
Company Owner, Manager, Japanese Copywriter, 3rd Party Stakeholder, and Graphic Designer (for consultation).
Timeline
7-weeks+
Project Type
Professional Work & B2C (Mobile, Web)
High-end luxury nail salon.
J-Cast JoliArts were opening their fourth nail salon in Tokyo and first in the Shangri-La Tokyo Hotel. For this reason, I was brought in from America to Japan to brand the LUXITA online presence and launch a multi-lingual website in time for the launch.
International tourists with no to limited Japanese language skills aiming to visit the nail salon need a quick, convenient solution for booking appointments, and locating the salon. Luxury brand enthusiasts seeking an experience, need easy to see nail options. Both Western and Eastern users should be able to navigate the website easily.
View Website
Web Designer & Developer
Company Owner, Manager, Japanese Copywriter, 3rd Party Stakeholder, and Graphic Designer (for consultation).
7-weeks+
Professional Work & B2C (Mobile, Web)
The goal of the project was to create a luxury brand website appealing to both foreign tourists and Japanese natives. While designing, we needed to avoid creating a cluttered site that is commonly seen on Japanese websites.
“There is so much visual noise, that you can feel like you’re walking through the chaos of Shibuya streets in Tokyo.” -The challenge of designing UX and UI in Japan
"In westerner cultures, red is the color of love and excitement and can be associated with both negative and positive purposes. But in Japan it means happiness and joy."
"There are only a few available web fonts...Japanese fonts need to include the katakana and hiragana alphabets and a pile of kanji...making their web fonts just too heavy to load on a webpage."
Japan is a cash-based society. Though most tourist traveling to Japan are made aware of this fact, not every person living outside of Japan are aware. Those living in countries like the United States are accustomed to card payments and money transfer apps like Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, Square, and more.
Japanese cell phone culture is tied closely with the transportation culture. The majority of Japan's commute takes place on trains. The idle time commuting on trains creates an increase in the usage of mobile devices.
“How do I pause my Western perspective of the world & open up to see an Eastern point of view?” -Katherine Delorme, that's me
Changing my perspective and world view of "normal" allowed me to experiment with ideas, user experience, and interface design the same way I experimented with understanding another culture. I can not express how much this project not only changed me as a designer but also as a person.
I created personas based on the owner's previous salon's clientele for comparison. As well as personas for what would be the new salon's prospect clientele. Additional data given about the hotel's typical guests and usual foot traffic was also used. The addition of the hotel's insight widened my perspective from two personas to three: Japanese resident, an American tourist, and a European tourist. The additional details regarding the persona's lifestyle and habits came about from research findings.
During meetings and sessions, when ideas were being bounced around, I would start sketching. A couple of the sketches made their way to production. Others still helped as inspiration.
The personas created helped prove the necessity for the website to be accessible on mobile devices as well as load quickly. International tourists are more likely to discover the salon on their mobile devices. Discovery, in addition to using the website's directions to navigate to the salon while in transit, made page load speed a priority. Japanese cell phone culture is tied closely with the transportation culture. The majority of Japan's commute takes place on trains. The idle time commuting on trains creates an increase in the usage of mobile devices.
Fulfilling a need and tapping into an underserved market. A Men's Success Nail service was created aimed at business professionals and those in favor of a groomed attire.
"Luxury brands have long known this. In their advertisements, they generate desire by relying on three principles: enrichment, distancing, and abstraction...Desire is created when something is just out of reach."
Website: Luxury • Informed • Secure • Confident in finding the salon • Satisfied • Authenticity • Desire • Extraordinary • Fantasy • Lifestyle Statement
Salon: Luxury • Confidence • Exclusivity • Sense of Status • Value • Serenity • Comfort
Home Page - Grey Boxing
Home Page - Wireframe
Home Page - High Fidelity Wireframe
After the launch of the English and Japanese versions, the next logical move would be to create a Chinese version. A large percentage of Japan's tourism comes from China. This information backed with the new wealth and middle-class families of China taking part in travel made for a sensible strategy.
