Product Consulting and MVP Development for a Beauty Services Software Startup

Summary

ScienceSoft created a product vision of an all-in-one web portal for beauty services stakeholders, built clickable prototypes for it, and provided a detailed MVP implementation plan.

Customer

The Customer is a promising US startup launched by a team of experienced beauty industry professionals. The startup’s product is Beauty Interactive – an all-in-one web portal that would connect key beauty industry stakeholders, such as beauty services providers, consumers, beauty product manufacturers, and educators. The solution will combine the following key functionality:

• A beauty product marketplace available to businesses and individual customers.
• A job search platform for beauty professionals.
• A beauty services search platform for consumers.
• A social network for beauty professionals to promote their services and get reviews.

The Customer decided to hire ScienceSoft for the project due to their experience in IT consulting services and vast portfolio of successful projects. ScienceSoft’s consultants were to elicit the requirements for the future web platform, create a product vision, a feature list, a solution prototype, and an implementation plan.

Product Vision Creation

ScienceSoft’s BA team thoroughly analyzed the beauty services applications market and the Customer’s business needs to form a comprehensive product vision. Next, the Customer got clearly defined user roles for the future platform (beauty professionals, beauty salons, beauty services consumers, suppliers, and admins) and the feature list.

FFP Prototype Development

The Customer received wireframes and a clickable full-featured product (FFP) prototype that visualized the future web solution. The prototype covered the following functional modules:

• Services module for consumers to search for beauty providers by name or keyword, book appointments, and leave reviews.
• Job offers module for employers and beauty professionals to place their job offers/CVs and search for a job or candidates by name or keyword.
• E-store module for beauty professionals to sell their services and display promo offers, for consumers to leave reviews about products and services, and for both user roles to buy beauty products.
• Education module for beauty professionals to view educational offers and tutorials, book paid training courses.
• Promotion module for educators to promote their courses to beauty workers and for beauty workers to advertise their services to customers.

MVP Prototype Development

To shorten the platform’s time-to-market and get feedback from real users early on, ScienceSoft’s team recommended developing and delivering the product in small iterations, starting from the minimum viable features. For the functional core of the minimum viable product (MVP), ScienceSoft’s team suggested focusing on the services module. As a result of this stage, the Customer got a clickable MVP prototype that covered the services module.

MVP Implementation Plan Creation

ScienceSoft’s team also provided the Customer with an MVP implementation plan. It comprised cost and timeline estimates, required resources, expected deliverables, and an optimal tech stack. Satisfied with the delivered plan, the Customer decided to continue MVP development with ScienceSoft.

Key Outcomes for the Customer

• A solution concept to guarantee the platform’s successful implementation and user adoption.
• Visualization of the platform’s capabilities with a clickable FFP prototype.
• A potential to pitch investors and attract new partners by presenting a clickable MVP prototype.
• A potential to quickly create and launch the platform due to having the detailed MVP implementation plan.