Building a personalised skincare experience with Sequential Skin

• Sequential Skin is an award-winning team with a mission to empower individuals to make better-informed decisions about their skin health. They are revolutionising skin health with the world's first consumer skin microbiome test, the Sequential Skin test, a product of the team's combined expertise in epigenetics, genetics, and microbiome research.

• Zühlke supports Sequential Skin as an innovation and technology partner to optimise their user experience and improve product quality and security.

Almost one-third of the world's population suffers from skin problems. However, consumers are often overwhelmed by the myriad of skincare products and struggle to make confident decisions for their skin health. According to a study on consumer beauty product purchases, 70% of consumers are overwhelmed by product choices, and 63% are confused by the product claims. 

Empowering individuals on their skin health

Sequential Skin is the world’s first science-backed diagnostic company that uses deep molecular analysis and next-generation gene-sequencing technology to understand the combined impact of an individual's genes and skin microbiome.

With the support from partners such as A-Star Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS), Enterprise Singapore, SOSV, and Indie Bio, Sequential Skin is able to bring their discovery from the lab to the consumer. Along with the Sequential Skin Test Kit and mobile application, consumers can access the microbiome levels on their skin and receive personalised recommendations on suitable skincare regimes and products.

With a vision to revolutionise how consumers think about and purchase cosmetics beyond powerful branding and marketing, Sequential Skin wants to equip consumers with the knowledge they need to make the best decisions for their skin.

As a trusted innovation and technology partner, Zühlke works with Sequential Skin to optimise their user experience and improve product quality and security. 

Achieving quality and security to scale long-term growth

Through collaborative workshops, the team starts by analysing four critical aspects: security, extendibility, scalability, and quality, which outlined potential improvements that align with Sequential Skin's business roadmap. Data security is identified as essential, especially for health applications and solutions, as patients' data is involved. 

As part of the health app solution design and development process, the team applies secure coding practices and ensures that the proper access and structure of the data are in place.  

Bridging the gap between science and consumers

As Sequential Skin scales their business, they realised that while their solution works, there are gaps in the usability and design of the product. As consumers' purchase behaviour changes with the availability of knowledge online, they realise the importance of understanding how a product works before using it. 

Companies must take a user-centric approach to end-to-end product development, from user research to development and commercialisation.

Adopting a series of UX methodologies, Zühlke identifies growth opportunities and gaps for improvement. This includes observational analysis to understand how consumers use the skin test kit, design audits to identify friction points based on users' interactions with the application, competitor analysis and more.

Scaling with agility and stability

As with all start-ups, speed to market is crucial for success. Working with Scrum, the team is able to maximise efficient collaboration, testing, and iteration, while achieving considerable progress within a short timeframe.  

While agility is crucial, stability and quality of the solution architecture is also vital for start-ups like Sequential Skin. Complementing the team with technology know-how, Zühlke works closely with the client to uplift the solution architecture and strengthen security for long-term scaling up.  

Built on a cloud solution, DevOps practices is also adopted by the team to accelerate delivery and deployment, enabling them to deliver new features quickly while maintaining quality.