Natalia Polniaszek
Custom Foundation Shade Mixing Machine
The ‘Scan’ and ‘Mix’ by ‘Unbiased Beauty’ is a set of two products working together to generate a custom blended makeup foundation for customers. This product is designed to be used in-person in a shop environment. The ‘Scan’ element must abide to this however this ‘Mix’ can become adaptable to a factory environment with the finished foundation product being posted to the customer.
There are currently no other existing products that complete this entire process. There are existing scanners which scan a customer’s skin, but they match this colour to a pantone colour that the customer can enter into a database to buy other foundations that carry that shade or a similar one (i.e. the Sephora + Pantone Scanner). Or they match to an existing foundation which is closest to the customers shade in the scanner’s brand’s range e.g. No.7.
There are also a few companies that claim to mix custom perfect match foundations, such as il makiage, but these rely on customers either having found other foundations that already match their shade themselves or using phone camera scans which can be bad quality or have incorrect lighting.
This product duo completes the whole process of scanning a customer’s skin to find their exact shade/shades and then custom mixing a foundation blend in that shade/shades. This is an improvement as it removes a lot of the work from the customer as it becomes more of a one step process from them to just go to a shop which carries this product and getting their skin scanned and then answering a few questions. It also should reduce product disappointment as a perfect match should always be made as human or technological error is almost entirely removed from things such as poor lighting or not being able to find a current foundation shade that matches.
This product also provides the option for multiple shades for the same face, to be used in different areas. This was makeup artist recommended meaning that the customer would end up with a more professional and natural look to the skin. Currently this sort of service is not available at all in this bespoke way other than from makeup artists personally matching and recommending existing foundations to customers. The addition of a base cartridge and an SPF cartridge, meaning the customer can sheer out their foundation and add sun protection if desired, is currently not available at all with other brands. For this you would have to look at each individual foundation range’s qualities and it is yet to be seen a range which provides the same finish in light, medium and full coverage let alone with different SPFs included.All of these qualities and more mean that this product can create a foundation/ foundation set which is far more personalised and customisable than other systems out there at the moment.
Natalia Polniaszek's designs
Student Biography
I decided to study PDM as I have a passion for design but also really enjoy problem solving. I felt that the product design elements of this course allowed me to work on and develop my creativity whilst the engineering elements allowed me to use my critical thinking skills along with physics and maths knowledge. This ensured that all the products I am designing are actually feasible and realistic rather than art pieces without the functionality.
My favourite parts of product design are the ideation and research phases. I find myself getting really carried away when it comes to finding out about my target markets and existing competitor products. This then leads me to be able to create all sorts of ideation designed which are inspired by other things I have noted down. This is not to say that I don’t enjoy the CAD and Rendering stages, but I feel my flare lies in these early stages.
I also really enjoy presenting my work and working in groups where people can bounce off each other for ideas. With this major project I especially enjoyed working with people from different knowledgeable departments than me. For example, when I spoke with the formulations team at Boots about what actually chemically makes a foundation and how this will effect how its stored and the packaging I then was able to use their expertise and apply it to my area of knowledge in product design to make a machine that is compatible with these chemical formulations.