Curiosity turns us on. We like finding new friends who wonder about something enough to find answers for them. The future’s full of change. That’s what it’s for. And we can run from that, or we can learn from it.
I don’t understand everything about algorithms, except that they mean I don’t need to dredge the sad sad bottom of the barrel corners of Netflix for what I want, because it’s served up for me right there on the surface of the app, so I know that I like them. I don’t understand artificial intelligence like a Data Scientist would, but I have been known to attempt to win every argument (just for fun) around A.I., citing iRobot and V.I.K.I of Terminator as "clear evidence" that we must steer clear away from A.I. (Emphasis on "air quotes")
However with the understanding I've come to have, I'm not actually that worried about it. I know I don’t, because if I go try to learn more about A.I. I end up more confused than I was. I guess that Tony Stark’s suit has one, or something? And it helps him with tasks, I guess?
I don’t understand this stuff.
But our beautiful new friend, Maria, does.
Maria’s a scientist. Not sure what sort, but I’m dying to find out. She wanted to know why none of the products out there were helping with her adult acne. Because she’s a scientist, she attacked the problem like a scientist.
She collected and tabulated data. Her studies turned up something that might sound familiar to a lot of us: there are a lot of claims out there, but not that much science backing up those claims.
A bottle can promise beauty, but a bottle hasn’t met everyone. We’ve all got different sensitivities. We’ve all got different problems. Some products will work great for some of us some of the time. Perhaps that’s good enough for most people.
Perhaps it is.
Wouldn’t it be nice for those of us who have to exist in the fringes if we didn’t all need to become dermatologist-chemists?
Wouldn’t it be nice if instead of feeling like the only options we have when we’ve got atypical skin is more expensive options?
Especially when
a) they don’t always work either, but
b) we didn’t know that ahead of time so we already spent the money, and
c) a more affordable solution might work for us.
Maria asked these questions.
To answer them, she developed Skin Bliss with her business partner.
It’s a gorgeous app. You get it on your phone. And what it does, she says, is it sort of makes shopping for cosmetics more like browsing Netflix, and it gives you a kind of Tony Stark’s suit type artificial intelligence buddy to help make sense of the litanies of ingredients lists on the backs of all those bottles.
I just downloaded the app. It’s very pretty and it makes sense already, which never happens for me.
Maria says it’s still (and always will be) in development, and she’s open to feedback. I like that; it means I can feel part of the scientific process.
It’s really good. We like scientists.
Here's where it's at in its Branding evolution:
To answer the question of "is this cosmetic a good choice for me?", Maria & Co. developed a concept of a "skincare match" and underlying skincare matching technology able to deconstruct skincare products. Their complex system, powered by Artificial Intelligence, works by assessing product effectiveness for different skin types and conditions in light of scientific evidence and by emulating and embedding the knowledge and expertise of skincare professionals.
By analyzing tens of thousands of products and comparing them to each other, they have derived a scoring method by our product matcher. This scoring method is inherently relative, which means that a product score has to be interpreted in a relation to other products within the same category. For example, if a moisturizer scores 30 on a dimension of "dry skin type", it means that 70% of other moisturizers in our catalogue are a better choice for dry skin than this one. It may still be that this moisturizer is a good product on its own, but it simply scores poorly in comparison to other, better-matched products.
Skin Bliss is an app that helps you find your perfect skincare match. It is like a Tinder match, but based on science and optimized for lasting relationships.
A bit more on the nerdy details on Skin Bliss
Personalized cosmetic analysis and ingredient knowledge The vision for Skin Bliss is to be the platform that provides truly personalized skincare recommendations for everybody, promoting healthy, transparent, and environmentally-conscious choices. Every single person is essentially unique.
