Durran

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am a department head at SalonScale Technology

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

SalonScale is the complete backbar management app built for teams who need to accurately track color costs to increase their profits.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Durran to accomplish?

• Help design out improved mobile app experience for stylists
• Help create mobile design standards for team to follow

SOLUTION

How did you find Durran?

Online Search

Why did you select Durran over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Durran were assigned to this project?

1 Employee

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

The project focused on improving the mobile app experience for stylists using SalonScale, a backbar and color cost management platform. The goal was to increase usability, efficiency, and adoption among stylists by reducing friction during in-session logging, improving clarity around product usage and costs, and ensuring the mobile experience supported real salon workflows.

Stylists rely on the mobile app during fast-paced service appointments, so the project prioritized speed, accuracy, and ease of use. The work combined strategic UX evaluation, qualitative user research, competitive analysis, and hands-on design exploration to identify issues and deliver validated, actionable solutions:

• UX audit & heuristic review
• Review user research feedback
• Competitor & market research
• Ideation & concept development
• Wireframing & prototyping

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

This project was broken down into milestones that had deadlines to meet. At each phase we would work with our customer success team to get feedback and do any updates as needed. Based on the feedback there may need a couple more revisions before we could move onto the next milestone.

Durran was very timely with their updates and took feedback very well. If there was any changes needed they took the feedback and got the changes done quickly and would often give a couple options to review.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

We would have 2 scheduled sessions each week. These would be remote meetings through Google Meet where we would review the work done and go over any feedback and next steps. We also would coordinate through Slack as needed for any communication needed outside of the scheduled sessions. We had milestones to meet and they would deliver on time. Often they would present a couple options to bring back and get feedback on. If any changes were needed they were quick to do any updates at any point in the process.

What was your primary form of communication with Durran?

Virtual Meeting

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They had deep design thinking skills and didn't just produce good looking designs. Durran consistently anchored design decisions in business goals and real user behavior. They challenged assumptions, clarified the problem, and ensured every design decision tied back to the outcomes we were looking for.

SalonScale has nuanced, real-time workflows used in fast-paced salon environments. Durran demonstrated a rare ability to quickly understand complex, operational products and translate that complexity into clear, usable mobile experiences without oversimplifying the underlying logic.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Durran could have done differently?

Earlier alignment on technical constraints would have helped. Some concepts pushed the product forward in the right direction but required later adjustment once engineering constraints were clearer. Bringing technical feasibility conversations (or a lightweight engineering check) slightly earlier could have reduced iteration and helped prioritize ideas with a faster path to implementation.