Daniel Gost

Coty Inc.

Finding the perfect
scent for you

UX/UI Design · 2024

DiscoveryE-commerceBeauty

Finding the Best
Fragrance for You

A digital fragrance discovery tool for Coty — guiding customers from "I don't know what I want" to confident purchase.

Role

Senior UX Designer

Timeline

2020–2021

Team

Coty Digital, Brand, Marketing

Status

Shipped

Discovery
The Problem

Fragrance is impossible
to buy online.

You can't smell a JPEG. Customers abandoning fragrance pages was the highest of any Coty category. The challenge: create a discovery experience as rich as talking to a counter expert.

The Problem
Discovery

Understanding how people
actually talk about scent

Ran interviews with fragrance enthusiasts and novices. Found that people describe fragrance through feeling and memory — not notes. Designed the quiz around emotional language, not product attributes.

Discovery
Design

A guided quiz that felt like
a conversation, not a form

Designed a multi-step discovery quiz with adaptive branching. Each answer revealed more about the user's preferences, building a scent profile that surfaced 3 personalised recommendations.

Design
Leadership

No research budget.
Shipped in half the time.

The original project timeline was cut in half and the research budget was eliminated in the same week. Instead of stopping, I redesigned the research plan — guerrilla interviews at Boots with £0 budget, rapid paper prototype testing, and a single-day synthesis sprint. We validated the core quiz mechanic in 4 days and hit the revised launch date.

Leadership
↑41% Discovery-to-purchase rate
−62% Drop-off vs category avg
8 Fragrance brands supported