Ulta Beauty's App Can Give You a Skin-Care Routine Based on Facial Recognition
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If you're a skin-care newbie or are just looking for new products, a single drugstore skin-care aisle can overwhelm you with options. Add other beauty stores, department stores, and online retailers to that, and it's nearly impossible to know where to begin. There are countless skin-care brands and products out there, and — let's face it — it can be tiring to sift through all that marketing mumbo jumbo and decide if a product can actually do what you need it to do. This week, Ulta Beauty introduced a new feature on its mobile app that can help you do just that.
The Ulta Beauty app (free on iOS and Google Play) now features a skin analysis tool as part of the retailer's GlamLab experience, which uses facial recognition technology to help you try makeup on virtually. The new feature aims to use that technology alongside a survey to identify your primary skin issues and recommend products to buy directly through the app. Ever the skeptic, I tried it firsthand to see just how accurate its analysis is, and whether or not I'd actually use the products it recommends.
Once you access the skin analysis, it'll ask you three questions: What your skin type is, how old you are, and what your skin goals are. There are eight skin goals to choose from, and you can select up to three of them. For example, I have combination skin, fall within the 25 to 34 age bracket, and want to reduce redness, even my skin tone, and enhance my glow.
After that, your front-facing camera will be activated and the app will ask you to pull your hair back and find a good lighting setting (you'll definitely want to do this part without makeup on for accurate results). A red oval will pop up on the screen to show where your face should be positioned – it'll turn green, take a snapshot, and immediately start loading your results once it's seen your face at the correct distance.
Then there's the not-so-fun part: the tool will then show you the picture it just took of you with lots of little graphics to show you where all of your skin imperfections are. You'll receive "scores" for redness, dark spots, breakouts, and fine lines. Those scores will play into what products it suggests you buy.
Here's where the actual product recommendations come in. Just below your scores, there are two scrolling menus full of products, one based on the skin-care goals you selected earlier, and one based on the app's analysis of your skin. As far as my personal results go, I was pretty damn impressed. I've already got my skin-care routine down pat from interviewing dermatologists on the job, so I wanted to see if the app would recommend the same types of products that I've been using based on professionals' recommendations.
My routine is very heavily focused on gentle cleansers, chemical exfoliators, and moisturizers with soothing properties. The app recommended those exact types of products to me, but many were from brands that aren't in my regular rotation. A few examples: Murad AHA/BHA Exfoliating Cleanser, Neutrogena Alcohol-Free Toner, and Keihl's Cannabis Sativa Seed Oil Herbal Concentrate. It even gave me a wide price range, with products ranging from $9 all the way up into the $100-plus range, so if I were going to buy any of those things, I'd have a few different budgeting options.
TL;DR: The current state of our world doesn't allow us to peruse the shelves of beauty retailers like we used to, and access to skin-care professionals is extremely limited — this tool offers a pretty good solution to that. If you're at a loss for what to do with your skin, having an app break down your concerns might help you start fresh with a new and more targeted routine. Even if you're like me and already have a routine that works for you, using this tool might introduce you to some new brands and products that can deliver similar results (or maybe ones that you like even better).
The Ulta Beauty app is free to download on Google Play and iOS.
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Originally Appeared on Allure
