NailSnaps empowers creativity and disrupts the messy, toxic world of nail polish with a better way to create, share, and wear nail art.

Nail art has exploded into mainstream demand due to social sharing – it’s one of the top 5 most shared items on Instagram and Pinterest with 8.5 billion dollars a year spent on nails. Yet keeping up with this trend can be challenging. A basic salon mani averages $20, but custom art on each finger can cost more than $50. Do-it-yourself techniques are cheaper but they're also messy and require a lot of skill. So for most people, personalized nail art is an aspiration rather than reality - until now.

NailSnaps is designed for the hundreds of millions of women who want the convenience of nail wraps without giving up the creative freedom to make their own custom nail designs. The free mobile app empowers women to easily create custom nail designs from any photo using a patent pending, rotatable, resizable hand-pose stencil. We print and ship custom design as 20 nail wraps: 2 full sets of 10 directly to the customer for just $19. The made-to-order wraps can be applied at home in minutes with a just a simple nail file. Application is as easy as placing a sticker and filing off the excess. A perfect, totally custom manicure. No mess. No toxicity. No dry time.

NailSnaps offers limitless creative expression by revolutionizing the way nail designs are created and applied. People are no longer limited by the number of colors they own or their ability to paint with tiny brushes. Nailsnaps revolutionizes nail design and makes the whole world your manicure.

NailSnaps is worthy of a UX award for 3 reasons:

1. NailSnaps solves a real problem. Polish, lacquers, and gels are highly toxic chemicals that ruin your nails and can have adverse health effects for nail art fans and salon workers. Even if the materials were safe, most people don't have the skill or time to hand-paint custom designs that today's trends demand and off-the-shelf nail wraps don't give woman the outlet for creativity and personal expression that they crave. NailSnaps makes custom nail art safe, easy, and fun for anyone.

2. We utilized a solution rooted in insights from user research. Findings from our research helped us create an interaction framework centered around a rotatable, resizable stencil in the shape of the hand-pose most commonly used to show off a manicure in photos. This “tiger-claw” stencil matches user's mental models for how a design will look when it's shared online. This simple, innovative approach is notable in that it allows people to easily create designs in which each nail is part of one complete picture. You can tell story in 5 fingers: A skyline that goes from pointer to pinky or each of your loved ones faces on a different finger.

3. NailSnaps delivers an exceptional user experience across all physical and digital touch-points. From the free mobile app to the physical nail wraps, we tested and iterated with real users to create a world-class experience. Since the launch of our live public beta in Dec 2014, we've nurtured a vibrant community to grow from 923 Kickstarter backers to over 30k downloads with $0 marketing spend. We got listed on the App Store's Best New Apps list and we're in the process of securing a global patent as the world’s best mobile/social nail design platform. It’s fast, easy, and addictive and our numbers prove it: 20% of users come daily, 50% of users return every month, and our average user session length is over 5 minutes!