What are the main problems faced by hairstylists?

I am doing a university project that involves designing a tool that can improve the work practices of a specific occupation (I chose hairstylists), so I was wondering what the typical problems upscale hairstylists encounter.

I was thinking that maybe one of the main problems is knowing exactly what kind of haircut your customer wants.  When I go into a hair salon and they ask me what I want with my hair, I just say "shorten it" (lol I'm a guy), because I have no idea how to explain what I want since I don't know any hair terms, and also because sometimes I don't really know the type of cut that would best suit me.  Is this a major problem for hairstylists: Figuring out exactly what the customer wants, or recommending something that they would like and would suit them well?

So, (sorry for the long post), the tool I propose would be a pda (handheld computer) type tool that has thousands of different hair styles in it (much like thehairstyler.com, but on a mobile phone size pda instead).  You would be able to choose your customer's face shape, hair color, and show him digital images of whatever hairstyle you want, or get to the one that you think he is describing.  You could also have an-ever updating database of haircuts that are currently trendy that you could quickly and easily show your customers.  This would allow hairstylists to know exactly what the customer wants, so that he won't be disappointed when it comes out.

So, the question I have for you professionals out there, is would this type of device help you at all?  Do you have other, more important hairstyling problems that need addressing instead? And, what kind of improvements/features, do you think this tool should have.

Alright, thanks for reading all that!  And I would really appreciate a thoughtful reply.

Ben

I'm not a pro so I can't answer that question, but about your pda idea...they could have a computer screen instead and a digital camera in the shop and actually take a picture of the person and put a selection of hairstyles on them.  (There was a thread here recently where someone did that with photoshop on one of those before and after makeover photos, and actually made the after look better than the makeover did).

If they could do that in advance so people would have a real informed choice about what they wanted, that would certainly please the customer, and although I would imagine it would take more time to do all of this "consultation" on the computer, and require more learning time from the cosmetologist, it ought to make the cosmetologist happier in the end too because they would get less complaining and less "THIS is NOT what I wanted!". 

wow innovative!!!

...yeah, that's cool.