Setting the taste direction for a new hot drink

The question

A beverage company had prototypes of a new hot drink that varied in strength, sweetness, flavor and mouthfeel, and its developers were planning the next round.

They needed to know which of those differences people could taste, which mattered to them, and what would make the drink feel like a treat. Liking alone would say which prototype did better without saying what to change.

Our approach

People tasted in small groups of friends, because describing taste is personal and comes more easily among people you know, who will also say when they disagree.

A drink already on the market gave everyone a common reference and a starting point, and a warm-up let people practice describing a drink before anyone was asked to judge one.

Alongside the whole drink, from look and smell to aftertaste, short shots isolated single qualities, and people chose from sensory and association cards to build their own set of questions.

What the team came away with

A sensory design brief gave the developers a direction element by element, from first aroma to aftertaste, with each element set as a design challenge to solve.

With it came a read of every prototype, how each came across in the cup against the common reference, and advice for the drink’s manufacturer on where each prototype could move.

People had described the drink in words they chose themselves, so the brief gave the developers language they could taste against when the next prototypes were ready, from the first look in the cup to the last of the aftertaste.