Setting R&D priorities for a personal care device

The question

The company’s R&D team needed to know what to fix now on its new device, and what to develop further out.

It asked what women want from a device like this, and how the test device performed in real use. With instructions still to be written, it also wanted to see what women would do with it unguided.

Our approach

We gave no guidance on how to use the device. That let the R&D team see what a first-time user would do by instinct, before any instructions reached her.

Women lived with it at home, filming themselves opening it and using it, first and again later, walking us through their beauty routines and keeping an online diary.

The most expressive women from the trial then joined co-creation sessions, where metaphors and product stimuli helped them describe how the ideal experience should feel. Co-creation suited the brief because the R&D team wanted direction for the longer term as well as fixes for the current device.

What the team came away with

An immersive debrief brought both stages together for the R&D team: how the device performed in women’s homes, what they did with it unguided, and the ideas from co-creation.

The sessions produced product ideas from the women themselves and opportunity areas for the longer term, so the team had material for its development work now and further out.