Deciding what goes into a consumer technology roadmap

The question

The company’s products competed in a crowded category, so its next portfolio had to stand apart in ways buyers would choose.

Two teams were planning that portfolio together, and whatever view of users came out of the work had to be one both would accept.

Our approach

The ground rule came first: before fieldwork began, both teams agreed what evidence they would trust.

The first layer of evidence asked which needs exist. We put the archetypes from earlier qualitative work to a quantitative test, measured how needs cluster across them, and translated each cluster into the features that would serve it.

The second asked what the portfolio could be. In a conjoint exercise, users made the trade-offs the teams had been making on their behalf, with features, designs and prices competing on one screen, as they do when people shop.

On top of it we built a bespoke market simulator, so the team could assemble a portfolio, price it and set it against the competitive set before committing to development. Every output is a preference modeled under the conditions tested, and never a market forecast.

What the team came away with

Engineering and marketing had one shared set of evidence: the archetypes, each linked to the features that would serve it, and the conjoint model with its simulator.

The simulator was built so the team could retest its options as the market moves, and plan the roadmap from the same evidence.