Four accessories in development, each with its own question

The question

A consumer technology company’s product and marketing teams had several accessories moving through development at once, and wanted answers while each could still change.

For an existing product’s next generation, the question was which value proposition should lead, and for whom. For a new device, it was who would value it and how to explain it. For the two prototypes, it was whether people could set them up and trust them first time. One method for all of them would have answered some badly.

Our approach

Each question got the method it called for: which proposition should lead needed a quantitative test across audiences, and whether people could set up a prototype needed watching them try.

For the products still being defined, competing value propositions and price were tested across audiences, and the new device’s concept was tested in a second market as well. In one set of prototype labs, the client’s product and marketing colleagues watched the sessions themselves, so they saw first use as it happened.

What the team came away with

For every accessory, the product and marketing teams had evidence on who it was for, what it needed to say and what its first use had to get right.

Each answer reached the teams at the point in development it was meant to inform, from the choice of what to lead with to set-up details a prototype could still change.

Because each question had its own method, the teams could weigh a survey number and a lab observation for what each could and couldn’t tell them.