Skills: Design Research, In-context user interviews, Prototyping, Design Communication
Type: Product Design (Consumer Packaged Goods)
Our task
Procter and Gamble tasked our team to explore products, services and user experiences within one of their consumer packaged goods categories. Over the course of 10 weeks, our teams performed research and identified consumer tensions that drove the design, testing and iteration of prototypes. At the end of 10 weeks, our team presented a final prototype complete with potential branding and packaging that addressing the user tensions and pain points and identified during our consumer research.
Procter and Gamble Brands
Understanding the User in Context
To fully understand the journey and experiences of the user, our team visited users in their homes to see how they used their P&G products in context. Seeing the products in the context in which they were used proved invaluable, allowing us to make observations and gain insights that would have been difficult to identify in an environment unfamiliar to the users. In total, our team conducted 8 in home interviews which including abstract and metaphorical exercises and user demonstrations in addition to the more routine question and answer segment.
SynThesis and Prototyping
Our 8 in home interviews, generated a wealth of information that was too broad and raw to immediately generate focused and effective brainstorming and prototyping. We gathered all the information, posted it on boards and identified themes, mapped the user experience, and considered the meaning of inconsistencies between the words of the users and their actions. Using these themes and observations we generated a series of user insights, which we used to drive brainstorming. We generated 8 promising concepts and prototyped them, building with only as much fidelity as necessary to answer our questions. We put these prototypes in front of users, observed them interact with them, and asked questions furthering of potential solutions.
Iteration and Final Prototyping
We took the information gathered from our user testing and iterated. Repeating the process of synthesis, brainstorming, prototyping and user testing, using the new insights and questions generated from the first round of testing to guide us. This iteration of higher fidelity prototypes and user feedback, drove the design of the high fidelity final prototype that was presented to Procter and Gamble.
Results and Takeaways
At the end of the our final presentation, our team discussed our work further with of P&G client and handed off all our prototypes. We do not yet know if and how our work will be incorporated into future Procter and Gamble products, however we are excited to follow the categories over the next few years to see. The resources provided by a company like Procter and Gamble allowed us the perfect opportunity to practice our skills as designers, and gave us experience working with a larger corporate client that will be invaluable in future design projects.