Understanding user perceptions of a component of sporting goods
Background: A B2B manufacturer of sporting goods came to us wanting to know more about trends, motivations, pain points and excitement factors related to a category of sports goods. The research was focused on understanding consumer needs, perceptions and language in order to guide new product development.
Project timeline: 3 months
Approach:
An online ethnography was used to survey explicit and implicit user perceptions related the category of goods, including analysis based on the different types of brands. Tens of thousands of consumer statements were reviewed, and over 2,000 user quotes were collected for detailed qualitative analysis. Consumer solutions for a variety of issues were included to highlight areas for improvement.
A product life cycle as used by consumers was outlined, to show how consumers interact with a product over time. This included aspects related to use, maintenance and storage and highlighted actions that consumers take along these different stages, as well as points in this life cycle during which the product is damaged or underperforms. The main pain points were also mapped along the phases of the product lifecycle to depict priorities for design improvements.
A competitor analysis (in this case, also partner analysis due to the nature of B2B businesses) was conducted to identify user perceptions of different brands and products on the market.
Inspirational best practice examples and trends were also collected in order to guide the design stage.
Personas were used to evaluate fit to brand, and identify future areas of development. Personas included consumer goals, excitement factors, pain points, age range, price willingness, relevant brands, understanding of lenses, purchase location, types of products used, buying patterns, touchpoints, brand fit, decision-making and attitudes towards similar products.
A customer journey highlighted important steps the users take and areas of most confusion. Phases in the customer journey covered awareness, general research, specific research, purchase location, wear, maintenance, storage, customer service, evaluation and purchasing of replacement. Consumer needs, motivation, touchpoints, pain points, confusion levels, consumer solutions and opportunities and excitement factors were mapped out across these steps in the journey.
Role: I led the project including all stages from the kick off to the final presentation. I conducted the English portion of the research and led other team members to conduct the German portion of the online ethnography. I arranged frequent meetings to make sure that our research focus was aligned.
Outcome: Together with the team, we outlined several consumer pain points that could be improved in future product development. We also identified consumer language that could be used to communicate back to consumers and to clarify confusion related to understanding the product. Posters of the personas and the customer journey were printed for different departments of the company in order to encourage the company to maintain focus on consumer needs during product development and launch.
Please note that the images above are demonstrative of visualizations, and do not reflect data collected.