This was a proctor and gamble sponsored project where we were tasked to do extensive user research and find insights for a product in femcare known for its accidental misuse by customers. We took these insights and research to brainstorm solutions and create a final prototype and pitch for our updated product idea.
User Research & Interview Guide Creation
Secondary Research
Affinity Mapping & Information Synthesis
Brainstorm Facilitation
MVP & Design Requirement
Low - Mid Fidelity Prototyping
Problem:
A product in the femcare space was being consistently misused. In such an important and sensitive product space, this is a large issue for users that causes uneeded stress and frustration. We were tasked to better understand why it was being misused and how we could design it for people to use it right the first time every time.
Secondary Research
We began by exploring the broader landscape through desk research
This helped us understand both context, user experiences and broader societal contexts surrounding femcare and menstruation. This helped prepare us for in person interviews and also helped us to create a more robust interview guide.
In-Home Interviews
To gain deeper insights, we conducted in-home interviews:
Created a comfortable environment given the topic’s sensitivity.
Asked open-ended questions about users' opinions, feelings, and experiences with menstruation and product use
Observed product use and analogous items digging into why users act one way or another.
Making Sense of the Stories
Back in our workspace, we transformed our findings into patterns using affinity mapping.
As the picture became clearer, we turned to our design tools:
Personas to represent the users
2x2 matrices to identify opportunities
Journey maps to chart their current common negative experience with the product we were tasked to update.
Finding Insights and Tensions using our synthesis
Really iterating and magnifying the product use in the journey map and understanding what mistakes were being made when handling the product in the context and environment it was being used and why they were being made through the psyche and perspective of the persona we were designing for helped us find insights to work off of
Beginning Ideation
With our insights in hand, we framed HMW (How Might We) to prompts to spark ideation.
First round On-site visits to better understand intuitive use and customer mental models
Our first on site interviews were used to answer more research questions. instead of having full functional prototypes for our interviewees to try out, we had activities
these activities included:
working with the interviewees to finish a storyboard
ranking current products and naming them,
observing their use of products with similar physical features and asking intentional questions about their particular use
Design Requirements and Brainstorming
Once we were able to collect and synthesize insights from our first round of on site visits, we were ready to update our journey maps, personas, and finally create our design requirements.
With the new design requirements in tow, and our frameworks to reference - we began to come up with tangible solutions that we could rapidly prototype
2nd round On-site visits and Low fidelity Prototype Usability testing
This was the first time we were able to have users try out the first ideas for our prototypes. These prototypes all had to be low fidelity but useable
this not only helped us understand what ideas were perceived as "good" or "bad" to our interviewees - but we were also able to understand more about how the people we were designing for interacted and understood the femcare product we were designing for by adding or changing certain features and silhouettes
