Starting point
They knew the category and the shelf. Next, the bathroom.
The brand had a retail launch planned and a clear view of the competition. It wanted to know the people who would use the product: someone tired at 10pm, a parent whose two children like different things, anyone dropping a habit they know is good for them.
We joined as an external research arm, so their team could keep building.
What we found
The product underneath the product is a routine that holds.
Our most useful question was the plainest: walk us through your morning and evening. People talked less about the object than the moments around it: whether to bother, and whether it felt worth it.
That reframed the brief. The brand was making an object. People were buying a routine they could keep. It rested on a few small, specific conditions that had little to do with how the product performed on paper. When one went missing, the habit went too, however good the product was.
What those conditions are belongs to the client. Several were not what we expected, and they changed what the product needed to be good at.
Where we went
A map the team could design around.
We wrote the interview protocol, ran the interviews with product samples in hand, and read every transcript twice: for what people said, and for what they did. Instead of a document, we built an interactive map. It placed each finding on three axes: the object or the world around it, function or feeling, and how much evidence stood behind it.
That third axis was the leap. It separated what the brand could brief a designer on today from what was still one person's voice, so the map was honest about its limits. The research is theirs, so the map is encrypted at rest on a private address. We built the map, the transcript passes and the encryption with AI in days, not weeks, so the budget went to talking with people.
What's next
Research continues through the launch.
The first round is already shaping the product. Further rounds will follow as the design settles, so the last decisions before retail will be made with people in the room.