ustwo

Brief

Designed and co-led generative and evaluative user research around cleaning attitudes and home environments in Japan. In close collaboration with ustwo, we spoke with users and analyzed competitors in the market to generate insights, ideate concepts and provide app recommendations for our client. This allowed them to understand the unique context of homes in Japan and understand usability issues in their current app.

（Qualitative user interviews focused on environment and attitudes around robot cleaners.）

Purpose

Although our client had conducted market research, they felt they were missing necessary day-to-day context to understand how users cleaned their homes and how they used robot cleaners in general.

Knowing homes had small square footage that could be difficult to navigate for robots, and tatami mats which required different cleaning methods, how did their app address these concerns? Did users find their features useful?

Process

To address these questions, we interviewed twelve Japanese users and asked them about their cleaning habits, their environment and their attitudes around robot cleaners.

（Process we used to generate insights.）

We spoke with users about their living environment, their experience with their current robot cleaner (if they owned one), and their day-to-day rituals around cleaning. We then prepared a localized prototype of the companion app to clarify usability issues and to validate whether it was possible to release the app as-is. All interviews were conducted in Japanese.

In parallel, we conducted a DIY competitive analysis of other robot cleaners in Japan. The research team tried out popular robot cleaners and summarized our experience over the course of two weeks. We researched the reputation and reviews of each of these robot cleaners through big box retailers’ websites to understand as a whole the strengths and weaknesses of each cleaner according to their customers.

(Left: Our synthesis board used for data analysis. Right: Mapping patterns to insights.）

Output & Outcome

We collected data from the interviews in a shareable digital board and synthesized it to identify patterns, user insights and types of user attitudes. From these insights, we generated sketches of future “to-be” concepts and application recommendations. Our collective storytelling drew the client into the daily lives of the users and encouraged them to empathise with the issues and challenges they faced.

The report played an important role in determining the client's strategy within the Japanese market, and included feedback that pointed out key usability blockers. Though the project was conducted with a short turnaround, the client was impressed with the depth and quality of both the analysis and the recommendations presented.