Uncovering deep customer insights for moonshot innovation
Team & Role
- Team: Two Product Managers, Two Design Researchers, Advanced Engineering Team
- My Role: Lead Design Researcher
Project Highlights
- Rejuvenated product innovation by bringing in deep customer insights
- Ran quick experiments to prove/disprove concepts
- Successfully worked with the Advanced Engineering team to create some early prototypes
The Problem
For a long time, the window shades group at Lutron couldn’t do step function innovation. So, the President of the shades group allowed the UX team to develop insights and ideas that could lead to moonshot innovation.
He wanted to see innovation both in the process and the product.
The Methods
We started the process by doing a quick inventory check about how much we know about our key audiences. Next, we did an internal workshop to synthesize our understanding and develop some key HMW statements. Next, we did analogous idea brainstorming and picked some top ideas. We prioritized the ideas, created some details, and handed them over to the business teams.
In parallel, we did contextual inquiry and diary studies with high-end and luxury homeowners. We synthesized the learnings using affinity maps, personas, archetypes, jobs-to-be-done, and journey maps. Next, we did brainstorming and selected top ideas. Next, we used quick and cheap preto-types to test the ideas. We are currently working with the advanced engineering teams to implement the most promising ideas.
The Solution & Results
After our effort, we generated 12 quality ideas that could result in step function/moonshot innovation for Lutron. We were able to run experiments on the ideas to prove their desirability and viability. We are currently working with the advanced engineering teams to demonstrate their feasibility.
