Case Study: Research That Delivered
In the mid-1990s, Procter & Gamble wanted to grow its cleaning business. Rather than start in a lab, P&G and the design firm Continuum sent researchers into people’s homes to simply watch them clean. That fieldwork produced the insight that led to the Swiffer - which went on to become a billion-dollar product line. It is a textbook example of research reshaping a product for the better.
Watch, do not ask
If you ask people how to improve mopping, they ask for a better mop. By watching instead, the team saw something people never articulated - and it pointed to an entirely different product.
How the research reshaped the product
Click each step to reveal what happened.
The lesson
The Swiffer is the case for fieldwork in one product. The winning insight - that people waste effort cleaning the mop, and dirt clings to a cloth - was invisible in surveys and focus groups. It could only be seen. Research that goes to the real context, and watches rather than asks, changes what you build.
Discuss
Where might watching your customers - instead of asking them - reveal a reframe as powerful as ‘eliminate the bucket’?
Try this at work this week
Pick one routine task your product supports and watch three people do it. Look specifically for wasted effort and workarounds. One of those is probably your Swiffer-sized reframe.
Sources
- Continuum (now EPAM Continuum), Swiffer case study documentation.
- Procter & Gamble, Swiffer product history.
- Global Innovation Institute (GInI), Foundations of Innovation body of knowledge.