Snacks that move with me
DRIVING INNOVATION & DESIGN
Role: Sr. Design researcher + Project lead. Work completed while at Conifer Research
A CPG company was being outpaced by competitors in meeting the on-the-go needs of consumers. This research focused on identifying latent needs in the market and to drive growth and innovation in their On-The-Go packaging portfolio.
Methods + Approach:
User group consisted of families with children and single adults who were actively spending time outside of their homes and packed snacks for school and work.
Remote ethnography + Unboxing: An online community or participants completed a series of activities over the course of two weeks.
Week 1 Baseline: Designed to capture behaviors, priorities, and decision-making when it comes to snacking. Participants conducted an in-home scavenger hunt for products in and outside of the food category, provided demos of packing snacks for a day out of the home, visited a grocery or convenience store to perform a snack and packaging audit, gave a video tour of their pantries, and provided rich photo and written data.
Week 2 Unboxing and concept evaluation: — Participants were shipped 1 of 3 curated boxes of snack products (multi-pack, kids, or single-serve). Two client concepts were mixed into the box of products. Activities captured direct feedback on food and packaging attributes, of both form and function, and how these items fit into routines. Along with detailed markups and follow-up questions about products they were sent, participants had the chance to share their thoughts in an open community discussion. The final activity prompted participants to reflect on the study and the products they encountered to create their own designs for snack packaging.
Outcome:
Insights from remote ethnography fueled the development of concepts during a two-day, remote ideation session with the client team. This work established pain points and opportunity spaces within consumption pathways and the lifecycle of primary and secondary product packaging. The final component of the research deck was a catalog of actionable and feasible concepts driven by consumer insights.