2022

Fang

Partnering with P&G to design a hygienic and sustainable oral hygiene product.

UX Research

Fang

Oral hygiene has long been dominated by traditional products, but consumers’ expectations are shifting as sustainability takes center stage. Companies are being challenged to rethink their offerings to align with these changing values.


As part of a student team, I partnered with Procter & Gamble to explore how a new oral hygiene product could better address consumer needs while embracing low-waste and sanitary design. Over ten weeks, we delved into user research, prototyping, and journey mapping to develop a concept that met P&G’s project brief. The result: Three rounds of user research, several brainstorms, and 20+ prototypes to arrive at a final design concept & recommendations on next steps.

Kick Off

The process began with a client kickoff where we met our client partners and received our project brief. We began with a desire to understand how sustainability and hygiene intersect in people’s daily lives. After completing secondary research to analyze consumer behaviors and explore the competitive landscape, we conducted 8 in-home interviews with users to gain deeper insights.

Ethnographic
Research

Through these conversations, we explored individuals’ daily oral hygiene practices, their definitions of sustainability, and the tensions they experience in either space. By observing behaviors and habits firsthand, we identified opportunities areas to dive into a bit deeper in our next round of research. Our team synthesized these insights to craft user journey maps, emotional and functional requirements, and key frameworks. Ultimately, we developed "How might we" statements to guide our design direction.

Need Finding

We ideated around five main 'how might we' statements. We put aside feasibility to allow ourselves to think of far-reaching concepts that do not exist today. Once we had ideas on the board, we extracted the key values and challenges of each. We brought together the best features from each to create multiple concepts for prototyping.


Synthesizing key observations, we dug deeper into existing tensions related to sustainability and hygiene in oral care and refined our emotional and functional requirements. Using these revised requirements, we brainstormed innovative solutions for specific touchpoints along the oral hygiene product experience. In a second round of in-person research, we presented 20 concepts to consumers through isolated ranking exercises, a step-by-step journey through touchpoints, and a mix-and-match exercise to identify the most effective and appealing design elements.

Design
Requirements

We ideated around five main 'how might we' statements. We put aside feasibility to allow ourselves to think of far-reaching concepts that do not exist today. Once we had ideas on the board, we extracted the key values and challenges of each. We brought together the best features from each to create multiple concepts for prototyping.


Synthesizing key observations, we dug deeper into existing tensions related to sustainability and hygiene in oral care and refined our emotional and functional requirements. Using these revised requirements, we brainstormed innovative solutions for specific touchpoints along the oral hygiene product experience. In a second round of in-person research, we presented 20 concepts to consumers through isolated ranking exercises, a step-by-step journey through touchpoints, and a mix-and-match exercise to identify the most effective and appealing design elements.

Prototyping

After extensive brainstorming, we landed on seven concepts to prototype and further test. We created prototypes from foam core, cardboard, 3D printing, and existing consumer products. Each prototype was unique in functionality and tackled our prompt from a different angle. I was involved and responsible for prototyping two of the concepts.


We began to envision our solution as a combination of enhancements across every touchpoint, with a particular focus on the use phase of the oral hygiene product. Over an intensive week and a half, we applied insights gathered from our consumer research to refine and iterate on key components, ultimately converging on our final concept.

End Product

We successfully designed a product that allowed for hygienic dispersal of a new to market oral hygiene product. The new packaging aims to maintain the status quo of oral hygiene products, while adding an element of fun to a seemingly mundane daily experience. Procter & Gamble is incorporating aspects of our research and solution into a project they already have in the works. We presented our findings to their specific project team following the conclusion of the course.

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