When good ideas lead to bad products

Once at a hotel, I brushed my teeth with a weird, bitter toothpaste. Certainly woke me up only to realise that I had brushed with a moisturizer. The root cause was a common mistake in innovation projects.

The journey for an idea to a product can exclude some perspectives.

The hotel had decided to use uniform tubes for tooth paste, shaving gel, and moisturizer. Same color, size, and appearance. Only the text printed was different. In a state when I'm literally waking up, I picked the wrong one. It's kind of interesting how the hotel would have made such a decision.

At large scales, it is tempting to minimize variations.

Imagine the hotel's sourcing just for a bathroom - brushes, paste, gels, moisturizers, soap, shampoo, conditioners, and so on. The number of SKUs at the hotel level are mind boggling. They can source all from different companies, which comes with its own challenges. Different prices, supply chain challenges, and product packaging. I believe this hotel chain would have tried to minimize the variation and also do some cost optimization.

One thing they may have forgotten to check is the customer usage.

In a fully awake state like at work, you may have spotted the product differences. There's no way anyone would mistake a moisturizer text for tooth paste. The question is did they test when the customer is groggy and absent minded.

User testing has to consider all possible ways in which they product will be used.

Typically, we have user groups test products and spot any issues. In addition to the test plan, it is critical to factor the operational environment of the user. Are they going to use your product in an office, on a phone, with family, alone, or in my case, in a bathroom in a half awake state?

Your customer journey mapping needs to capture the operational state of the user.

An extreme example is the usage of emergency products such as fire extinguishers or first aid kits. Their usage will be under stressful environments. If the instructions or the functioning isn't easy, then it's a failed product.

They journey of an idea to a product is an exciting one.

Make sure that you are ever conscious of the user's operational state.

That's it for today.

Happy Ideating!

Hemang.