designing a more delightful & convenient consumer experience by improving their dishwashing routine
If you have Swiffered your floors, been told to not eat a Tide Pod, or used the bathroom recently, Procter and Gamble has had a hand in it. The Wall Street Journal ranks them as the #1 consumer goods company and it is no wonder why; they are an omnipresent household name with an incredible range of products to back it up. In my studio design class at Northwestern University, P&G was our project sponsor, assigning us the task of improving the consumer experience in the dishwashing category.
This project is under a non-disclosure agreement from P&G and as a result, will be high-level to protect that agreement. Thank you for the understanding :)
Duration
September 2024 - December 2024
Northwestern University - Procter & Gamble Project Sponsorship
Profs. Helen von den Steinin & Jim Wicks, P&G Coaches
Skills
User Research
Market Research
Prototyping Skills (hands-on and CAD)
Human-Centered Design Process
Challenge:
GOAL: to improve the dishwashing experience and enhance consumer delight in their routine
This challenge was muti-faceted in nature, as the team had to keep in mind not only the human-centered design process, but also the business objectives of a multi-billion dollar corporation.
The Process
Outcome:
DELIVERABLE: a final design in the dishwashing space, presented at P&G headquarters in Cincinnati, OH in December 2024.
From my team’s work with Procter and Gamble, we worked to achieve objectives set forth in the design brief for the quarter as well as user-defined requirements.
Through the development of a journey map and personas, our team created a plan for consumer in-home visits in order to gain insights on their habits. From there, we refined our objectives from our learnings and developed a plan, as well as prototypes, for the first central site visit. At this stage, we gained valuable information from consumers about their perceptions and feelings. Using the newly-gathered information, we developed design requirements and user needs that were focused during the second, more specified central site visit. Through rounds of design reviews and the compilation of information gathered, the team spent the final weeks of the quarter developing and prototyping a final solution that met both P&G’s initial objectives as well as the user-defined requirements.
The Problem Space.
I wish I could say more about this problem because it was an interesting one. What I can say is that Procter and Gamble has a robust catalog of many different household products; my team had a focus on improving the dishwashing experience for users, aiming to spark more joy through the often mundane process. Turns out that dishwashing is the second most hated household chore (second only to cleaning the toilet), making this problem space an intriguing one to focus in on.
This sprint contains the development and refinement of a user persona and associated journey map used to inform what an in-home visit interview may look like. From there, the IHV insights were used to create jobs to be done, tensions, pains, gains, and insights during the consumer’s process. A first iteration of “How Might We” questions was also created.
Sprint 1
Sprint 1: In-Home Visits
Just like the name suggests, the in-home visits were in a user’s home. Although I had conducted human trials before, an in-depth, one-hour long user interview is completely different. My partner and I practiced on the Lyft ride over and that certainly helped; everyone on the team got firsthand experience with how to come in ready to listen, leaving our worldviews at the door as we aimed to dive deep into each person’s routines. These rounds entailed going through a homework assignment that consumers completed beforehand, a photo representation activity, and task observation with in-depth questions.
Behind the scenes…
Using Figma to create a journey map and some Sharpies & Post-Its, we further refined our persona based on what we found out from our in-home visits. This more specified persona was not made up anymore, but rather, was a compilation of trends we had seen throughout the initial interviewing process.
We didn’t just use Sharpies and Post-Its for the fun of it though (even if it was still fun). We did this to start to find themes among our users. Each person came from different backgrounds, but through the synthesis phase, we were able to determine key trends that we used to inform our prototypes and plan for the first central site visit.
After the refinement of key deliverables post-IHVs, it was time for Sprint 2. This phase entailed the preparation, commencement, and synthesis of the Central Site Visit 1, where consumers came to Northwestern’s Ford Engineering Building to participate in additional research. After this stage, a large midterm shareout presentation occurred with P&G coaches present both in-person and virtually.
Sprint 2
Prototype Testing: Round 1
During the first central site visit, our team entered with the aim to learn even more about our set of consumers’ habits, desires, irks, and preferences in their dishwashing routine. After the first round of interviews, we were all user interview experts (more or less) and able to gain valuable information from our set of users yet again. This stage gave us insights on not only what consumers explicitely said, but on what they didn’t outright say; digging deep was an instrumental part for our team’s process that helped us in our human-centered design process.
CSV1 entailed three different rounds, each designed with our “How Might We” questions in mind and being tailored to answer specific questions.
Although the prototypes our team made were low fidelity, made with hot glue, scrappy 3D prints, and things we found around the EDI studio, the consumers responded more honestly than they may have with a fully working prototype. By embracing the “quick and dirty” way of doing things, we found out what they truly thought about key features we were testing for; these insights informed further prototypes made for the second central site visit later on.
Behind the scenes…
Our team began our post-CSV1 updates by compiling a ton of data from the interviews. Not only did we spend time analyzing what was verbally said, but we took careful note of certain patterns we saw arise within the interview activities. From there, we were able to update our persona yet again into a more narrowed down version of our user. Rather than a simple journey map, our team created a process flow diagram to emphasize certain decision-making steps in the process. Based on everything we had learned up to this point, we created a set of functional & emotional requirements and created a 2x2 of what our solution aimed for.
We learned a lot from this stage, including the need to pivot; as is often the case in design, things don’t always go according to plan. However, our team was able to lean into this pivot, working through to pursue an interesting new design decision based not only on P&G’s business model, but on what we had learned from our consumers during their central site visit.
During this midterm check in, we conducted a progress report of sorts. With the Procter and Gamble leadership team there both in-person and virtually, it was essential that we were able to clearly share our findings throughout the quarter up to this point, including our refined persona and journey map, new and improved insights and How Might We questions, our design requirements, and our next steps for the remaining two sprints. Our presentation was followed by a brief Q&A as well as a meeting with our P&G coach to give us feedback and confirmation that we were on the right track!
The Midterm.
Now that we had an information base, it was time to develop prototypes based on the additional user feedback we gained from CSV1 for use in CSV2. During this stage, the second central site visit occured, where we were able to gain more specific insights to questions we were trying to solve for a final design for P&G.
Sprint 3
Awesome ideas: it all starts with a Post-It*
At this point in the design process, we were subject matter pros on dishwashing and our consumer habits, so it was time to use this information to inform another round of prototypes! We honed in on our top functional and emotional requirements and started sketching ideas based on each of the needs seperately. After grouping certain themes together, we chose a few approaches that were promising from each category and brainstormed more multifunctional prototypes based on those. This informed us of different methods we could use to acheive the same goal in creative and out-of-the box ways!
*not sponsored by Post-It, but might as well be for how many we used
I love CAD.
A mechanical engineer by trade, the physical realm of things is where my heart lies. Few things are cooler than going from an idea in my head to a hastily-sketched drawing on a Post-It to a rendered 3D model to a real thing I can hold in my hand. The user research and How Might We questions and new insights had all led up to this moment of creating informed prototypes to test even further during CSV2. Our prototypes went through a rigorous design review to be refined even further, ensuring requirements were effectively met, and then were produced.
Prototype Testing: Round 2
With our same group of participants as our first two rounds of testing, our team dove into the art of listening to people during the second round of on-site prototype testing.
With our newly brainstormed prototypes, each testing different presentations of key features, we made an in-depth interview guide for 8 hour-long interviews. Our participants ranked, explained, and messed with our prototypes, helping us get a better understanding of what we were really trying to achieve.
Sprint 4 is when things got exciting. During our two seperate rounds of design reviews, our team came up with several sketches to communicate our ideas, including not only how our final design would look, but how it would work. With the help of our awesome professors and TAs, our team narrowed down on our non-negotiables in a design and began preparation for our final push!
Sprint 4
The Final Design.
Including proprityary and consumable aspects to meet Procter and Gamble’s business model
Acknowledgements!
The BIGGEST thank you to my team, The Scrub-a-Dub-Dubs! This project would not have been the same without this team and I am so grateful for each of your wonderful ideas, work ethic, and fantastic personalities. Another huge thank you to Helen and Jim for being mentors throughout this entire process; this class being in the first quarter of the EDI program was daunting, but you both made it great. Thank you to Ashley and Erik for being great TAs! And finally, to the P&G coaches who made tackling this real-world design challenge a fabulous experience.