Present a "differentiated shopping experience for the unassisted retail sales floor". The process involved primary and secondary market research, ideation, and the creation of a working prototype to be presented to management at Whirlpool's headquarters in Benton Harbor, MI.
In order to get our heads around our challenge, we took some time for some hastily assembled anthropological market research. As only about half of us had actually shopped for a major appliance before, even the "experienced" ones in our group were dismayed at what we found at virtually all of the big box stores we came to.
An overabundance of options, very little differentiation, and no one to answer our questions. We informally interviewed fellow shoppers who were, for the most part, as lost as we were. When we were able to flag down employees and sales people, they were generally friendly, but didn't know any more than we did. As we had started with a brief education from our initial trip to the Maytag/Whirlpool headquarters in Benton Harbor, we often had far more knowledge than the sales people who were there to help us. Making the challenge especially interesting, there are severe limitations placed on the kinds of media used on and around specific models of washer and dryer.
We took our primary and secondary research and began to create three personas. The group I was in was assigned the "Übermom" persona. From our discussions, the Übermom (Super Mom) takes the idea of the Soccer Mom one step further. As a working mom with a busy family the Übermom is looking for performance, but also needs to see how the new appliance fits into her lifestyle. In the attention-gettng video as part of our solution, stains attack the viewer as if they had a mind of their own. The Duet is positioned to be the hero, or solution to the myriad messes that life throws at the Übermom's family in any given day. The desired implication is that if you have the Duet system in your arsenal of tools, you don't have to worry about stains and laundry anymore, and you can just "relax". Your time is again your own to spend with your family.
With a background in Video Production and Post Production, I directed and edited the attention getting video for the project. The concept and storyboard was written by Cynthia Naughton, one of my group members. The video depicts a day in the life of a busy family, from the perspective of the stains that "come our way".
It started with that first cup of spilled cofee dropping off the kids at school. It fast forwarded to afternoon Soccer practice, followed by spagetti and tomato sauce for dinner. The messes of the day are resolved with the Whirlpool Duet washer and dryer, giving our Übermom the rest of the night off.
We borrowed a video camera that could record 60 frames per second, and using about thirty dollars worth of food and potting soil, recorded the video on campus at CCS. Given that we effectively had no budget to put the video together, I think it was quite successful.
As this camera was on loan, we used an old sliding glass door window that was in my house when we bought it. It was easy to clean and made for an effective shield from flying coffee, spaghetti and sauce, as well as a slurry made from water, potting soil and used coffee grounds. As you can see from the right, the blue tarp was used to house our mud and was just out of shot. It took about a half a day to get all the shots just right. Looking back, it would have been better with a higher end camera, but sometimes it just comes down to making due with what you have.
When presenting our ideas to Whirlpool, they were very happy with the video. While our team did not "win" the blessings of the Whirlpool team, (yes, at this point it did feel like a reality TV show), we felt good about our overall solution.
As the shopper passes by, a motion sensor activates a short 30 second video which highlights activities of 'a day in the life' of an "ubermom", our persona focus:
Contributions included research, ideation, video production, video direction and editing.
After the video, the kiosk plays an easy to use interactive touch screen program which helps the shopper answer some basic questions to advise them on which Whirlpool Duet washer/dryer unit to purchase. At the end, there would be an option to call over a salesperson, or to make an online purchase.
