This semester, students from xLab teamed up with a global electronics manufacturer to evaluate how two of its consumer robots could be used in households in the United States.
The students were tasked with:
- Crafting key insights about the target demographic to drive further feature enhancements on the robots
- Developing consumer use cases
- Building a viable business model for the robots
Through conducting a series of surveys and interviews, the xLab students were able to gain an extensive understanding about what tasks potential users preferred. The team learned that while people are nervous about trusting their robots to cook, helping with the laundry could be useful.
After they got a sense of their potential users’ lives, the students led focus groups to help identify the most important features for different age groups, specifically teens and their parents. The focus groups helped identify what areas of life people would be interested in using a robot. Areas with the most interest were monitoring home security, educational enhancements, digital health monitoring, and laundry help.
The team then evaluated a variety of pricing models and made recommendations about pricing to the client team. As part of the pricing models, key partnerships and third parties were also evaluated to determine how to yield the most profit.
Lastly, the team presented their insights to the client and translated them into necessary feature enhancements that need to occur before the products can be brought into the U.S. market.