Now is the best time to reach out

This is our favorite time to start working with you on user experience. Ask yourself — how much time and money does it cost to develop a new product? If you're going to spend that many resources, would you like to know if your concept has a high chance of success — or if you could better use those resources on a different product?

When we work with teams early in the conceptualization phase, we focus on ensuring you are meeting a user need. We answer questions like:

• "How deeply do people care about this need?" Some needs that users have, they don't care strongly enough about to go out of their way to fix. We work directly with users to learn how important the need is to them. The stronger people care about it, the more they will purchase your product.
• "Is there a more core or specific need we can meet?" It might be tempting to make a robot to complete every household chore — but that would require many intense and diverse capabilities. We determine core needs, so you can focus on the highest user need and get your technology to market faster.
• "Will this product really solve the user's problem?" Many technologies have failed because developers thought they had developed a solution to a user need, but found upon release that they had missed the mark. We work directly with your future customers to help you create something that truly fits their needs.
• "How much money would people be willing to pay for this?" If we learn that people are not willing to pay more than $200, and your estimated cost is $5,000, you will know early whether to seek different customer types or wait until production costs fall. Conversely, knowing what customers will pay can help set cost goals that inform component decisions.

Whether or not you have thought deeply about the user experience yet, this is a great time to consider it. This is the optimal time to work on making the technology easy, intuitive, and robust to context — before you have completed the product. Our learnings about user needs will inform hardware choices, workflow needs, and more. Designing for users from the start means you don't have to spend extra time and money changing hardware and software design later.

• "Does the hardware meet user needs?" Does the speaker have the appropriate quality for the given use case? Are buttons placed so a user can easily press the intended one? This saves development time — you don't have to later reorganize the design or reprogram the technology to function with new hardware.
• "Is the user workflow easy and intuitive?" Because engineers have spent so much time with technology, what seems intuitive to them is often not intuitive to naïve users. We learn what users need to understand and move easily through the product, and pass tangible design recommendations to your team.
• "Can users accomplish their goals quickly?" We can reduce user time on task by consolidating information, removing irrelevant workflows, and more — increasing customer satisfaction and willingness to purchase or recommend the product.
• "Can customers use this in the different contexts they need it?" Engineering tests on the engineering floor look very different from real-world use. We identify contexts of use, test in those contexts, and provide recommendations to decrease product errors in the diverse situations customers actually encounter.

If you are approaching a release date, this is still a good time to consider user experience. Whether you have explored it earlier in development or not, considering it before release can meaningfully boost your product's success. At this late stage, we work closely within your constraints — identifying what can still be modified to provide the best possible user experience within your timeline.

• "What errors or failure cases should we prioritize fixing?" At this stage, every minute counts. We help you prioritize which errors will most negatively affect users and their trust in the product — what must be fixed before release and what can come after.
• "Does my robot's communication make sense to users?" When robots communicate with lights and nonverbal sounds, it can help or hinder user understanding. Even word choice affects what users do next. We recommend specific tweaks to the communication interface to help users understand and trust your product.
• "Does the menu organization support ease of use?" How a menu is arranged can make the difference between a user quickly finding what they need and getting lost and frustrated. This can be a quick change that makes all the difference to product lovability — increasing purchases and use.