When should I contract these services?

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 in the robot. In our work, we determine core needs. For example, what is the most time-consuming household tasks? That way, you can focus on the highest user need and get your technology to market faster. The rest can come with later releases.
• “Will this product really solve the user’s problem?” Many technologies have failed because the developers thought they had developed a solution to a user need, but found upon release that they had missed the mark. This is especially common if the expected customer base differs in important ways from the people making the technology. For example, young adult to middle-aged developers making products for older adults can easily miss concerns they might have (e.g., what if I trip on the short robot?). We work directly with your future customers to help you create something that truly fits their needs, resulting in product success.
• “How much money would people be willing to pay for this?” – This is important to know early. If we learn that people are not willing to pay more than $200 for the item, and your estimated cost is $5000 per item, you will know if you must look into different types of customers for whom the technology is more valuable or wait a few years until it would be more affordable to create technology. Conversely, if what customers are willing to pay is similar to the estimated cost, we can set a cost goal to inform decisions on the components for your product, to keep it affordable and purchasable.

When we work with teams during early- to mid-development, we focus on usability and robustness. We answer questions like:

• “Does the hardware meet user needs?” For example, does the speaker have the appropriate quality to be audible used in a given use case? Are the buttons placed such that a user can easily press the one intended and not accidentally press another? This saves development time, meaning that you don’t have to later reorganize the design to include the necessary hardware, or reprogram the technology to function with the new hardware.
• “Is the user workflow easy and intuitive?” Because engineers have spent so much time with technology, what seems intuitive for them is often not intuitive for naïve users. We learn what users need to understand and move easily through using the product, and pass tangible design recommendations to your team to make your product more effective for the end-user.
• “Can users accomplish their goals quickly?” We can reduce user time on task. This might look like consolidating information, reducing workflows that are no longer relevant, and more. Doing so increases customer satisfaction, time saved, and willingness to purchase or recommend the product.
• “Can our customers use this technology in the different contexts that they need it?” Engineering tests on the engineering floor usually look very different than tests in the environment the product will be used. Is the lighting different? The sound environment? Can the mobile robots roll over the types of terrain they will encounter – whether that is in a home (hardwood floors, carpets, or bumps that divide one room from another), in cities (bumps and cracks in sidewalks, puddles), or rugged natural terrain? We identify contexts of use, test use of robots in these contexts, and provide recommendations or design requirements, to decrease product errors in diverse situations that customers use the robot.

When we work with teams during late development, we focus on what is still possible to change to improve user experience and meet your timeline needs. We answer more specific questions about your program like:

• “What type of errors or failure cases are most important for us to prioritize fixing?” At this stage, you want to get your product out on time, and every minute counts. We help you prioritize which errors will more negatively affect the users and their trust of the product. We help prioritize what needs to be fixed before the release date and what can be fixed after, to decrease critical errors and build user trust.
• “Does my robot’s communication makes sense to users?” When robots communicate with lights and nonverbal sounds, it can help or hinder user understanding. Even word choice can affect what the user does next. We can recommend specific tweaks to this communication interface to help users understand how to interact with your product so they can understand your product’s value and increase purchases.
• “Does the menu organization support user understanding and ease-of-use?” How a menu is arranged can make the difference between a user quickly and easily finding what they need (invisible use) and getting lost and frustrated within the software. This can be a quick change that makes all the difference to product lovability, increasing purchases and use.