Business

Autonomous innovation across borders

Jan 8, 2024

By

Aaron Cannon

The challenge

Board of Innovation is an innovation consulting firm who helps some of the world’s biggest companies create new products. Earlier this year, a team working for Fortune 50 CPG brand had some product concepts that they needed to test with real people in the field.

The challenge was that their ‘market’ was in fact 3 different countries who speak three different languages — and they had an incredibly tight deadline. They needed to conduct qualitative research at a scale and speed that isn’t even close to possible with traditional research tools.

"Imagine conducting 150 hours of interviews in three languages — it is not only expensive but also time-consuming…plus, analyzing and labeling data from such an amount of data is a big concern, and Outset just makes it simple." — Leo Velásquez, Senior Experiment Designer @ Board of Innovation

The Solution

Board of Innovation worked with Outset to run over 250 interviews in just a few days across three different countries (and four languages). The team set up their interview guide in Outset and included over 15 different concepts to test with Outset’s Voice Response interview mode, where respondents use their voice to chat with AI.

"[Voice Response] allows us to capture fresher insights from an organic conversation with the consumer." — Leo Velásquez, Senior Experiment Designer @ Board of Innovation

Respondents were shown visual stimuli of the new product concepts and asked probing follow-up questions about their preferences, motivations, and potential uses of these new products. The interview adapted to the language of preference in real time without any additional setup.

By the numbers:

The Results

Leo and the team not only achieved the scale and speed that was never possible, but Outset also labeled, tagged, and pulled quotes automatically. Outset’s AI synthesis identified and measured key themes across the population and pulled 3+ languages into a single English report.

Ultimately, Outset’s AI moderated research tools allowed the team and their client to more deeply understand disparate sets of consumers and with that, build better, smarter products for the world.

"[Outset] saves hours of labor and allows us to spend our time on what really matters, which is understanding the consumer and designing products, rather than on countless hours of interviewing and labeling." — Leo Velásquez, Senior Experiment Designer @ Board of Innovation