In-Home Contextual Inquiry for a Gaming Accessory Brand
The challenge
They knew their customers were passionate. What they didn't know was what that passion looked like in practice, in the actual spaces where people played. Survey data told them what customers said they cared about. Nobody had gone to look at what they actually did.
What we did
Sometimes the best way to understand a customer is to show up where they actually live.
For this project, I conducted in-home contextual inquiry interviews with target users in their own spaces, including apartments and dorm rooms, to understand how gaming product fit into their daily lives. Not how they described their habits in a survey, but what those habits actually looked like in practice.
In-home research surfaces things a lab or a Zoom call never will. You see the workarounds people have built, the environments they're working in, and the gap between what they say they do and what they actually do. That gap is usually where the most useful findings live.
The research led directly to an innovation workshop where the team identified entirely new product directions they hadn't previously considered. Some of the participant language found its way into marketing messaging. The team also started to focus on new market segments that we learned about in the research.
What changed
The research surfaced market segments the team hadn't been building for. Some of the language participants used in sessions found its way directly into marketing copy. The findings also led to an innovation workshop where the team identified product directions they hadn't previously considered.