How User Research Helped Delta Bring The Right Product to Market

It isn’t easy to think deeply about something we take for granted. Think about how your life is affected by common objects, like a spoon or doorknob. You use them every day, but you may come up blank if asked to explain their value. Though people don’t actively think about the value of household objects, they can be innovated to simplify our lives.

Delta Faucet knows this, so they update the home faucets you use every day to make routine tasks easier, faster and more seamless. They embrace the things we take for granted, and make our lives easier where we didn’t know we needed it.

Problem

Armed with a product vision, Delta wanted to create a voice-enabled kitchen faucet that had smart capabilities: powering off/on, measuring and temping water all through voice commands. For users to easily set up, track and manage their smart faucets, Delta created an app. The app’s user interface was outdated and needed a refresh.

Delta came to Innovatemap to improve the app’s user interface. To do this successfully, we first needed to understand how people used the product through user research.

Solution

To understand faucet usage patterns and interactions with smart home products, we conducted thorough user research.

Our research team asked participants to track all daily interactions with their kitchen faucet. Faucet usage is a subconscious task because people don’t think about it while it’s happening. Asking participants to track their faucet usage turned it into a conscious task, which primed users to talk to us about what could be improved. After discussing their usage, we asked research participants to rate the capabilities of their Delta faucet on cool factor, usefulness, and the frequency they would use it.

From research, we learned that Delta needed to more clearly identify the product’s value, benefits and use-cases. We activated these insights in the product design through the app’s onboarding. Research insights influenced Delta’s product marketing strategy because they understood the value and benefits users look for in the product. Now, Delta understands which messaging will resonate with buyers.

Takeaways

Through user research, we discovered how Delta’s product adds value to real people so Delta can translate those benefits into their product marketing strategy. A product that doesn’t add value to users is not innovative — a better product must be marketable, valuable and usable. User research helped Delta create an easy-to-use app for installation, saved time and money, and helped resonate with buyers in market.

Learn more about how our product experts can help you understand your users.