Jeremy Fu


iRobot

Smart Home 

Partnered with iRobot to investigate the how iRobot’s products might be a thoughtful partner in the home through smart home connectivity. 

My Role
  • Design Strategy

Brief

iRobot’s vision is to build the world’s most thoughtful robotics and intelligent home innovations that make life better. 

How might iRobot be a thoughtful partner in people homes through smart home connectivity?
Opportunity Space

There are an average of 9.5 connected devices in the home today that are only as smart as we invest the time to program them to be. iRobot wants to transition from a company that builds products to one that builds partnerships.

Research Process
We used a variety of research methods to understand needs and pain points

Secondary Research

  • Competitive Analysis

  • Radical Looking

  • Smart Home Players

  • Cleaning Trends

Primary Research

  • 10 DScout Interviews

  • 5 Informal Interviews

We sought to understand the past and current experiences of smart device users, and what gives them peace of mind at home
  1. What is your relationship with your smart home devices?

  2. When do you feel comfortable or uncomfortable at home?

  3. What does “Peace of Mind” in the home mean to you?

Leading Insight
People often want to disconnect from actively thinking about or doing household tasks so they use smart home devices to relieve mental and physical burden. However, smart devices often don’t work properly or fit in to a person’s daily routine, creating disruption and amplifying stress.
Painpoints

During our user interviews the biggest pain point that emerged was our consumer’s feeling a lack of control over their home environment. This feeling stemmed from three key factors:

Exhaustion
By the end of the week, I am exhausted and need alone time to do nothing. On Sundays, I grab my iPad and lock myself in the guest bedroom.
Sherrie, MD
Disruption
If I find mice poop, then I have to figure out where they are coming from and how to stop them. It messes up my day and commonly my week.
Jessica, NY
Preoccupation
I easily get side tracked with household to-do’s, because I see them while I am working from home. I never feel like I am able to focus 100% of my time.
Jon, MN
Framework

We created a framework to further communicate our ideas. The current iRobot product focuses on users being able to control the robot. This is true of most products on the market.

We see a limited opportunity in increasing a user’s control of the robot. 

We see a much larger opportunity in increasing a the robots understanding of the user’s needs. Through iRobot HyperSense we want to fill in the gap so that iRobot devices can understand the user’s needs and perform actions proactively.

Value Proposition
People often want to disconnect from actively thinking about or doing household tasks so they use smart home devices to relieve mental and physical burden. However, smart devices often don’t work properly or fit in to a person’s daily routine, creating disruption and amplifying stress.
Ecosystem

We’ve created an ecosystem to showcase iRobot Hypersense. 4 buckets of features improve life for our family. These are: personalization to the home environment, limiting daily routine disruptions, reducing overwhelming to-do lists, and having a safe home.

Framework
  • Competitive athletes who are interested in enhancing their performance
  • New to having a nutrition and hydration regimen
  • Benefit from specific daily recommendations
Specific

recommendations

Reminders

before & after

Personalized

nutrition & hydration

Motivation

to keep on track

Sports Nutritionist
  • Sports Nutritionists aiming to provide athletes with cutting edge information about recovery
  • Have athletes who could benefit from daily support
  • Interested in learning which athletes have highest hydration needs
  • Track progress and statistics 
Value

in each test

Convenient

fast & easy

Partner

in the process

Data

to assist athletes

Business Model

This value proposition can be applied in three categories: Collegiate Programs, Premium Gyms, and Virtual Fitness.

We realized a nutritionist is only one type of influencer that might affect a customer’s decision to use the Gx system, and can be found as collegiate nutritionists to nutritionists at gyms.

We want to propose an expansion on Gatorade’s current strategy by partnering with collegiate teams and external gyms

By partnering with collegiate teams Gatorade can leverage their existing partnerships at D1 schools, becoming the daily insight partner of sports nutritionists. At the same time there is the opportunity to enter the DII and DIII and high school sports market to fill the sports nutrition gap in that segment.

By entering into this partnership, Gx can increase awareness of their product, while solving a key pain point for athletic programs—helping new athletes understand and follow their nutrition and hydration plans despite only meeting 2-3 times with a sports nutritionist each year.

Beyond collegiate programs we see the additional opportunity to partner gyms which have trainers or sports nutritionists in-house. Using this partnership model will help the casual athlete or an athlete training for a competition for the first time to understand where sweat testing fits into their routine and how a nutrition and hydration program can help them have a competitive edge.

We see an additional opportunity to leverage the trends in virtual fitness and home fitness to better understand their athlete’s needs. For gyms and virtual fitness the Gx system will give nutritionists and trainers objective data to provide hyper-personalized, specific feedback in a community setting.

Reflection
  • Learned to manage a team of 5 from a diversity of backgrounds and majors
  • How to articulate a clear value proposition and business model driven by human-centered insights
  • Creating new value for an existing product
  • Client communication with the Gatorade team
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