USER PROBLEM

Bathtime carries with it a load of emotions. From fun bubbles to messy tantrums—parents’ hands are full when managing bathtime with their children. And as children age, bathtime starts to take different shapes. Parents want to continue to choose natural products for their children as they age up, but the choice isn’t easy and they’ve got a lot on their hands.

BUSINESS CONTEXT

With a saturating market for natural baby products, the Babyganics brand was seeking growth by capturing new users, and increasing the lifetime value of each user. To do so, they wanted to explore expanding its baby bath line to a new line of bath products for toddlers and kids. But, they weren’t sure that approach would actually provide value for parents of older children, and if it did, what critical aspects to deliver in these new products.

APPROACH

To start, the team needed to understand what unique problems (if any) parents of toddlers and kids needed to solve as it related to bath time. We needed to know, as babies age up, what distinct needs crop up that our baby bath products were failing to solve. To do this, I needed to understand the role of bath—for parents, and for children—in the context of a day, and how if at all, that differs by age. What job does bath fulfill, and how does that differ between parents of babies, toddlers, and kids? What does their routine look like, what happens before, what happens after bath?

While I designed a research plan centered on in-homes to capture sub-conscious behaviors around bathtime, the pandemic forced alternate plans and I opted for mobile in-context diaries to execute the research. In retrospect, this allowed us to respect parents’ busy lifestyles and unpredictability, while still getting close to bathtime moments.

To better understand the competitive set, I recruited parents who used not only Babyganics, but products from our target competitive set. I designed unmoderated research tasks with the intention of delivering 3 high level bath time journey maps for our parents babies/newborns, toddlers, and kids, and a clear articulation of the specific emotions, struggles, and needs that parents express at each stage.

OUTCOMES

The research revealed that parents of children at different stages did appear to have unique needs and desired outcomes. For example, a desire to embrace kids’ newfound independence and decision-making became clear from parents of children 6+, which the base Babyganics line could not deliver on.

I created video montages from the diaries to bring the experience to life, capturing the raw emotions parents felt minutes after putting their children to bed after bathtime. These successfully helped senior leaders empathize with parents, internalize insights, and quickly make product decisions.

Not only did the product team leverage these learnings in each aspect of the Tots and Kids product’s design—from formulation, to fragrance choices, and structural design, the learnings became central to the overall Babyganics portfolio strategy, helping the team form a compelling retail sell-in story for the launches in the context of their flagship Baby portfolio. In preparation for launch, the marketing team was also able to leverage the learnings to direct content and narrative, and make decisions on key benefits to communicate.

RESPONSIBILITIES & KEY ACTIVITIES

Jobs-to-Be-Done
Mobile Diaries
Consumer Journey Mapping