Consumer Shave Testing

Gillette currently makes a product that helps users exfoliate while shaving. The business side of the company asked “would this work Venus too?”

I enjoying designing products for consumer testing. This is the largest test I’ve ever done and I designed the study, built the products, and performed the interviews in a breakneck 4 month period.

Moreover, the unusual part about P&G is that consumer research entails (consensually) watching consumers in swimsuits shave with your products behind 1-way mirrors. (The picture below is the hallway where you can sit and watch consumers shave at a time).

I learned about what it takes to place a massive consumer test from both sides - research and engineering. Over these few months I:

• Created 300+ razor prototypes with 1500+ parts total

• Went through the legal channels to create confidentiality and safety documentation

• Enabled research with 100 consumers (interviewing about 50 myself)

• Performed 45 minute user interviews followed by 15 minutes of cleaning and set-up for the next group

• Helped with 4 synchronous interviews every hour in 4 fake one-way-mirror bathrooms

• Created qualitative insights from the data and interview quotes that we received

In the end, the data generated from my test was used to recommend next steps for the business.

Ultimately, the project was not continued - at least not in it’s current form - but that’s how R&D goes sometimes. We learned something, which was that the business should take a different direction.