Innovation Strategy:
Smart TVs as Family Focal Points

CLIENT:
LG

RELATIONSHIP:
Agency, freelance

PROJECT DURATION:
3 Months

OBJECTIVE:
Develop a robust understanding of smart TV owner behaviors to anticipate emerging needs; Identify net-new user experiences that add value for TV owners and increase long-term value from an owner relationship perspective, and design and refine those concepts for delivery

RESULTING IMPACT:
Word spread throughout LG of our human-centered approach to new product design, and the agency secured repeat business from different business units within their global organization.

TEAM:
Client: Director of Product Innovation, Senior Consumer Insights Manager, Consumer Insights Lead, Director of Ownership Experience
Agency: Director of Product Strategy, User Research Lead (myself)

RESPONSIBILITIES:
I led end-to-end strategic research, including sample definition, live moderation, survey design and facilitation, and design sprint facilitation to deliver new concepts.

FOUNDATIONAL QUALITATIVE INTERVIEWS

I designed a generative, foundational qualitative study to demystify smart TV and device behaviors in the home, and identify unmet needs for TV owners. I collaborated with the client to align on the following study design, goals and recruiting criteria.

METHODOLOGY DETAILS

Method: A blind, generative, qualitative study of live user interviews with a total of (n=21) smart TV owners

Session Duration / Time in-field: 60 minutes / 2 weeks       

Key Screener Criteria:

  • 50% LG TV owners, 50% owners of other TV brands, who purchased at least one TV within the last two years

  • Participants had a mix of streaming devices and smart systems such as Alexa and Ring.

  • Participants reflected persona types already established at LG.

  • Additional screener criteria included HHI, gender, employment, and popular US demographics for LG.

ABRIDGED LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Home Layout, Inventory:

  • Why do owners adopt the different smart devices in their homes?

Smart TVs & Streaming Media Players:

  • Why do owners adopt SMPs? How do they discover new content?

Multi-tasking with the Smart TV:

  • How does TV use factor into different parts of daily life, such as facilitating hobbies or other interests?

Future & Unmet Needs:

  • What do you expect smart TV to do next? Are there unmet, activity-specific needs?

FOUNDATIONAL INSIGHTS

We uncovered 4 major theme areas, 6 key insights, and 4 additional learnings that we surfaced with the client. We also identified 12 data-informed opportunities for compelling net-new UX, as well as 40+ jobs-to-be-done related to smart TV usage at home, bucketed into 6 major super jobs. From here, we turned to quantitative methods to scale our findings, and prioritize areas of focus for our net-new concepts.

QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH

I designed a survey to prioritize and build confidence in the opportunities and needs gathered through qualitative research. This helped us determine which experiences would be most worthwhile for TV owners. At this point, I onboarded a freelancer to drive our survey analysis, and I facilitated our survey deployment through a third-party vendor.

METHODOLOGY DETAILS

Method: We completed a general population survey with a sample of (n=1168) smart TV owners aged 25-60 located across the United States. Excluding our screener questions, our survey consisted of 33 questions in total.

Duration: ~One month, from screener definition to analyses and final deliverable

Key Screener Criteria: Our screener included 9 demographic questions informed by LG, 7 contextual and behavioral questions, and one open response. Consistent with our qualitative round,

  • 50% LG TV owners, 50% owners of other TV brands, who purchased at least one TV within the last two years

  • Participants also had a mix of streaming devices, smart systems and devices.

  • Participants reflected pre-established persona types

  • Additional screener criteria included HHI, gender, employment, and popular US demographics for the brand

ABRIDGED LEARNING GOALS

Prioritizing our Jobs-to-be-Done:

  • What are the most important jobs Smart TVs?

  • What’s the most high-value problem to solve for LG TV owners?

  • What UX concepts should we develop that we can iterate and test?

Fortifying our Insights:

  • On the whole, do owners feel their TV is personalized?

  • Are there sizable productivity-based value propositions worth pursuing related to working from home?

  • How important is voice for both the TV and around the house?

KEY SCALED LEARNINGS

While our entire survey focused on a broad set of smart TV needs, our most compelling learnings brought us back to one of our original qualitative insights—that the smart TV has one main job. Owners simply want to find relevant content faster: global search across all streaming apps was most important, and four of the top five needs were concentrated on accessing desired content quicker.

NEXT STEPS

With our insights in mind, we delved into workshopping mode with our client team to polish 3 concept statements abbreviated below, and I facilitated a research-led design sprint with iterative prototype testing to bring them to high visual fidelity.

  1. North Star Product Vision: an ultra-personalized hub that collects your most used content and platforms on your TV

  2. Membership Objective: a way for LG to serve their own content and products via the TV

  3. Companion Remote: an app managing play back, content searching and content management

ITERATIVE CONCEPT TESTING

We translated these statements to clickable mobile prototypes via a research-led design sprint with our internal Heady team, and I designed an iterative concept test and discussion guide based on our client needs, as well as our design team’s questions about these three new experiences, incorporating feedback from all stakeholders.

METHODOLOGY DETAILS

Research Approach: We conducted a open qualitative study of moderated user interviews with (n=13) LG smart TV owners

Session Duration: 60 minutes      

Time in-field: 2 weeks

Key Screener Criteria:

  • All participants have LG TVs, and made at least one TV purchase within the last two years

  • Participants also had a mix of streaming devices in their homes, in addition to other smart systems and devices

  • Participants reflected persona types already established at LG

  • Additional screener criteria included HHI, gender, employment, and LG’s popular US demographics

ABRIDGED LEARNING GOALS

North Star Product Vision

  • Does LG serve as a content aggregator or content provider in this new experience?

  • How does this shift or not shift the users’ relationship and expectations of LG?

Membership Objective

  • Is this experience about taking those content moments with you? If so, how?

  • How do users conceive of product placement?

Companion Remote

  • What are the basic needs from a remote?

  • Are there unmet needs from the current remote experiences that could be met with a digital experience?

RESULTING IMPACT

Overall, we found validation and viability for all three concepts, and a strong sense from users that this was a complete package that ultimately improves the smart TV user experience by “bringing everything together” in a more seamless way. We also accumulated myriad directional signals as to how to improve each experience, including iterative changes and adjustments to the product level value proposition.

I presented each phase’s insights and findings decks sequentially, and we maintained alignment through a series of workshops staggered throughout our engagement. Word spread of our human-centered design approach to new product development throughout LG, and the agency secured repeat business from different business units within LG’s global organization.

Get in touch.

Curious about coaching or interested in collaborating? Schedule an introduction using the big yellow button, send a message using this form, or email me directly at joseph@violet-studio.com. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn.