I worked as an R&D Design Intern for Gillette at the Grooming Incubator in P&G’s Reading Innovation Centre. My role involved technical and consumer validation for an early front-end innovation (FEI) project related to the female Blades and Razors (B&R) sector.
I discovered a method and developed a protocol for producing in-vitro hairy skin mimics and testing consumer tactile perception of a variable that contributes to ‘stubble feel’. I interviewed 46 internal consumers and carried out a statistical analysis on the results to generate meaningful consumer insights. This supported my team’s decision and proposal to pivot their project’s focus to a more significant consumer grooming tension. I summarised the learnings in an SLR (Smart Learning Report, a P&G internal publication) as the lead author.
I was tasked with exploring the design potential of adapting a new technology to address an ergonomic tension from grooming of a targeted body site. My human-centred design knowledge was used to identify and define consumer tensions through observational research and hosting co-design sessions with the target consumer. I used lo-fi prototyping and the on-site rapid prototyping capabilities to guide the prototype through multiple divergent and convergent iteration cycles and landed on a ‘feels’ and ‘works-like’ MVP ready for consumer testing.
