Autonomous Floor Cleaning: New Opportunities

Overview

The client in this project was a major floor cleaning supply manufacturer that makes floor polish pads and cleaning solutions. With the new trend of autonomous floor cleaning robot, the client would like to identify new product opportunities and discover unmet user needs that could be solved with potential digital solutions.

My Responsibilities

•Competitor analysis

•User interview

•Business Eco-System Mapping

•Storyboarding

•Stakeholder workshop

Process

Competitor Analysis

My research started with a trip to the Mall of America, who is a super user and early adopter of autonomous robotic floor cleaners.

Stakeholder interview

I conducted user interviews to understand the current experience and also observed how facility managers currently set up their cleaning routines and plans both manually, and with the newly installed autonomous cleaners. Understanding how the new technology solved for, and created new pain points was the key to looking for differentiating opportunities for my stakeholders.

Eco-System Mapping

Based on the user research , I started to map out an eco-system to visualize the relationship between each stakeholders. There are many different layers of the eco-system based on different type of commercial space that has different cleaning service provided.

Future Scenario / Story Boarding

Next step, I created three different story boards to demonstrate future scenarios in next 3~5 years autonomous robotic cleaning forecast. This helped tell the story both internally for alignment, and for use to verify my findings with my end users.

Stakeholder Workshop

I hosted and facilitated workshops with stakeholders , presented all the research and storyboards. We conducted a brainstorm session to help our clients to envision playing a key role in these future scenarios.

Outcome

The inclusion of this design strategy changed our perspective and accelerated our ability to learn from the channel and end customers relationship, accelerating our involvement in this new space by 6 months. This kick started investment from corresponding divisions into new product introduction specifically for the autonomous segment.