Circularity in context

October 19th 2020

Picture the scene: a room full of executives are watching a presentation on company strategy (actually, let’s move with the times… they’re all at home, watching on Zoom). A simple, elegant image of a circle dominates the screen. Will they support the adoption of circularity principles across the business? In unison, they nod. Not only is this the right thing to do, but it’s what the rest of the market is doing. Circularity is an essential component of a forward-looking business strategy.

But in each of their minds is a nagging question… How?

Why is circularity important?

“Circularity” is a word that has become ubiquitous in the sustainability strategies of many of the world’s biggest brands, from Apple (variations of the term ‘circular’ appear 27 times in their latest sustainability progress report) to AstraZeneca. Spearheaded by advocacy groups like the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the concept has intuitive appeal: maintaining the value invested in materials and products for as long as possible seems like good sense, given the effort, skill and resources required to produce them. It should also be good news for a planet that is running out of capacity to supply us with raw materials and soak up our waste.
Behind the elegant concept of circularity, however, is an incredibly diverse range of steps with varying degrees of applicability – and environmental benefit – in a given situation. But the need to simplify this into marketing messages and calls to action has led to Circularity becoming a buzz word, applied so broadly that it risks becoming meaningless. Companies, keen to move into this green and pleasant new vision for the economy, are looking for simple, off-the-shelf ‘cricular’ measures that they can adopt quickly – sometimes at the expense of a proper assessment of whether the approach is appropriate and truly beneficial for them, their customers or indeed, the environment.

In this blog, we look at why Circularity in Context is of fundamental importance and the approach CDP takes, working in partnership to provide our clients with the best possible sustainable outcomes, instead of pushing a square peg into a circular hole…

Context is King
Take this as an example. An enthusiastic company want to generate a new beverage offering that is due to launch in an up and coming developing market – let’s call it ‘Circular Soda’… for now. They want something that has the kudos of being ‘Circular’, which seems an attractive USP for a marketing message. Time is spent identifying the right grade of rPET (recycled PET plastic); starting with a circular material in the first place seems like a great idea. But… when the brand launches with sustainable claims emblazoned on the label, it’s not long before journalists realize that this ‘recyclable’ rPET is not being recycled in practice, as there is no recovery or recycling infrastructure in this market! Context is king… had the company thought it through a ‘circular’ solution, based around recycling, is actually not the best fit for this market, even if it is perfect for other regions. Sadly, in some instances, this kind of example is not that far from the truth.

A great real-world example is our old ‘frenemy’ the plastic bag. Few are aware that this innovation in 1959 had sustainable circularity front and center in the mind of its Swedish designer, Sten Gustaf Thulin. Sten calculated that a plastic bag that could be reused time and time again was a far more durable and far less energy intensive product than the common 1950s cotton or paper bags. He always carried his beloved innovation in his pocket, just in case he found himself doing a spot of shopping… (70 years later we find ourselves reaching into our own pockets for Sten’s reusable bag, in a consumer culture that aspires to be more circular… if only we could remember not to leave them in the car!) Unfortunately, the context that became king in the 1950s and decades following was convenience. Bags were so cheap to produce and so desirable for consumers as a disposable convenience, that Sten’s planet-positive pack has become a slur on sustainable living. This is where the introduction of filters in the process of innovation is key. What are the factors that might pervert intended circularity, and how can the design counter this?

Back in the boardroom, chief execs are still looking at the circle on the screen and scratching their heads with a killer question in mind.

How do we put circularity in context?

At CDP, our Circularity in Context model enables client teams to look at a brief through a broader lens, with the ability to consider what’s happening now as well as what will influence innovation in future, via 4 key filters that will help drive our understanding of which circular opportunities are most applicable. These filters extend far beyond the business or product itself, looking at the wider ecosystem and emerging trends that are shaping it.

The societal filter looks at the ways in which governance and politics influence the markets our clients are operating in, and how society as a whole might embrace or reject certain opportunities due to attitudinal or legislative parameters for change. This can drive future regulation, infrastructure development, or R&D investment.
The economic filter helps us understand ‘viability for change’ from a commercial perspective; what commercial pressures occur in the context that their brand and product is operating in? What criteria are used to appraise investments? What is the existing asset base?
The user filter puts us in the shoes of the end users, either ‘consumers’ (B2C) or customers (B2B); how should a proposition meet their needs and does a move toward a more circular solution provide gains or create pains for them? How might their habits and behaviors have a positive or negative impact on the viability of a more circular solution?
The technological filter is an exceptionally important one that’s often overlooked. CDP rely on a broad group of experts with deep knowledge in science and technology to determine how a ‘circular idea’ can become a technically viable reality, as well as identifying emerging technologies that could enable new business models in the future.

As much as people want to be unfettered when pursuing creative thinking on how to adopt circular approaches, these filters constitute whether a circular concept could become a viable reality for our clients. So, developing a brief with our clients for a successful outcome with these filters underpinning innovation – aiming to be circular, but doing it in context – is the key to success.

Game-changing?

As a team of researchers, designers, engineers and innovators, we want to develop great sustainable products! Much of the focus of current efforts to embed circularity into products has focused on utilizing circular materials; the leaders in the field are extending their ambition to more resilient, returnable or repairable models. A great example of the adoption of ‘game changing’ circular thinking, at different levels, now exists within the Toy industry. The first level in improved circularity is moving from dispose to recycle; at the end of 2019 Mattel announced its goal to achieve 100% recycled or recyclable plastics in its products and packaging by 2030. New entrants to the toy market (such as Toy-Cycle and Whirli) have gone a step further and established a ‘recommerce’ platform, where outgrown toys are shipped directly to the company to be sorted, repaired, resold and returned into the system. This commercial model for a lending library – recycling parts, not materials – is perfectly in keeping with a new generation of consumers who don’t want to condemn their child’s personal plastic Toys “R” Us store to landfill, or even the recycling bin. The societal context is shifting!

However, being circular in our choice of materials and components is often only one opportunity; bigger ones might exist if we are willing to look beyond the product as it is today. We opt for a telescope before a microscope – we’re interested in the detail, but we’re just as interested in the bigger picture, where the big innovations often lie. Applying systems thinking and looking beyond circular material usage could uncover a totally new way of delivering the benefits people currently derive from the existing product.

Some entrepreneurial businesses have had a eureka moment when their context is well placed to offer them the chance to do something radical and reimagine a product, system or service altogether. With the games industry booming, (in no small part due to the current pandemic), this year it’s set to reach a phenomenal $159.3 billion in sales¹. With many asking where the potential for growth is, innovation has pivoted away from games linked to hardware formats. Inspired by smartphone innovation and leveraging an expertise in cloud computing, Google Stadia and Amazon Luna have emerged as serious challengers to established players such as Xbox and Playstation. Hardware tomorrow will be so yesterday. Brands in this new gamer age look like the style of their landing pages and the quality of their games and content, not the console or the cartridges or discs that once ran on them. By 2021 video gaming sales are due to hit the $200 billion mark; one can only imagine how the absence of hardware will increase the profit margins within this behemoth entertainment industry.

By considering the wider context around a business, and how this might change in the future, it’s possible to identify opportunities that – like in the game-changing example – offer enhanced value to customers precisely because they are more circular and less reliant on consumption of materials. As the famous quote goes, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole”!

A partnership approach

We are known for working in close partnership with our clients (it’s in the name!), but also for offering an evidence-based, independent perspective when assessing circular options and the surrounding context using both a telescope and a microscope. We believe this approach can de-risk circular innovation strategies by identifying opportunities that fit the situation, and even reimagine the product or service entirely. Circularity is definitely not one-size-fits-all – but with careful consideration of context, we think there is a circular opportunity that’s right for everyone.

Connect with CDP

For more on how to apply circular design thinking in the right context for your business, products, and markets, contact Cambridge Design Partnership.

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Crankl: from the bike shed to the operating theater, how CDP created a novel surgical tool

September 8th 2020

Matt Brady

It is important to start each innovation journey with the broadest possible mindset because this opens the door to all sorts of different solutions that might exist outside one team’s experiences. A great example of this philosophy in action was the design of a surgical torque wrench that we developed recently.

The story starts with one of our engineers who was a cycling enthusiast. He saw an unmet need amongst cyclists who owned ‘high end’ carbon fiber bikes for a simple torque wrench to stop them over tightening screws and damaging their bike frame. So, in his spare time, he came up with a simple, plastic, single piece wrench design that indicates the right torque every time. He publicized his idea on a trends website, but unexpectedly he received messages from surgeons who were also bike enthusiasts.

It turned out that orthopedic surgeons were frustrated by the tools they had to make sure that screws used to fix fractures and implants were not over tightened. Plates are commonly used to support fractured bones and over tightening the screws can break the screw, damage the bone or make the screws difficult to remove, under tightening can allow the fixation to become loose.

A torque wrench is a tool that indicates or limits the torque applied to a screw. They are used across all engineering sectors and surgeons have similar devices adapted for the operating theater. However, the inherent cost and complexity of these tools mean that they must be reused, which in turn creates additional processing complexity and cost for the hospital. Before each procedure, they must be thoroughly sterilized and tested, which is time consuming and open to error.

Single use medical devices have seen increasing adoption since their early introduction in the 1960s, initially for their ability to displace durable devices with their requirement for costly reprocessing, calibration, adjustment etc. Over time their potential to deliver when sterility and performance are paramount has become increasingly prominent, as they can be manufactured to tight quality standards and tested, packed and sterilized in controlled factory conditions where economies of scale make this cost-effective. Following pressures towards sustainability and ever-reducing costs the trend is swinging back again – with devices leveraging the benefits of single-use style designs, but with more robust materials and designs to allow a limited number of reprocessing and re-use cycles (multiple-use devices).

What was needed here was a single or multi-use wrench, that was accurate, easy to use and did not require maintenance.

The plastic construction of the bike wrench showed us that a single, low cost, plastic molding could be used as the active element in a basic torque wrench. However, the surgical version would need to be more accurate & repeatable, have different settings for different screws, and be more usable in the surgical environment – with a form factor that allows single handed use, and haptic feedback indicating when the correct torque is reached.

The design team reviewed the original bike torque wrench design and analyzed where it could be improved and adapted for surgery. The original bike wrench had a beam that buckled when the right torque was achieved but this phenomenon was influenced by several parameters that could result in lower accuracy. Together with a more compact form factor that better suited surgery, a new design was envisaged that only relied on bending, so should be more repeatable. It also provided better haptic feedback to the surgeon.

The design was modelled in 3D CAD and underwent FEA simulation to better understand how it would perform. This allowed the first round of optimization to get as close as possible to the desired performance. To allow the ergonomics and ‘feel’ to be evaluated, a first model was made using 3D printing. The Crankl surgical torque wrench was born.

When the wrench was assembled, the team were pleased that they had got close to a design that would meet the surgeon’s requirements. But 3D printed materials perform differently to the injection molded plastic that would be used in the final design, so another step was needed to verify the system would work. The team needed to have real injection molded parts in the correct material to test.

Moving to ‘production intent’ manufactured parts is a big step in all medical device developments. Medical devices have to meet strict standards to be placed on the market and CDP’s experienced device development and quality engineering teams ensure that this happens, in line with our ISO13485 certified quality system and device development process. This means that at the end of development all the correct processes and documentation will have been completed to support a submission under the EU Medical Devices Regulations and / or to the FDA, as appropriate to market need.

Obtaining molded parts is usually an expensive and time-consuming step because mold tools have to be designed and manufactured. These are complex and take time to make, and errors can occur that can affect performance and the validity of the test results – requiring a further iteration. For this reason, CDP has developed a “rapid digital molding” approach which uses 3D printing to very quickly make mold tools into which target polymers can be injected – rapidly creating production-intent parts.

The window for innovative diagnostics is open

August 5th 2020

Dan Haworth

Head of Diagnostics

Richard Owen

Bio-Scientist

Pari Datta

The Covid-19 pandemic has presented a time-limited but immense window of opportunity for diagnostics companies. Changes in regulation and increased levels of investment are enabling radical innovations to have real impact, but only if they can be fast-tracked into new products which are cost effective and compelling to users. In this article we review some of the product releases and look at the long-term effects of this unique situation.

The WHO’s message of ‘Test, Test, Test’ echoed around the world and since the start of the Covid-19 outbreak, diagnostics companies have dropped their existing R&D programs to focus on SARS-CoV-2 test development.

The FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) has enabled a quick route to market for products that have not received formal approval, and for many companies, the outbreak has stimulated significant cash injections from government and private organizations. The Covid-19 situation has meant products can be launched faster than ever before.

Engineers and scientists have been working intensively while the EUA window remains open, including teams at CDP who are in the final stages of developing a molecular platform for Covid-19 testing.

Most tests (~80%) authorized under EUA are molecular tests that detect the presence of viral RNA. Two companies (Becton Dickinson and Quidel) instead targeted detection of a protein within the virus particle (an “antigen” test) rather than detecting its RNA. The promise of home-based tests that detect antibodies (to determine if someone has had the virus) was unfortunately dashed by poor performance; the 26 authorized antibody tests are all lab-use and primarily involve large expensive equipment, rather than a low-cost pregnancy-style lateral flow strips that use a drop of finger prick blood.

Molecular tests on platform devices

First off-the-mark were companies that already have a device which can be repurposed for Covid-19 testing. Automated lab analyzer running PCR (the molecular ‘gold standard’ test) require little in the way of hardware modifications. The SARS-CoV-2 molecular assay is a relatively easy assay to develop for these systems as it is similar to other respiratory diseases (e.g. for Flu A/B). Roche, Thermo, Hologic and Abbott Molecular all released their tests on large scale hospital lab equipment during the same week in mid-March.

Companies producing near patient tests on existing platforms were quick to follow, and in the following week Cepheid’s Xpert Xpress, Mesa Biotech’s Accula and Abbott’s ID Now were all authorized. These systems are highly portable and CLIA waived, so they can be used outside of lab settings. The Abbott ID Now (the re-branded Alere-i) uses isothermal amplification (rather than thermal cycling) which enables results to be generated in as little as 15 minutes. Compare this with traditional PCR which takes ~40 minutes, and these should be ideal systems for mass deployment into schools, care homes, pop-up clinics, even for testing passengers while travelling on commercial flights.

However, whilst these systems seem an ideal method for de-centralized settings, sample collection can be error prone and the cost per test is relatively expensive compared with central-lab testing. Combined with lower throughput, it is currently more cost effective for people to self-isolate while their sample is processed in the central lab.

New CRISPR-based tests

Start-up companies are making use of this window of opportunity by building products around potentially disruptive technologies, which may have been too risky to develop in more normal times. An example technology is CRISPR, the game-changing technology for gene-editing – now heading rapidly into diagnostics. CRISPR uses the natural defense properties found in bacteria to protect itself, ironically, from viruses. It is now being used to rapidly detect specific nucleic acid sequences. Sherlock Biosciences recently received EUA for its CRISPR-based Covid-19 test kit – and is working to bring the technology into a point-of-care format which can deliver results in 20 minutes within a doctor’s office or even a supermarket. GlaxoSmithKline is also working with Mammoth Biosciences to bring CRISPR-based technology into a hand-held, fully disposable product format. These products are at an early stage, but future developments will advance detection capabilities and potentially enable faster and lower cost diagnostics compared with traditional approaches.

Fully disposable molecular tests

There is currently a race to launch fully disposable molecular devices that can offer lab-quality results from the convenience of the home. The vision again is that of a pregnancy-test type device, but one which carries out the complex assay functions of a molecular test. Many of the devices in development use isothermal amplification due to lower power demands and ability to cope with reduced sample preparation. These first-generation devices are going to be initially very expensive, but companies are pushing the boundaries and paving the way for more accessible testing.

Antibody tests – “the wild west” of testing

Very low cost, home-use lateral flow immunoassay tests involving just a single finger prick blood sample was hoped to be the ticket back to normality. These tests detect if a person has antibodies to the virus and therefore potential immunity to re-infection. Manufacturers were pushing these out under EUA despite very little in the way of supporting clinical data, but hopes were short-lived as high false negatives meant the tests were unsuitable. In some cases, results were so poor, it was comparable to flipping a coin. The only antibody tests released under EUA are lab-based tests, not home-based, and use conventional serum, plasma or whole blood sample collected by a phlebotomist.

Recent data suggests antibody tests are not actually very good at detecting if someone has had Coronavirus; many virus-positive patients have been antibody negative, so there appears to be other immune responses taking place involving T-cells, but that’s another topic.

Changing landscape

While existing lab analyzers are currently the workhorse of testing due to high performance, high throughput and low cost, relaxation of regulations and rapid cash injections have meant there are some highly innovative new developments which are pushing the boundaries and re-shaping the landscape of point-of-care molecular diagnostics.

Faster and lower cost point-of-care tests that are more convenient to the end user have the ability to provide results while-you-wait, meaning local outbreaks can be identified sooner and less time is wasted unnecessarily self-isolating. With greater access and clear social and economic benefits, more people will engage with testing on a regular basis. Covid-19 testing applies to the global population – it is not just a one-time event, but repeated frequently, time and again. The market size is huge, and the commercial opportunity is immense.

But the window of opportunity presented may be short-term due to the nature of the current global circumstances. Companies will have to act fast in technology development to devise compelling embodiments that differentiate them from very similar competitors. Speed and innovative thinking will be key to win and maximize the opportunity.

Packaging – perceptions & preferences during the pandemic

August 5th 2020

James Harmer

Head of Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG)

When we ‘locked down’, as a nation we had very little idea what to expect or indeed for how long. Major behavioural changes have come about as a result of the pandemic and our lock-down experiences, but what has been incredible to watch, as someone who has spent many years looking at consumer behaviour, is just how big an impact the Covid pandemic has had on our global preoccupation with ‘consuming’, and our physical relationship with packaging.

Packaging perceptions

People’s perceptions of packaging have changed during the course of the pandemic. It’s fundamental role as a ‘first line of defence’ to protect our products came under scrutiny. With many questioning whether packaging itself could actually be a ‘superspreader’. During the first month of lock-down, as well as the government guidelines on how to socially distance and take precautionary measures, we adopted many more of our own. For example, every crate of food that was delivered to my front door was sanitised! It became a family event, getting bags of new products out on the worktop and wiping them down with disinfectant! Plastic bags that had once been banished became a ‘disposable saviour’ in the handling of food quickly and efficiently without prolonging time at the front door. Although I found this behaviour irrational after a few weeks, especially after the FDA and other respected bodies announced there was no data to support the notion that COVID could be transmitted via interaction with packaging, astonishingly a snap poll of 1,000 people interviewed in April 2020 by communication agency G&S, stated that 44% of respondents were continuing to clean products with disinfectant. Although this cleaning frenzy has now subsided and my family are back to the normal habit of letting me pack all the shopping away, single-handedly… the COVID pandemic has left a significant mark on our relationship with products and packaging.

Packaging semiotics

One of the areas where some marketeers have responded quickly, are the semiotics of packaging. This can be as simple as the language used on a pack to reassure consumers, in some cases, it can be a total visual overhaul. Clients in a large global soap manufacturing firm were considering the launch of a new visual identity for some of their brands in the midst of the pandemic. They told me recently that there was an immediate U-turn in keeping with the consumers need for reassurance about hygiene, responding to the pandemic. In this case “kills 99.9% of germs”, was a more reassuring message for consumers than ‘lifestyle’ graphics or colour schemes suited to the interior design of the bathroom. How long the u-turn will last is yet to be seen, but it’s clear that consumer reassurance is a high priority and will probably continue to be for some time to come.

A great case in point, when it comes to our relationship with packaging and how we handle our food, is fruit and veg. As part of the backlash against plastic, supermarkets were being encouraged to remove single use plastic wrappers around these items. But ‘naked’ vegetables, shrouded in protective shrink wrapping, have proven favourable over loose items during the pandemic. Clients in the beverage world have recently been exploring ways to generate new forms of secondary carry handles that enable consumers to pick up part of the pack that has not been handled by store staff, or indeed anyone else within the supply chain. Although this might seem unnecessary, consumers spend less than 5 seconds on average choosing products in frequented commodity isles. So leveraging consumer auto-pilot decision making that’s been influenced by a heightened awareness of risk avoidance and safety, will naturally present opportunities for brands to stand out, in commoditised categories where points of difference and unique product positionings are increasingly hard to find.

Packaging convenience

Of course, convenience has always been king in many of the decisions we make about the products we buy and the packaging we are attracted to. But this need increased during the lock-down period as pre-packaged meal kits enabled us to conveniently avoid the shops altogether and dramatically rose in popularity. I was ‘a Gousto virgin’ until April of this year. But I now eagerly await the delivery of restaurant quality cuisine delivered straight to my door in a chilled red box every week! Each part of the meal individually packed for convenience, pre portioned for exactly what’s needed as I don my apron and fool myself into thinking I’m Jamie Oliver. (For anyone that’s unfamiliar with the recipe box phenomenon, think painting by numbers with food). Although, you simply can’t avoid feeling guilty when putting a red Gusto box full of cardboard out for the weekly bin collection (as well as finding a way to reuse the fleece, included to keep the pre-packed food cool!). Gousto reported challenges in keeping up with demand on their packaging lines and Mindful Chef, offering a similar service reported a 425% spike in new recipe box customers during the lock-down period. A McKinsey report on the 2^nd June stated that consumers have continued spending more time cooking at home and that most expect that the impact of Covid on their routines will last for well beyond two months. So as we re-evaluate how we want to shop post lock-down, it will be interesting to see if pre packed food delivered straight to your door dwindles or continues to go from strength to strength. What is evident in this increasingly buoyant e-commerce era, is that excessive packaging is at odds with manufacture, retailer and consumer commitments to move toward less packaging.

Conclusion

Consumers foundational packaging needs are safety, trust and the associated reassurance it provides. The Covid pandemic has exposed many associated consumer foibles and anxieties around the perception of packaging and its importance in our modern day world. It has also catalysed new future business models for how we might prefer to shop in convenient and reassuringly distanced ways in future. But we have yet to reconcile this with the increasingly important need to move away from excessive single use packaging, in light of the environmental crisis that still looms, albeit behind the immediate challenges of this Pandemic. Innovation will be essential in balancing all these needs in a new era of packaging that can reassure, add value and minimise the environmental impact. If you’ve enjoyed this article, watch out for my next instalment of the blog, where I wrestle with the challenge of packaging sustainability and some brave new ventures in response to the increasingly urgent need for radical ideas and innovation.

If you wish to explore packaging sustainability challenges and avenues for innovation, benefiting from CDP’s expertise across categories and markets, contact:

Innovating for context; The role of Anthropology in innovation

July 21st 2020

Jessica Platt

Ben Strutt

Although we don’t often hear the term ‘anthropology’ referenced in the innovation process, anyone charged with this objective knows implicitly that the key focus areas of language, culture, society and place, are critical when it comes to the harmonisation of a brand or the successful launch of a new global product.

The growing adoption of user-led approaches to front end innovation (FEI) means that global new product development teams are highly motivated to understand the cultural background of their target user’s social, functional and emotional needs. Anthropological thinking has a lot to offer new product innovation by providing a range of tools that help shift perspectives, making the strange appear familiar, or re-defining an experience to make the familiar even more intuitive, more relevant, more personalised…or perhaps more provocative. Our collective goal as innovators is to create products and services that will resonate within different cultures, deliver meaningful value, and improve lives. Anthropology offers an analytical lens for insights that reach beyond what people say, to access the culturally influenced assumptions that underpin their decisions and behaviour. This allows us to create products and experiences that resonate with our users lived experience.

Anthropology and ethnography

Anthropology is the in-depth understanding of people and place and is implicit to much of our FEI work at Cambridge Design Partnership because the history of Anthropology is closely intertwined with ethnography. At CDP, we use lean derivatives of ethnography to support our client’s fast-paced innovation initiatives and to keep them user-focused. With the growing pressure for innovation teams to be ‘agile’ and ‘lean’, we continually develop even faster contextual insight methods that engage real people in exploratory research, and co-creative activity. As the world changes, we rise to new challenges by adapting many of our ethnographic research methods to utilise digital techniques and ensure that we can continue to successfully access the deepest insights from people based around the world, no matter the global context. This is more important than ever in a ‘new normal’, where social distancing policy is now restricting routine daily physical interactions.

Ethnography in innovation

Whether it is conducted in person or online, ethnography is all about empathy; it is an opportunity for us to put ourselves in the shoes of our consumers, to understand what resonates with them and validate what is meaningful. This is essential to develop a unique and believable product specification and strategy. Ethnography is particularly powerful when used in combination with other analytical overlays. Anthropological thinking pushes ethnographic research beyond immediate context to access other subconscious influences behind key decisions.

Incorporating anthropology in ethnographic research creates an opportunity to interpret how deep-seated cultural nuances might also be impacting on what consumers aren’t saying explicitly in a research scenario! This is a crucial level of understanding when creating a globally relevant product that can be seamlessly incorporated into daily activities. When we run research remotely, applying an anthropological lens to our discussion guides and being creative about the way we ask people to share their lived experiences with us becomes even more important, because we are often limited in how much behaviour we can see. Our questions must therefore be clear and targeted to reach a depth of understanding from a distance!

Learning to ‘read’ culture

Understanding the culture of our target users is crucial for success because culture changes the way that people understand their experiences. For example, the user experience provided by McDonald’s in all restaurants around the world are virtually identical (economists famously use the Big Mac as a global measure of price index), but culture alters the experience that diners have. Whereas in the UK fast food has a mixed reputation for trading off quality for convenience, in some regions of South Asia, McDonald’s signifies high status and is frequented by the wealthy middle classes. The sacred status of a cow in India, brings yet another pivotal McDonalds perspective. McDonald’s may look the same, but the experience it provides is transformed by the cultural context.

Logos, brand-marks, and tag lines are assumed to carry a universal meaning, but context can change the way that they are understood. Semiotics and the cultural psychology of colour can also be effectively combined with ethnography to investigate the signs and visual cues that influence people’s understanding of the world they inhabit, which may be missed by a research team not attuned to these themes.

Often it is only through immersing yourself in another culture that these different systems of understanding become clear. For example, although it is common practice to eat with one’s hands in Sri Lanka, it is considered extremely rude to lick your fingers at the end of a meal. I only learned this crucial etiquette when I flagrantly broke the ‘rules’ at a dinner with some Sri Lankan colleagues.

My embarrassing mistake caused the people I was eating with to explain a rule that was usually unstated. As I walked down Galle Road that evening, I passed an advert for KFC:

KFC
It’s finger lickin’ good.

I have seen the same sign thousands of times but that evening the tag line took on a completely new significance. In a country where eating with one’s hands is the norm, but it is taboo to lick your fingers, does KFC actually offer a different brand identity? Is the tag line transformed from being nostalgic to become a bit maverick… a bit saucy?

In this case, the contextual overtones of the tag line don’t appear to have negatively impacted KFC, but there are many examples where subtle (or not so subtle) cultural readings or mistranslations have presented brands with uncomfortable challenges to un-pick, which could have been proactively predicted had a cultural research lens been applied earlier in the process.

Anthropology offers a raft of effective desk and field research tools to access the things that go unsaid within cultures which, once articulated, reveal important insights that can radically redirect and refine a product specification or a global brand strategy.

For breakthrough innovation to take place, it is essential that a new product, service or brand proposition resonates with the audience. This means not just looking beyond what people say, but adding an anthropology lens to understand the non-verbal, semiotic and sensorial cues, to reach the foundation of the very assumptions that influence their daily decisions, and which remain largely unspoken.

The systems approach to formulation and product design

July 21st 2020

Mark Buckingham

Today’s liquid and paste formulations, from washing up liquid to shampoo to toothpaste are complex structured fluids or solids which are designed to meet the demanding needs of consumers. It is tempting to regard the formulation or recipe as the main challenge. However, these complex formulations behave very differently in the range of environments they experience across their lifetime, such as manufacturing, filling, distribution, storage and consumer use – sometimes leading to unexpected failures. Should we adapt the formulation to work with the process/packaging or vice versa or both?

Seeing the Wood for the Trees

We take a systems approach to designing and developing new formulations. Put simply one must consider the interactions between manufacturing process, formulation, distribution chain, application device or packaging, regulations (monographs, storage requirements etc…) as well as consumer habits and usage requirements. This has long been the goal of all product development groups but reality is often different.

Often there is a focus on only some of these parameters, for example the formulation, packaging, regulatory and consumer attributes, and then a huge effort is subsequently spent trying to adjust the manufacturing and distribution chains to accommodate the product – incurring unnecessary cost and time delays to new product introduction. This has a huge and often neglected economic impact, from personal experience this can add as much as 5% to the total delivered cost of the product.

Putting the Toothpaste back into the Tube

Many real-life examples exist of these manufacturing issues. These include a shampoo product, where the manufacturing line speed had to be turned down to prevent issues with filling bottles, such as dripping, mounding and air entrapment. Another was the high level of product rejects due to incomplete sealing of toothpaste tubes caused by the formulation stringing during filling. A third was the eventual upgrade, at a significant cost, of filling lines to accurately dose out a structured fluid and prevent periodic under-filling.

These solutions were a consequence of an incomplete understanding of how to design a recipe to cope with manufacturing and filling where there are quite extreme forces and shear rates involved. Recent advances in rheological equipment and methods, coupled with Computational Fluid Dynamic modelling now enable formulators to simulate these conditions and explore strategies to reduce or eliminate these issues. We have reached a tipping point where formulators can now actively design complex fluids to be easily prepared, as well as fulfil their other design criteria thus potentially avoiding unnecessary costs.

Delivering the Optimum Four-season Solution

Many companies are exploring new e-Commerce business models with products being distributed directly to the consumer, bypassing large parts of their centralised distribution network. This presents an interesting challenge to ensure products and packaging are designed to survive shipping and still deliver the intended consumer use experience. To help solve this puzzle it is important to obtain real-world data of what actually happens to your package before it reaches the consumer. Does it freeze in the middle of winter in Canada, or bake during the height of summer in Florida? Does it experience massive pressure swings as part of air freight causing packs to burst open? How often does the temperature cycle from high to low and back again, and how much vibration or shock loading does your pack receive?

All of these considerations can have a drastic impact on the integrity of your product and brand image and affect consumer acceptance. It is important to put together a testing protocol to verify that the formulation and packaging solution are sufficient to cope with any extreme conditions. We have experience fitting customised tracking sensors inside packaging and if necessary inside the pack itself. This enables real shipping or usage experiments to be run and high quality data collected to guide product design and stability requirements.

Putting it All Together

At CDP we have access to tools and techniques which can be used to explore important design spaces for formulated products, to avoid unnecessary costs and exploit new ways of doing business. Our broad combination of experience in Chemistry, Consumer Insights, Materials Science, Packaging design, Modelling & Simulation, Digital Systems, Manufacturing Technology and other areas can help you to take more control over your design space and specifications.

We do not specialise in just one area, instead we have experience in how all these aspects can work together across several industries, so that we can adapt and combine approaches from entirely different applications.

The recipe may be at the heart of the product, but it must work with the package and the process to provide the best possible customer experience.

Stay Safe Quiz: Name that Brand A-Z

June 9th 2020

Chris Houghton

As lockdown restrictions slowly ease, for many there’s an enduring legacy of heightened awareness and behavioural change across the world. The coronavirus pandemic continues to devastate with loss of life and significant impacts to industry and people’s livelihoods.

Whilst situations vastly vary country to country, here in the United Kingdom, I feel heartened by the fortitude shown within communities to help one another during these difficult past few months. Locally I’ve witnessed a greater sense of togetherness, an appreciation of unsung heroes and selfless goodwill towards one another. Internationally, an array of innovations emerged from creatively designed and decorated facemasks, 3D printed hands-free door openers, through to building entire new hospitals and medical equipment in days.

These unprecedented circumstances have changed our everyday life, leaving us time to assess the things that matter most. Across our individual social, emotional and functional need states, we’ve collectively adapted and found ways to stay connected and to stick together.

One common form of connecting with each other during lockdown has been the growth of the ‘Online Quiz’, a very British response to missing weekly pub trivia and social engagement. Competing with colleagues, friends and family to test knowledge, in an entertaining and light-hearted way. Whilst this behaviour might sound alien and trivial to some of our friends overseas, it delivers on some of our most basic human needs. Socially, it connects us with others, providing a sense of belonging in a very primal, protection from the pack kind of way. Emotionally, it provides reassurance and certainty knowing answers are right or wrong rather than the ifs, buts and maybes we read and hear on the news. And functionally it stimulates our brain neurons to help our mental wellbeing which is especially important for those who are alone, vulnerable and/or self-shielding.

As a tribute to this behaviour and to continue its positive impact, I’ve authored a series of short quizzes to engage with, share and stay connected with others.

The quiz is called ‘Name that Brand A-Z’, which as the title implies, gives you 26 opportunities to identify a brand, organisation, individual or certification in alphabetical order. Some of the visual clues will be easy, others tricky and many tantalisingly familiar. Difficulty wise it’s pitched more ‘Millionaire’ than ‘Mastermind’, so it should be suitable to share beyond industry experts. There are six markets covered in this series giving a maximum score potential of 156/156. Any score close to a gross are clearly brand masters whilst many will be pleased to break the century. Good luck, enjoy and share with others.

Cambridge Design Partnership maintain stringent confidentiality towards all clients and related project work. We have no affiliation, endorsement or views towards the brands used for this game and have no responsibility or control with how this material is used subsequently by others.

Part 1: FMCG & Digital

The first quiz pairs Fast-Moving-Consumer Goods (FMCG) and Digital apps. These are the brands you scroll through on your phone and tablets providing on-demand services. Those you ponder when ordering online groceries or compare in the supermarket aisles whilst filling your trolley. Online grocery and e-commerce have accelerated during lockdown as people physically distance themselves and remain at home, this trend will only grow further over time. I hope you enjoy this espresso sized, coffee break distraction.

Part 2: Consumer & Healthcare

The second quiz pairs Consumer and Healthcare brands. These contrasting markets and companies have continued to provide life-saving medical treatment and equipment as well as clothe, entertain and connect us together. Healthcare companies have needed to become agile during this period and have adapted quickly to new emergency authorisation measures. In a collaborative effort we’ve seen consumer companies such as General Motors help the manufacturing efforts for ventilator production as global demand outstrips supply. However, it’s diagnostic testing that’s proven invaluable to inform management given the absence of effective therapies or vaccines. I hope this micro-dose of mental stimulation helps you and others to stay positive.

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Part 3: Luxury & Sustainability

The third quiz pairs Luxury brands and Sustainability organisations, individuals and certifications. Locally, many people have been walking and cycling more becoming increasingly reliant on local stores to replenish stock levels. Our environmental footprint collectively has reduced by default during lockdown with no international travel and working from home lowering our fuel consumption. Whilst greenhouse gas emissions have reduced, and air quality improved during this period it’s not a substitute for a stronger stance and strategy to address climate change.

With the associated economic downturn our spending has been more conscientious and conservative by choice or necessity. This has left the often-overindulgent Luxury category to be even more exclusive and removed from everyday life and reality. However, to say Luxury and Sustainability are mutually exclusive would be wrong. One famous luxury slogan which resonates is “You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation” which is true of so many things including planet Earth itself.

Plastics: the great sustainability challenge

May 29th 2020

Dan Mayhew

When Sir David Attenborough highlighted the extent of plastic pollution, public opinion fundamentally shifted. The concern crossed over to become a mainstream issue.

This mind shift caused a significant packaging revolution with plastic being phased out, but has this come at a cost? Are we making more environmentally safe products, or are we just creating a different environmental crisis? Well, as in many situations the answers to those questions are more complex than they first appear.

It appears that the industry’s answer is to replace plastic with paper; as paper is instinctively more sustainable. However, this warrants some further thought. The most common way to make paper comes from using wood pulp, which (unless using recycled content) involves chopping down trees, thereby removing them as a natural store of carbon. This in itself might not be an issue; forestry operations can be sustainable, and many are. Established forests will tend to absorb as much CO2 as they release, so in principle it is possible to maintain a carbon neutral position if the forests are well managed with any removed tress subsequently replaced. But unfortunately not all forests are sustainably managed, and a rapid rise in the demand for pulp will likely result in poor forestry practice. Stark contrasts in forest management can be made between areas of Europe (where the forested area has increased by an area the size of Portugal since 1990), and Russia, Brazil or Indonesia where there have been vast loses in forested areas for agriculture, mining, or conversion (to pulp or palm-oil plantations); all of which highlights the critical importance of supplier accreditation.

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Nevertheless, even when sustainably sourced, the processing of raw wood into pulp consumes a range of chemicals such as sodium dithionite, ozone, chlorine dioxide and hydrogen peroxide, as well as plastics such as polyethyleneimine and polyacrylamide. All these chemicals can get caught in the runoff from the paper making process. To remove and dispose of these effectively, large volumes of water are used; the subsequent treatment of which is an energy consuming process. To make a single sheet of A4 paper, up to 20 litres of water can be required 1. It should also be noted that in some nations 10% of all the freshwater goes into the pulping industry. There is potential for this water to be returned to the system, but only after the energy intensive treatment. A further key limitation of paper is that it is not waterproof. This can be addressed through the use of a coating, but this again raises further issues. Is this coating good for the environment? Are you adding another material that makes recycling more challenging?

An alternative approach to the reduction of plastic pollution within the industry is to make the plastic materials themselves biodegradable (i.e. make the plastic behave more like paper). But there are of course challenges here as well. Virgin plastics produced from oil by definition aren’t sustainable, so biomass derived plastics are often considered here instead. The raw ingredients for these tend to be crops such as cane sugar; so we must factor in that this removes land from other crops required for food production, and potentially removes the very forests that are needed to store CO2. Though, perhaps given the current trends to reduce sugar-content in foods, there is an opportunity to transition any excess sugar cane production towards these biodegradable bio-plastic solutions.

Over the last few years, research into biodegradability of plastics has continued to deliver a wide range of products. When considering these, the completeness of degradation, the conditions required for degradation, and the typical speed of degradation are all important factors. Given this, it is crucial for product designers to better understand the end-of-life pathways for such materials. Many products are looking to claim that their products are compostable, but this may only be possible if consumers compost their waste in the right way! Furthermore, getting this wrong can also potentially be the difference between aerobic and anaerobic degradation; the latter producing methane rather than CO2, which has 25 times the global warming potential.

In a final twist, as newly introduced bioplastics intend to mimic current plastics, it can be hard to tell them apart from other plastic waste streams. In many cases this may not present an issue, but specific risks may arise, such as the possibility for PLA to contaminate PET recycling streams as they are challenging to separate from one another.

So, the challenges are multifaceted, and all too often in tension with one another. But these are issues that we have to address if we are to protect the planet we live on. At CDP we are helping our clients navigate this complexity to make their products more sustainable, more cost effective, and more attractive to their customers.

References

[1] https://paperontherocks.com/2019/03/22/water-waste-paper-industry-what-makes-pulp-paper-production-thirsty-business/

Testing times: adapting user insights research for a new era

May 21st 2020

Ben Kelsey

Andres Barrera

As COVID-19 related distancing threatens established methods of engaging with consumers and patients, Ben Kelsey and Andres Barrera reflect on how to support innovation projects with ‘hygienic’ user research tools and techniques!

The ability to travel and observe how people live in their cultural context is a privilege, and an asset to a researcher’s toolkit. It enables us to elicit the insights that can develop new commercial strategies, and it allows our design and technical teams to create the new products and experiences that deliver critical benefits. So, a global pandemic would, at least on the face of it, seem a high barrier to the ‘day job’.

However, to preserve the global economy, businesses must and will adapt, therefore products and services must also evolve and reinvent themselves for this new environment. The emotional rollercoaster that many families are currently experiencing will certainly influence their behaviour, and understanding this may offer a valuable insights into potential long-term changes in habits and attitudes that will provide innovation opportunities in the future.

Our broad tool-kit and research expertise has developed over the last ten years to include both physical and remote insights capture and validation methods. The challenge is knowing the right tools to use and having the experience to deploy them to maximise results. No one tool is perfect for every task because the research objectives and budgets can vary significantly, but the starting point is that there is much to be gained, and little to be lost, by a learning engagement with your future potential customers.

As long as travelling to users’ houses is prohibited by the need for social distancing, traditional ethnography is impractical. However, online ethnography can go some way to replace it. Users can self-facilitate their interview, creating a series of short recordings on their smartphones across a series of scenarios which have been pre-defined by the moderator. This enables researchers to gain a valuable visual, narrated snapshot of respondents’ lifestyle, behaviour, shopping environments and product usage.

Today, it is estimated 3.5 billion people around the world have a Smart Phone¹. So these digital methodologies can access populations and user groups with greater ease and speed than face-to-face methods including ‘hard to reach’ populations in a way that was not previously possible. Furthermore, remote research allows the moderator and the observers to gather the insights captured within the participant’s natural environment; allowing the participant to be more relaxed and more instinctive behaviour to be observed, with sessions scheduled around the participants’ daily routine. At a practical level this can enable recruitment of wide diversity, both by geography and consumer segments, typically at a lower cost that physical field observations.

Our research and insights team is made up of a variety of subject matter expert backgrounds, including psychology and anthropology, science, and design. The objective of our work, whether for consumer or healthcare markets is always to creater a better, and more intuitive experience. Human Factors and Usability trials are another research activity that has been impacted by COVID-19, and this service has also benefitted from a creative approach and constantly expanding tool-kit to ensure client’s critical path healthcare development programmes remain on course as we switch to remote methods.

How we run online remote usability testing

There are three key questions we ask partipants which measure product desirability and usability:

“Does it fit in with the way I do things?”

One way we explore this is by gaining feedback on product workflow using storyboards or demonstration videos and animations which can be shared online. These tools are great for communicating assumptions and quickly learning whether they resonate with users and reflect how they do things. Study material can be shared prior to the session or presented to the participant during it.

“Can I understand how to use it?”

Gaining feedback on visual design and the hierarchy of information helps to validate mental models embodied in the design. This can be done using images, walkthroughs and interaction simulations to explore specific user interface features, i.e., interpretation, legibility, navigation, etc.

Each step of the user experience can be explored with the participant to determine their understanding of the device state and asked what they would do next.

“Am I able to physically use it?”

We can obtain richer feedback on physical interactions by posting test packs to the study participants. These might include, for example, handling models or low-fidelity prototypes, and briefing materials, which can be used in a range of ways – both moderated and unmoderated, depending on objectives.

3D printing is a great tool for this. We can print and finish a ‘looks-like’ model, and a 3D-printed headset allows them to video the encounter with their phone. We have also, as a matter of course, been including a personal hygiene pack and instructional information on measures to minimise virus contamination risks.

Participants are encouraged to ‘think out loud’ and walk through the overall experience with the device. This footage is then used by the research team to ask follow-up questions via video calls, to better understand use challenges or frustrations.

Heuristic analysis

Some tools avoid the need for usability testing with real users at all. One is heuristic analysis; an evaluation method which draws upon the collective knowledge and experience of a team of expert interaction designers and usability engineers to evaluate a device or concept against a set of pre-agreed criteria. This can also be expanded to consider capability loss or through exercises such as “walk-in-my-shoes” or using capability loss simulations. It provides a powerful empathetic solution when the target users are hard-to-reach, rare patient groups or are part of a niche consumer population.

Data logging

An approach we have pioneered at CDP is the use of data loggers hidden in prototype products, a service we call diialog. This allows a subject to receive a prototype device or packaging sample and naturally engage with it in their day to day routine in trials lasting up to a month, when it is eventually returned. At this point we download the stored data and analyse it to understand how the subject actually used the product.

This digital technology has been deployed successfully on research devices ranging from drug delivery systems to vacuum cleaners, both in concert with, and without a written diary.

As experienced researchers, we all know that there is no perfect single test method – but when faced with very diverse innovation challenges, the starting point is always collaborating closely with our clients to fully understand their objectives, and a broad and evolving toolkit to call upon! As an end-to-end innovation partner, we understand the importance of asking the right questions in order to uncover the right evidence to craft the right solution that is both desirable and safe for the user.

With a return to widespread physical in-home research some way off, you may be wondering how you are going to maintain your NPD critical path; whether you are in the early ‘explore’ phase of an innovation programme, or needing a decisive validation test result, if this feels like your current situation we would warmly encourage you to get in touch for a chat about your current research challenges, and some of the latest options that may be open to you.

References:

1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/330695/number-of-smartphone-users-worldwide/

What this pandemic can teach us about preparing for an uncertain future.

May 18th 2020

Martha Hodgson

We are entering the world’s most turbulent period in more than a generation. The last major global shock was the financial crash in 2008. But while it caused massive economic upheaval it broadly followed a logic that we could comprehend from previous recessions – bailouts, stimulus packages, austerity. But the crisis caused by Covid-19 is different. It reaches into all parts of life with spectacular speed and requires unprecedented measures. It is not a choice between demand-side or supply-side tactics because neither are effective. It’s about managing the economy in deep-freeze and in time a gradual thawing and reactivation. How business and our lives will eventually look is highly uncertain. But the consensus is, they will be transformed.

So as we start to assess the impact, familiar questions are being asked. How could we have predicted this? What do we do right now? What futures do we believe in and plan for? Indeed, the defining feature of all this is that it’s unchartered territory with a lack of epidemiological, financial, and political history data to help predict what happens next. Rightly, the current focus is on business continuity and resilience, but in time thoughts will move to further in the future.

The pandemic is sure to have far-reaching impacts. It has exposed fragilities in just-in-time global supply chains that may result in a shift to on-shoring to provide greater resilience in the system. Enforced remote working is leading to new work practices that may result in productivity gains and longer-term adoption. It could transform how we deliver essential public services from education, using more blended distance learning, to healthcare, building in new technologies, agility and community participation.

But should it take a global pandemic to imagine this? Perhaps we could explore similar scenarios through the creative application of trends we are more familiar with:

What if trade networks shifted away from hyper-globalisation and towards localisation?
What if digital technology adoption was enforced and big high-rise offices became obsolete?
What if demand for public and private transport reduced as a result of faster internet connectivity and less commuting?
What if consumer concerns over food safety/hygiene increased demand for plastic wrapping at the expense of environmental drivers?
What if social distancing became part of ongoing life and automation became essential?

A good starting point for this is an understanding of enduring consumer or business needs. Typically, these are the things that remain consistent across periods of time while the relative importance and how they are fulfilled changes in response to external factors. Consider, for instance, the need to purchase food. This core need hasn’t changed over the past few months but how it is fulfilled – with a shift from in store to online – and indeed the relative demand and pressure on certain food types – from long-life products to baking goods – has altered. At CDP our approach to any innovative investigation is start with understanding these enduring customer needs and then explore how they might evolve or be solved to imagine alternative futures.

Even with an appreciation of enduring needs, long-term, ‘what-if’ thinking has its challenges. It can seriously stretch comfort zones and often appear too abstract to gain enough traction during or after the process. To address these issues and get the most from scenario planning, try adopting these three principles.

1. Assign clear ownership. The common push back is that future scenarios are too hypothetical and too far ahead to be of any practical value. As a result they all too easily fall off the agenda. To avoid this, appoint someone with specific responsibility to help leadership teams take the long view. Even for leaders who value longer-term thinking they need to be given the space and time to think about it, with someone assigned responsibility to coordinate and implement planning.

2. Be led by the data. Some scenarios appear less plausible than others or may look more uncomfortable for your current business. However, it’s important not to let subjective judgement affect how seriously you take them. Remain objective and focus on scenarios which look most impactful or likely according to the data, not ones which suit you or cause the least disruption. Generating a sliding scale of probability and impact will help to prioritise in order to minimise exposure and/or choose the biggest opportunities.

3. Move from insights to actions. Scenarios provide a clue as to what may happen in the future. They are not usually a sound basis for a business case – although entrepreneurs may use it to make strategic bets. More often, it’s about informing directed steps that you can take to better plan, prepare and exploit opportunities, from assessing current capabilities to generating specific insights to support decision making. It’s important to ground scenario outputs in practical next steps which build on the insights and buy-in you have generated.

At CDP we apply customer/business insights, mega trends and technology insights, informed by our in-house experts to create possible futures, brought to life through creative exercises. We then make this actionable through clear prioritisation and breaking down outputs into ‘three horizons’ steps, starting with focused learning activities or experiments.

The future feels more uncertain than at any point in most of our lives. But our creative energies can be harnessed to see through the fog and plan for what we can anticipate, putting the right structures, knowledge and capabilities in place so when the scene becomes clearer, you are ready to adapt and flourish.

If you’re thinking about what the future holds for your business or sector, we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch at hello@cambridge-design.com, we look forward to discussing your specific requirements.