CookFest: Reimagining cooking

An appliance brand needed to uncover unmet needs while cooking, to advise a new launch in the appliance category. Previous interviews and focus groups had relied on respondent past experiences and their stated intent, and had thrown up insights that were all previously known. Humanify aimed to fix that with a Show and Tell approach, rooted in ethnography versus interviewing as a methodology. To enable a deeper understanding and advice the launch 

Live Show & Tell versus interviews

Ethnography is about being in the room during the experience, and there are different ways to run such studies depending on the intensity of researcher interaction required. The first is "Fly On The Wall" study, which is self reported by the respondent, to remove any bias from a forced or curated interaction with researcher intervention. The second is "In-Situ" study, where the researcher immerses himself in the experience alongside the respondent. For this study, the In-Situ option was chosen.
Respondents were recruited based on their cooking habits and appliance use and live videos were recording on site during the cooking process. The show and tell experience was live-streamed through their smartphones, and Humanify's platform created hundreds of video clips around the regime and experience of cooking. 

Cooking is intuitive and habitual

• Show and Tell AI analytics Stated expectations are sometimes different from actual experience hits and misses. By decoding both the show and tell through AI, it became possible to explore both unstated and stated needs. Also habitual or intuitive behaviour was labelled to assess what behaviours are likely to remain unchanged, and need to be supported with product features/technology.
• Quantification of needs for prioritisationBecause the dashboard analytics quantify the qualitative data, the team was able to identify the important needs for prioritisation. Helping decision making in a strong qualitative setting
•  Identifying the right profile of userBy using dashboard filters and features, it became possible to understand how the need-benefit hierarchies changed for different cohorts across demographics, usage and ownership. So the team could make a clear decision on which user type to focus on for the launch.

Forward Path

The findings helped the brand gain actionable consumer insights to better understand Indian households, identify opportunities, and shaping strategies to strengthen its relevance in Indian kitchens.