Generation-spanning appeal

Challenge

The family products division of a large state-owned enterprise offers bundled telecom and internet services. They needed to design an innovative service strategy to meet the growing demands of their middle and upper-class Chinese consumers living in first-tier cities.

Process

Our previous work with this client informed our design process. As in many of our projects, we tried to strike a good balance between ethnography and traditional market research methods to uncover opportunities the client could take to make its service successful.

Our design research was conducted in the homes, offices and other environments where the services would be used. This helped us understand the current needs of the market, taking into account product life cycles and the projected technological advancements of our client.

Outcomes

Keeping in mind that most Chinese homes are multi-generational, we needed to think in a way that our client never had before. Based on in-context user interviews and projected future trends, we identified six functions that a landline phone could perform to enhance family life.

Part of our research revealed the increasing desire of urban dwellers to connect with one another, and the client was perfectly positioned to facilitate this. We provided a service concept that would be considered a value-added social networking application attached to the service bundle. This was aimed at young, urban singles, and was intended to augment both current and future social networking sites.

Both of these directions are being tested and included in future services provided by our client.