Agile Market Research and Conjoint for Ideal Product Design…Even for Jigsaw Puzzles!

May 5th, 2020
Michele Sims | Vice President, Research Management, TRC
Hero Image: Agile Market Research and Conjoint for Ideal Product Design…Even for Jigsaw Puzzles!

Folks isolating at home during the COVID-19 pandemic are looking for inexpensive family-friendly ways to entertain themselves. Jigsaw puzzles seem to be fitting that bill, and my family has been doing them since before the shut-down began.

At my house, as we’ve gotten better at doing them, we’ve also gotten more particular about which puzzles to buy. Subject matter, the size and number of the pieces, the construction material, border type and repetitiveness of the patterns all factor into our decision for which puzzles to tackle. We won’t attempt something all in one color palette nor one with rounded edges (that grayscale Moon puzzle circulating social media is a definite NO). But we also don’t want to waste our time on something that is too easy or with juvenile subject matter.

As I’m dreaming of the perfect puzzle, I can easily see how a manufacturer could utilize conjoint to help determine the types of puzzles to design. Puzzle-buying consumers could trade-off puzzle features and price, perhaps even bundling some puzzles together. Suggestions for puzzle subject matter could be generated through a crowdsourcing-style research exercise, such as our Idea Mill™ agile product. The 6 to 36 designs with the most promise could then be winnowed down in a Message Test Express™ — feature prioritization exercise.

So now that I have the entire research program laid out, I just need a jigsaw puzzle company to embrace my research plan and quickly – before I run out of puzzles!