This document outlines a research plan to understand demand for the Eco Stool product. It includes proposed research activities like prototypes, identifying lead users and target markets, creating personas, assessing feasibility and competition, and testing marketing concepts. Qualitative and quantitative research methods are suggested like focus groups, online polls, questionnaires. The plan aims to portray acceptance of sustainable furniture over other eco-products to stakeholders. Feedback on the proposed tools is requested.

1. RESEARCH PLAN
for PoC of the Eco stool – to understand the ‘demand of the product’
This document highlights the qualitative data from the industry, and has the research framework as
well as the ‘Blanks to be filled’ for a concrete Proof of Concept about the product discussed with
the Enactus, SSCBS team. The various kind of data that we can utilise is categorically mentioned as
individual topics in the content-list below:
Contents of the document:
1. Product offering (brief) with context report
2. MVP – prototypes with intents
3. Lead User – generation strategies
4. Target Market & Target Audience
5. Personas – to be
6. Practical potential - feasibility v/s desirability
7. Risks & Opportunities
8. Feasibility & Competition benchmarking
9. Research plan for market
m. miscellaneous blanks to be filled
1. Let us begin with clearly defining the concept of the product and the current offering!
The Eco Stool is the easiest and most flexible piece of furniture that can be practically
manufactured on a scale that supports our story of ‘Waste is the new Raw’.
Worth noting here, ‘the story’ is a crucial part of the offering; the story will end up being the
catalyst over-powering the products once the system has been successfully deployed.
CONTEXT REPORT: The context into which the product shall land is under-developed to be
considered an impactful one. Several other patterns and products are leading up-to the context of
sustainable living, though. It is also important to be understood that there is no logical ‘demand’ for
this product, as it is not understood by the target audience in the first place.
With 2020 as a new psychological milestone for many institutions, there is an emphasis on ‘change
that works’, an emphasis on selling realistic stories verifiable in existing systems and situations.
With this trend alone, it is safe to say that the second-tier innovators in the existing market are
feeling a dire need of direction and guidance from the top innovators in the chain.
The aim of deploying our systems smartly would mean streamlining the flow of knowledge into the
industry while creating first-hand buyers for these (seemingly) new products.
In terms of technology and methods, there is clearly no existing scene either.
Compliances and the political will around this has to be accessed and supported when they start to
show themselves.

2. 2. MVP – prototypes with intents
With over 12 months of continuous exploration in the area of cardboard furniture, we have
developed and tested varieties of spatial forms and arrangements to arrive at an optimised concept.
This implies the advantage and kick start over the entrants in the market who will follow us later.
The plan is to have several throwaway prototypes for the research activities scheduled with Enactus.
Kindly access the research plan to convey the requirement of these prototypes in our next
communication.
3. Lead User
Our lead user could be from any sphere of life, but most probably residing in an urban location,
with influential colleagues and a decent exposure to real-time internet.
4. Target Market (the larger sphere) & Target Audience (the specific spheres)
Target market should include anybody who needs furniture with little worry of it’s longevity, or
anybody who simply needs a large number of furniture. A cardboard-subscription model directly
translates into retentive service to this consumer of bulk-furniture.
An explicit chart of all potential spaces will be the result of a future brainstorming
5. Personas – to be
bioQ has an in-house version of 6 personas for this product, in particular.
It should be logically helpful to our case if Enactus identifies 6 personas from their understanding of
the market post this report, and then those personas are tallied to eventually fuse the two versions
into 6 fresh personas (We’ll carry out this fusing exercise at bioQ labs itself) to have an explicit
need assessment in our data for future planning and reference through this project.
6. Practical potential - feasibility v/s desirability
This is an article we’ll arrive at after some original research. Will share the strategy to quantify this soon.
7. Risks & Opportunities
Can be accessed and proven with numbers from the web, and then supported with original research data later.
Please prepare a separate document focusing on this.
8. Feasibility & Competition benchmarking w.r.t. the following factors:
- Financial:
- Technical feasibility:
- Schedule and timing
- Market feasibility
- Regulations & Standards
- Operational
- Distribution/Deliverability

3. 9. Researchplan
9a. A/B Testing: We need a modified version of the traditional practice of A/B testing to have
lucrative data. Instead of giving two products to test extensively and reviewing features of those,
our version of the exercise shall involve several A v/s B scenarios left to be imagined one under the
other – they’ll follow the pattern of a traditional but harmful product against a less accustomed-to,
but sustainable products. Products from all streams of life can be included here. The motive is to
portray the acceptance of furniture over other areas by placing the ease of adopting eco-furniture
with the difficulty of adopting other eco-products. Some tailoring might be needed, but this shall
produce results worth presenting to several stakeholders. Could be performed online also. [qtv.]
9b. Online petitions: can be run for this initial period of internal planning on platforms like
change.org [qtv.]
9c. Decision mapping/ Emotion mapping of someone who represents one of our personas. [qlv]
9d. Focus groups : Since the spread of the Coronavirus, activities like Focus groups have become
pointless to arrange. Although, I do feel that we can replicate the environment online in the form of
a webinars or something like it. Focus group interactions shall help us gather real statements from
real people, and subjective data about why the acceptance of this product or the lack thereof.
[qlv/qtv]
9e. Ladder interviews, in the case of our product, could help us refine our story, but won’t help the
product or the marketing. [qlv]
9f. Target market research: Niche, Fandom, Lifestyle brand, maker culture, subcultures, price-
sensitive, etc [qlv]
9g. Test marketing and promotion – testing of basic related marketing concepts [qlv]
9h. Online polls in different regions [qtv/qlv]
9i. We can post questionnaires online along with credits that testers can use when the product gets
launched, affecting their opinions on the acceptance of the product, and can then use those numbers.
[qtv]
I have deliberately kept away from including service design research tools in this itinerary, as it
mostly caters to qualitative assessment anyway. Kindly go through this directory at
https://servicedesigntools.org/tools and add here whichever of those you find helpful or even just
intriguing.

4. m. Competitive Positioning – fill in the blanks or rate the following:
After research, and by comparing ratings of outsiders, the following factors can be accessed to
avoid under-positioning or over-positioning:
PRICE
DECOR
QUALITY
CUSTOMER SERVICE
PERFORMANCE
HEALTH
CONVENIENCE
COMFORT
FUNCTIONS
IDENTITY
EFFICIENCY
USABILITY
CUSTOMISATION
p.s.: Let us have a common document online, where we can add web-resources for this research
phase of the project?
Thank you for attending to this long document of vision.
This document stands for revision, first of which could be discussed in our next meeting.
Feel free to express your teams’ discomfort with any of the research tools aforementioned.
Looking forward to mutual empowerment!
Greetings!
From bioQ labs