Premium doesn't mean the same thing to everyone
osim wanted one smart massage chair for tech-forward millennials and for older users who just want relief. we found out what "smart" had to mean for each.
where does helpful turn into overwhelming?
some users wanted to optimise their recovery. others wanted to sit down and recover without learning a single setting. the chair had to work for both.
we asked about stress and rest separately.
the two blocks came back as very different answers. across generations we asked what stress feels like and what it takes to relax, then where smart tech loses people and whether ai could help without taking over.
- weeks 1 to 2Questionnaire designsplit the survey into a stress block and a rest block, and wrote the ai questions last so they wouldn't colour everything before them.
- week 3Sample & quotasbriefed our recruitment vendor on quotas by generation, chair ownership and smart-device habits, so both the optimisers and the relief-seekers were properly represented.
- week 4Soft launcha small first wave to check how long it took and whether any question was being misread.
- weeks 5 to 8Full fieldworkmonitored quotas as responses came in and asked the vendor to top up the cells running short.
- weeks 9 to 12Analysis & handovercut the data by how much control people wanted to keep, and handed osim a framework for what "smart" should do for each group.
comfort depends on trust.
it's emotional and it shifts over time, and it hinges almost entirely on how much someone trusts the technology behind it.
the osim udream pro, launched july 2023.