HVAC Technician Ethnography

Overview:

In Summer 2019, Resideo’s comfort line of business was developing a new product offering. They wanted to learn more about HVAC technician's daily routines so we could better inform the product development.

Key Goals:

Learn and document HVAC technicians’ daily workflows, tools, and work environment
Discover places within technicians’ current routines in which the new product could be incorporated.

My Role:

I led the ethnographic research in the northeast region of the US. Other researchers simultaneously conducted research in other regions of the US.

After conducting fieldwork, I led the analysis and synthesis of research from all regions to document findings & provide business recommendations.

What I did:

Rode 16 hours with technicians

Visited 7 maintenance calls

Conducted 4 in-depth interviews with management

Led a daily debrief with project team

I observed technician work processes.

I examined environmental factors.

I recorded information in detailed fieldnotes.

Business Impacts:

Based on the data, we learned many of our assumptions about HVAC technicians were inaccurate. This directly impacted how we would introduce the new product into the market.

With ethnographic data we provided the project team with an accurate understanding of technicians’ day-to-day activities and recommended ways to incorporate the new product.

Outcomes & Assets:

Since the product design depended heavily on understanding the role of the technician at their company and their daily routine, I created the following assets for the product team as tools to help product development:

A cumulative research insights report with recommendations on how to frame the new product in the HVAC space.
A detailed HVAC technician journey map
A data-informed HVAC technician persona

Project Challenges:

One of the challenges of this project was combining over 72 hours worth of field research from four different researchers in four different geographic regions into a single, compelling narrative. I led the team in collecting, synthesizing, and organizing data through affinity mapping exercises and bi-weekly analysis workshops.

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