MENA User Research

Using qualitative research to discover habits in the MENA region.

Based out of New York, OXO focuses on creating household products that ease the tasks of everyday life inclusively for a wide range of users. They are one of the world’s leading manufacturers of kitchen utensils and houseware products. Through ethnographic research, we achieved their goal of better understanding the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and broadening their understanding of local cooking, food preparation and organizing habits.
Year

2020

Client

OXO

Purpose of the study

Undertaking qualitative and generative research to help the OXO team gain a better understanding of habits in the Middle East.

Method

In order to understand the users’ needs we gathered information through recording daily activities and habits of families and individuals of different backgrounds. Diary studies, home visits and shop-alongs provided the necessary first hand data to create a full picture. During recruitment, we aimed to have a variety of participants; different ages, different living situations, different abilities, and of course different locations. We acquired participants from UAE, KSA and Jordan.
Methods used for this study:
  • Diary study
  • In person research (home observation & shop along)
  • Interviews

Summary

After the diary studies, in person research and interviews, our team synthesized all the information that we gathered during the study and found relevant patterns. We filtered the noise from the golden nuggets and analyzed patterns, common themes, similarities and differences. As a result of that, OXO gained insights into the habits, behaviors and needs of MENA users.
Twelve Degrees is an extremely thoughtful and highly skilled group whose passion for user research and design thinking further elevates their work. They are an engaging and inspiring group and we thoroughly enjoyed our research collaboration!
Mike Delevante
Vice President of Product Development, OXO

To honor the privacy of our study participants, we have used different images to illustrate our work on this page. The header image is by Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay. The other two images were made by Jason Briscoe on Unsplash.