A technology in search of a market — narrowed to its strongest first-adopter context and handed to the founder as a bet they could actually test.
Aquamox had built something novel: a way to turn ordinary water into an environmentally friendly sanitizer. The capability was real — but the product wasn't. No one knew who it should serve, where it fit, or what would make people use it.
The brief was to find the pain points and market gaps, then shape a concept for validation. The obvious starting point was the technology: it sanitizes better, so who wants better sanitation?
But "better" isn't why people adopt things — and that gap became the project.
People already have cleaning routines, trusted products, and workarounds around hygiene. A new product doesn't win by being technically better — it wins by fitting behavior people already have, or earning trust where the value is invisible. The question wasn't whether the tech worked. It was where it would be believed.
On a team of three working with the client CEO, my contribution ran end to end. I led market research, recruited participants, and ran the field interviews and in-home observations, then synthesized findings into the frameworks that shaped the direction.
On delivery, I built the prototypes and wireframes, and developed the Business Model Canvas and validation-metrics framework the founder would use to test the concept.
I ran field studies where people actually manage hygiene — separating what the technology could do from where it had the strongest pull.
The studies made the adoption problem concrete by contrasting two candidate contexts:
Users already had trusted routines. A new step needed an obvious payoff, and "cleaner" alone wasn't enough to change behavior.
Campers and RV users were already managing water limits, storage, and waste — so the technology solved a problem they felt daily.
Jobs-to-be-done analysis and an adoption-feasibility matrix made the comparison concrete: the outdoor context had a stronger job, clearer constraints, and better validation potential than the kitchen, where entrenched routines made behavior change hard.
So I recommended narrowing MVP focus to campers and RV users — choosing the context we could actually validate over the broader, more familiar kitchen market. A segment you can win beats a bigger one you can only theorize about.
Before committing to a form, I pressure-tested the direction with a 60-minute workshop with three campers — card-sorting their values, existing "haves," and adoption barriers, then prioritizing must-haves. Clarifying who before what kept us from jumping straight to a prototype.
The direction had to make the idea tangible while keeping its assumptions honest — each piece built to be questioned, not admired.
I shaped Droplet around a truth the research surfaced: campers and RV users already think about water, storage, waste, and low-impact living. It fit that existing mindset instead of asking for a new one — delivered as physical form studies and digital wireframes.
The 3D-printed forms weren't meant to look final — they were made to be questioned. I put them in front of campers to test whether the concept fit their context, using the prototype to surface doubts and refine direction.
I built a Business Model Canvas to surface the assumptions behind the concept — value proposition, segment, channel, retention — and a modified Proctor's Implementation Outcomes framework to define what adoption evidence would count: is ozone tech acceptable, does it fit the camping context, will users adopt it into routine rather than try once, does the cost math work at scale?
It shifted the question from "does the prototype work?" to "what would we need to see to know this is worth building?" — criteria instead of enthusiasm.
The engagement turned an open-ended technology into something a founder, partner, or early investor could evaluate: a named concept, a defined first-adopter segment, physical and digital prototypes, and a business model with explicit, testable assumptions.
The prototype may evolve. The segmentation logic and validation framework were the durable deliverable.
A broad technology needs a specific adoption context. The stronger move wasn't to design for every use case, but to find the one where need, constraints, and behavior change were clear enough to actually test.
Trust has to be designed when the value is invisible. Users couldn't see the sanitation happening, so feedback and guidance became central to the product experience, not an afterthought.