The team partnered with an European vehicle brand to identify key inspirational anchors for a new "in China, for China" product definition. The goal was to align the brand’s core pillars with the aspirations of China’s next-generation consumers.

The Challenge
The team partnered with a European vehicle brand to identify key inspirational anchors for a new "in China, for China" product definition — aligning the brand's core pillars with the aspirations of China's next-generation consumers, within a fast-paced, multidisciplinary team structure.

My Role
As the sole design researcher on the team, my contributions included:

• Designed research plans tailored to the client's needs and business objectives

• Implemented a "futuring" methodology to ground early hypotheses and surface new design opportunities

• Co-created culturally nuanced research materials with product and interaction designers for consumer testing

• Facilitated conversations with experts and consumers that directly informed product decisions

• Integrated findings into the client's existing internal framework

My research design was hypothesis-driven from the start — built on both the client's existing assumptions and our own, and structured to connect directly back to the client's internal ways of working.

• Stakeholder and expert interviews — to surface and stress-test existing assumptions early

• Desk research and futuring — to expand the range of future scenarios under consideration

• Co-creation workshop — infusing a socio-cultural lens to broaden the team's perspective beyond category norms

• Interviews with inspirational consumers, recruited using the client's own segmentation model — ensuring findings would integrate into their existing framework

• Concept testing — to ground emerging ideas in real consumer reactions before moving into product definition

• The research grounded the brand's "in China, for China" product definition in culturally specific consumer insights — giving the team a shared, evidence-based starting point for design decisions.

• Strengthened cross-functional alignment between research, product, and design — and gave VP-level stakeholders confidence to commit to the long-term China strategy.

• Opened the door to further strategic collaboration with the client at both group and departmental levels.