When last did you listen to your product?

Think about the last time you opened a bag of crisps. Did you notice the crinkle? The way the packet resisted just enough before yielding with a satisfying rustle? That sound wasn't accidental - it was designed. And for consumers, it whispers a promise of freshness, quality, crunch.

Now ask yourself: when last did you truly listen to what your product is saying?

Traditional methods of product testing often fall short, capturing data points but missing the emotional and sensory richness of the consumer experience. We measure foam volume, track flavour intensity, benchmark texture against competitors. These metrics have their place. But they struggle to capture something crucial: the lived product experience. The feeling your product leaves behind. The sensory signature that makes it alluring and unforgettable.

This gap leaves product designers flying with one eye shut, missing the nuanced insights needed to craft truly exceptional products that delight daily. A reformulation might optimise one attribute for liking while unknowingly eroding the emotional resonance that drove loyalty. A new launch might tick every functional box yet fail to connect. The cost is tangible:, 76% of product launches fail, with most not reaching even 10,000-unit sales.

But what if we could find a way to listen to what your products are saying through the voices of those who use them, transforming data points into stories that matter?

Every product talks. The question is whether we have the capability to listen.

Consider toothpaste - seemingly simple, purely functional. Yet when we stopped measuring and started listening, something remarkable emerged. In Kenya, consumers didn't just describe mint intensity or foam volume. They described feeling. One consumer captured it perfectly: "It makes me feel amazing... I feel like I have received new teeth... it makes me feel great, free, and confident... it makes me feel joyful."

This feedback goes beyond testimonial. It’s proof that the product connected, resonated, and mattered in ways far beyond clinical efficacy. And when consumers perceive products to be functionally similar, it is the emotional connection they feel with a particular product that drives loyalty and repeat purchase.

We've always been able to hear these stories through qualitative research, but not at a scale that gives us confidence we've uncovered the emotions that truly matter. Through Sensory Bot™ - a highly targeted application of conversational AI - we've created a way to capture these consumer stories at scale. Stories that reveal the intricate exchange between product and consumer. In these moments, product experiences are sensed, evoking feelings, memories, and behaviours. The pop that signals freshness. The seal of a lid that builds trust. The gentle tingle that creates confidence.

And because Sensory Bot™ also allows us to collect key metrics such as liking, purchase intent, and uniqueness, we can quantitatively identify the stories that will best drive brand growth – empowering you to design with clarity, without guesswork.

Our industry loves to promise the benefits of AI. But when every solution promises “feaster,” “cheaper,” or “more automated” – are we embarking on a race to the bottom? A crowded space where platforms compete on feature lists instead of delivering what truly counts: insight that drives better decisions.

The truth is that AI's real power isn't just in doing the same things faster. It's in unlocking insights that were previously impossible to access at all.

This requires a different approach - not generic AI bolted onto existing processes, but targeted applications built from the ground up to solve specific, complex problems. The opportunity isn't in claiming AI as a selling point but in showing how AI enhances research in practical, measurable ways.

Sensory Bot™ wasn't designed to automate surveys more efficiently. It was designed to replicate something previously impossible to scale: the nuanced, contextually adaptive probing of expert sensory moderators. To decode the full spectrum of consumer expression - from vivid metaphors to subtle emotional cues. To maintain deep engagement while consumers reflect on their experience with a product. To capture not just what people perceive, but how they make meaning from it.

This is AI as a discovery partner, not just a productivity tool.

Traditional research excels at precision but can struggle with interconnection. Sensory panels deconstruct individual attributes with rigour. Consumer surveys track performance against standard KPIs. Both approaches have value. Both reveal moments of truth.

But product experience isn't fragmented - it's holistic, integrated. Consumers do not encounter products as a set of attributes, but as a single, lived experience. Taste, texture, sound, aroma, emotion, and memory all interact in real time. Every product is a living constellation. Yet the challenge for research has always been this: while we measure the parts well, we struggle to capture the whole. When we only track individual "stars," we never see the full sky.

Sensory Bot™ was created to solve this shortfall. It guides consumers through their complete product journey in a dynamic, conversational format. It doesn't just collect data - it listens, learns, and adapts with the expertise of a sensory scientist.

Unlike traditional surveys with predefined diagnostics, Sensory Bot™ enables rich, exploratory dialogue. It understands sensory language, uses contextual memory, and adapts dynamically to each participant's responses. Each conversation is unique - reflecting the consumer's individual authentic experience - yet remains systematically comprehensive, covering every relevant touchpoint from packaging to after-effects.

The results can be revelatory. In a recent study, over 300 consumers from the USA, China, and Kenya engaged for an average of 45 minutes each, sharing almost 175,000 words. And remarkably, they rated their research experience highly, often commenting on the space it gave them to reflect on and share their experience, in such depth, often for the first time.

This isn’t about speed alone. It is about research that transforms - delivering depth at scale.

If Sensory Bot™ sounds like magic, that's because it was built through a unique and obsessive collaboration between qualitative researchers specialised in sensory science and AI innovators hyper-focused on pushing past the limits of conversational AI for market research.

There is nothing synthetic about Sensory Bot™ - and that's crucial, since despite the hype and genuine use cases of AI for synthetic data, uncovering the hitherto undiscovered insights about visceral sensory experiences is precisely where synthetic data loses touch with reality. Instead, our proprietary technology combines the power of AI with sensory science in order to understand real human experiences.

So how does it work?

Underlying every Sensory Bot™ conversation is a network of interconnected data points: this complex structure allows for the rich representation and aspectualisation of each sensory moment across all relevant touchpoints. By aspectualisation, we mean viewing each experience from multiple angles or ‘aspects’ - capturing not just what was perceived, but how it was interpreted, how it made them feel, and how it connected to other elements of the product journey.

By using the semantic capabilities of large language models in real-time, Sensory Bot™ interprets both what has been said or left unsaid. As an interactive moderator, it is guided by researcher-designed heuristics – practical rules shaped by sensory science and human research expertise – to probe, clarify, and surface the sensory details, interactions, and conceptual implications that matter.

For every single data point, we have trained, tested, and validated the analysis and conversational heuristics based on sensory science from seasoned experts, with quality checks applied to ensure nothing is missed. The sophisticated conversational representations this methodology delivers are then combined and analysed at scale, allowing us to quantify how people derive meaning from their experiences – without losing the richness of real consumer language.

A seal that signals quality

In Kenya, when consumers engaged with toothpaste packaging, they didn't just notice design - they interpreted it. Phrases like "professionally packed," "carefully designed to protect the user," and "made with passion" weren't technical observations. They were signals of care. The hygiene of the lid, the integrity of the security seal, the reassuring QR code - each detail was decoded as evidence of craftsmanship and intention.

One consumer noted: "The QR code for easy verification makes it authentic." Another shared: "The toothpaste is well sealed giving assurance and originality of the product." In markets where counterfeit products create genuine concern, these cues carry profound emotional weight. They transform packaging security from functional feature to marker of respect and trust.

This is quality as care through thoughtful design. And it would have been completely missed by a standard packaging acceptability survey.

The pop that promises freshness

A client working with Sensory Bot™ discovered elements about their product experience they had never known about or measured before - like auditory feedback, that pop sound. This seemingly minor detail emerged organically as consumers described their experience. That satisfying sound wasn't just noticed - it was meaningful. It signalled freshness, a product untouched until that moment.

These discoveries only surface when consumers have space to express experience in their own words, beyond predefined response options. This is the difference between asking "How would you rate the packaging?" and creating the conditions for someone to spontaneously say, "The sound of originality to prove it hasn't been opened before hence more legit."

Quality that speaks culture

Perhaps most striking was how “quality” is constructed across cultures. In our study spanning the USA, China, and Kenya, the same product told remarkably different stories.

In the US, quality speaks the language of science. Consumers emphasised clinical efficacy, articulating trust through sensitivity protection, whitening power, and professional endorsements. In China, quality evokes balance and renewal. Vivid, metaphor-rich language positions oral care as a ritual in tune with nature, with mint "rising in the air like wisps of green smoke" and cooling sensations as "breathing in the morning dew,". In Kenya, quality is not a technical benchmark – it is relational. It is care you see and feel. It is confidence you carry into the day, feeling "so fresh that "talking to people doesn't make me feel shy." Same product. Completely different meanings.

Cultural interpretation shapes product experience - insight that only emerges when consumers have the space to express experience in their own words. For brands, understanding these nuances is invaluable for sensitive localisation without diluting core brand promise.

When consumer stories collected at scale meet expert product insights, teams can design products that don’t just meet expectations – they exceed them. This goes well beyond liking to create lasting, distinctive, positive impressions that drive loyalty and growth.

As one client reflected: "It's the first time we've been able to look at the product experience in such a holistic way, to see the connections across attributes and how these ladder up to emotional and functional benefits. It is such a fresh way of looking at the data, and very valuable and differentiating for us."

This matters commercially in three critical areas:

• Product reformulation: Understanding your product's sensory DNA - its signature - means knowing what to preserve, what to protect, what to optimise. You can act early, mitigate risks, and make confident decisions before issues arise. No more flying blind when ingredients change or supply chains shift.
• Product superiority: Uncover what makes your product emotionally resonant and memorable. Amplify those elements and weave them together more strategically. Build a resilient product identity that truly differentiates in competitive markets. For new products, engineer advantage from the start - embedding emotional drivers and distinctive sensory cues into the product DNA, ensuring superiority from concept to launch.
• Resonant communication: The rich, nuanced language consumers share with Sensory Bot™ becomes the bridge between product design and marketing. When consumers describe a toothpaste as "friendly," "tender," and "trustworthy," these words can inspire communication that speaks directly to hearts - not just rational claims or lists of benefits.

The value here isn't just in having insights faster. It's in having insights you couldn't access any other way - insights that fundamentally transforms how teams understand and design product experiences.

We live in an era of sensory abundance yet experiential scarcity. We can measure everything, yet the shape of true experience often feels elusive. As data proliferates, meaning seems to fragment.

The research industry faces a choice. We can continue the features race - adding more automation, more speed, more dashboards - until we've commoditised ourselves into sameness. Or we can ask harder questions about what research should actually do. Not just deliver data faster, but help teams think differently, solve complex problems, and drive smarter decisions.

This requires moving beyond generic applications of technology toward purposeful innovation. Tools built not because AI can do something, but because it solves a real problem in a genuinely new way.

The margin between product success and failure lies in the lived product constellation - now, for the first time, made visible and actionable with the right blend of machine and mind.

When we truly listen - not just to what consumers say, but to what they mean - we discover that even the most ordinary products can tell extraordinary stories. A tube of toothpaste becomes a signal of care. A crinkle becomes a promise of quality. A gentle tingle becomes social confidence.

These aren't just interesting insights. They're actionable intelligence - clarity, confidence, and consumer closeness to guide smarter design decisions.

And so we return to our opening question: When was the last time you listened to your product?

Not measure it. Not benchmark it. Not optimise isolated attributes. But truly listened - with empathy, precision, and scale - to the stories it tells through the voices of those who experience it daily.

Because in those stories lies the difference between products that simply function and products that genuinely connect. Between launches that fade and brands that endure. Between data that informs and insight that inspires.

Your product is speaking. The question is, are you listening?