18 FAQs About Highlight's In-Home Usage Testing Platform

Historically, in-home usage testing (IHUT) and physical product testing has been costly, slow, and complicated.

• It’s hard to build and cultivate a nationwide panel of high-quality Highlighters.
• It’s hard to source and prepare your prototype for shipping—especially if it needs to be refrigerated, blinded, or paired with instructions for testers.
• It’s hard to collect and synthesize all the data for reporting and immediate use.

Many CPG and retail brands assume it’s simply impossible to manage all of that. But skipping consumer and IHUT product testing altogether is incredibly risky. Don’t move forward without the consumer data you need to de-risk the millions of dollars you’re investing in product innovation and go-to-market initiatives.

That’s why we built Highlight, an integrated product research platform that gives brands access to high-quality consumer data at speed and scale. For a broader look at how modern IHUT works, see our guide to 10 things you need to know about in-home usage testing.

Taking the pain out of product testing isn’t easy, so we get a lot of questions about how we do it. We’ve integrated every step of the process—tester recruitment, shipping and logistics, and data delivery—to make IHUT quick and easy for innovation, insights, and R&D teams. Here’s your look under the hood.

What do you mean when you describe Highlight as a “vertically integrated” product research platform?

Highlight has prioritized transforming a previously fragmented space into a streamlined solution. Each component of product testing comes together under one umbrella: the tester community, the technology platform, and the logistics.

Bringing each of these elements together acts as a force multiplier for rapid innovation. Your team has instant access to data as soon as the first response comes in, and your final dataset in about three weeks on average from product shipment.

Highlight’s solution integrates our nationwide community of testers, painless logistics, and a data and analytics platform for project set up and live results.

What role does technology play in how Highlight conducts product testing?

Highlight is a digitally native brand born out of discontent with the outdated methods of the insights industry. Highlight’s CEO and founder Dana Kim began her career in market research, where she soon found herself frustrated with archaic processes, high costs, and slow timelines. While earning her MBA from Wharton, she founded Highlight to change that.

Highlight’s technology replaces the long timelines, clunky processes, and fragmented partners of traditional product testing with seamless execution and data visibility. The platform acts as a technology-first standard for the product testing space, making it easier than ever to access pivotal insights at game-changing speeds. Learn more about what tech-enabled IHUT makes possible for modern teams.

Highlight’s platform for Highlighters enables project set up, tester recruitment, live data results, and final data delivery all in one place. Highlight for Highlighters makes it easy for Highlighters to submit their feedback—including photo and video.

What is “in-context learning”?

At Highlight, we believe that only real product experiences can power real product intelligence. To assess a product honestly, it must be evaluated in consumers’ natural environments. In-context learning is the ability to meet consumers where they are—testing early stage prototypes, later-stage product innovations, and in-market products in the real environments where consumers will experience the product.

As your team works toward differentiated innovation in a highly competitive environment, incorporating in-context learning early and often enables the deep understanding you need for consumer-led innovation and product superiority.

Our organization has previously relied on CLTs (Central Location Testing). What is the value of in-context learning over a CLT?

In-context learning provides five key advantages over traditional CLT methods:

• Understanding consumer behaviors over time: In-home usage testing is not just a powerful tool to understand product and sensory performance at a single point in time. IHUT can also shed light on a product’s habit-forming power over time. For example, do consumers use your cleaning product once a month, once a week, or once a day? By understanding habitual behaviors and changes in use over time, product insights and innovation teams can build products that consumers buy again and again. The ability to understand how a product lives up to consumer expectations outside of a controlled setting is a leading indicator of repeat purchase—a vital component of in-market success and a great KPI for winning retailer sell-in.
• A lens into organic routines and occasions: A consumer’s experience of a product can largely depend on the occasion. Allowing people to use products as part of their normal routine not only shows behaviors over time—it can reveal usage occasions you hadn’t considered previously. These discoveries can be game-changing for marketing and activation efforts.
• The power of situational context: Taste preferences can differ dramatically between regions, occasions, and preferences. By leveraging in-home testing, you can ensure a geographically and demographically representative audience along with large base sizes for quantitative learnings by subgroup—or access feedback from the low incidence rate demographic groups you need for more niche products.
• Real-time visibility: Once products are in field (shipped to your recruited group of Highlighters from the Highlight community), you can access live results in your Highlight dashboard. The most agile Highlight customers use this initial data to make quick pivots. You receive data within days while giving consumers the proper amount of time to use products as part of their normal routines.
• Cross-functional efficiency: In-context learning offers something for every team and helps break down the silos that can form in larger product innovation initiatives. Your insights team can get the claims substantiation they need, your product design team can get packaging validation, your social media team can get video reviews for promotion, and your sales team can get proof points for retailer conversations. Highlight empowers every team with the data insights they need in one phase of research.

Did you know? Highlight customers have the ability to engage super niche consumer groups (as low as 3% IR audiences!). Learn more about our tester community.

I need a nationally representative sample. Can I do that with the Highlight community?

Yes! Highlight has tens of thousands of active members spanning the United States. This enables us to ensure a nationally representative sample as well as tap into niche consumer groups—as low as 3% IR (incidence rate) audiences.

I need consumer data for a product in a tricky category. Can Highlight’s community of testers accommodate me?

Highlight has helped a wide variety of brands get the consumer insights they need for uniquely challenging products. For example:

• Product testing for pets: From pet food and treats to cat litter and dog toys, we’ve tested it all with the pet owners in the Highlight community. Learn more about a sensory test we recently conducted for a cat litter brand.
• Product testing for newborns and young children: Highlight frequently helps brands innovating products for children design product tests and recruit parent-child teams of testers. Read about a recent example from the popular children’s snack FruitBlox.
• Product testing for women’s wellness: We frequently help brands innovating products across personal care and women’s health categories recruit the Highlighters they need for high-quality data. Here’s an example of a longitudinal study we helped a postpartum recovery brand conduct amongst women in their final trimester of pregnancy over 30 days of in-home usage.
• Product testing for alcoholic beverages: Highlight helps many BevAlc brands get the real consumer data they need to understand in-context product usage. Learn more about what BevAlc brands can achieve with in-context learning.

Our organization usually does large scale (n=500+) home use tests to validate prior to launch. If you have your own community, are you able to reach those n-sizes?

We are so glad you asked! One of Highlight’s strengths is the ability to drive quality insights among high base sizes to build confidence pre-launch. We call this the Highlight Greenlight. (Learn more about our end-to-end solutions.)

Highlight currently has 50,000 active members (and growing!) of our Highlighter community, enabling our customers to organically source Highlighters and accommodate large n-sizes in line with your organization’s action standards.

Sometimes we only have so many prototypes to send out (n=50-60). Is that still sufficient to get research-grade confidence?

No problem at all! Highlight is focused on meeting you where you are, whether that is for IHUT product tests of n=500 or n=50. We maximize the real estate of each and every study to get the most out of your research.

Learn more about how apparel brands use a mixed methodology approach to gain insights with small n sizes.

While it is our best practice to apply statistical testing to n=75+, we can provide strong directional reads, quantitative-style analysis, and nuance with rich open-ends and videos to bring the consumer experience to life.

Product tests with small sample sizes often use photo and video qualitative feedback to gain the insights they need for consumer-led innovation.

Is your community “sensory trained”?

Highlight’s focus is on testing real products with real people. While there are wonderful sensory panels in the industry, we have made the intentional decision (for now) to focus on consumer testing, including building protocols around testing cadences to ensure we do not create “professional Highlighters” or a mismatch in incentives.

Does Highlight offer focus groups?

Highlighters (what we call our Highlighters) are people just like us with jobs, kids, priorities, and routines that don't always align with the time slots available in a traditional focus group schedule. Highlight leverages 1:1 in-depth interviews, video testimonial feedback, and asynchronous qualitative methods that allow our customers to meet consumers where they are—at a time and place where they are most comfortable and ready to give in-depth and valuable qualitative feedback.

My biggest frustration with traditional in-home tests is the lack of visibility into project progress. How does the Highlight platform solve for this?

The Highlight platform was built by researchers for researchers—and yes, it’s the little things. A dynamic timeline within the platform outlines each and every step of the process from product receipt, shipped, consumer receipt, to live data visualization. Our process is built on transparency, and you always have full visibility into every project step.

How can I give multiple team members and stakeholders visibility into our research within the Highlight platform?

Highlight does not charge by the seat, so you’re free to add whoever you need to the platform. Grant those who are “in the weeds” of the work with you full access so you can, for example, edit study design documentation together.

We have a variety of plans tailored to our customers’ needs, the number of tests they want to run each year, and the types of analytics they are looking for. Access to the platform is simple once you sign up for a subscription plan—whether you are an insights team or a cross-functional team working across product and brand to get quality insights fast.

We care most about transparency and giving teams access to data without restricting them. You can run your tests with the guidance of our modules and blueprints in app, or do so with the support of our team of research and enablement managers.

I can’t make a big investment in new software up front. I need to work in an ad hoc capacity at first.

No problem at all! Highlight has a flexible working model. We can partner with you on a project-by-project capacity (and yes, you still have access to the platform) or you can subscribe to the platform so you can test as early and often as your product research roadmap requires.

Can I still access my data after the study is done?

You bet. We ensure your data is protected as long as you may need to access it.

My product requires special arrangements and/or careful shipping (frozen/refrigerated shipping, fragile product, etc.).

No problem! Highlight has an FDA certified warehouse centrally located just outside of Chicago. We have worked to establish best practices and protocols to ensure your product arrives in the fidelity at which it should be tested, whether that’s frozen, safely packaged, blinded, relabeled, or coupled with a competitive product. You name it, we’ll work with you to make it happen.

Can I ship directly to consumers?

Highlight treats data privacy and security regulation with the utmost importance. Due to the transfer of PII (Personally Identifiable Information), we lead the shipping and distribution to our community of Highlighters. Another important reason to leave shipping to Highlight is that our team of experts can ensure quality best practices are employed to pack every single sample box per product testing requirements.

Does my product need to be consumer-ready when I ship it to you?

Absolutely not! Our focus is on ensuring that you and your team can ship us the products or prototypes with as little effort as possible on your part. Ship us the product in bulk and we’ll handle the rest—from repacking into smaller containers and blinding packaging for distribution to sourcing in-market competitive products. Leave it to our logistics team.

Does Highlight ship internationally?

As of now, Highlight operates solely within the United States with strong representation and the ability to reach niche, targeted audiences as well as broader category audiences. We are excited to explore the possibility of expanding internationally as we move forward!

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Didn’t find the answers you needed here?

See how the Highlight product research platform works end to end, or book a demo to get your questions answered with our team.

Want to explore on your own first? Take a platform overview or dig deeper into 10 things to know about IHUT and how tech-enabled IHUT drives better products.

Related reading: In-home pet food testing: insights to improve your product.