Inspecting Clean Room Opportunities At Interphex 2007

The annual Interphex 2007 trade show, a convention targeted at Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturing professionals was held in New York City at the Jacob Javits Convention Center on April 24-26.

Each year, Kimberly-Clark Professional (KCP) has used the show to perform quantitative product concept testing for clean room suits, gloves, masks, and wipers. This year, KCP hired Matter to conduct qualitative research of a more exploratory nature, aimed at identifying clean room product and market directions, opportunities, and possible gaps.

Matter held interviews and participatory design sessions with relevant attendees and clean room audiences. Researchers Jeff Harris and Crystal Collett spent two long days leading numerous sessions with lab technicians, clean room supervisors, maintenance professionals, and quality control supervisors to understand their needs, pains, and overall clean room environment context.

Collett said of the experience, “This was a unique opportunity to work in a dynamic industry market and an opaque new context of proprietary clean rooms. Even though this was our first time at Interphex, by getting a contextual understanding of how users operate in their home clean room environments, we were able to extract great feedback and provide our client with exciting new product opportunities and directions.”

Project Photos