The challenge
The team ran its trade-panel research on static surveys. A one-to-five score captured how satisfied someone was, but never what felt wrong in the hand, or why a rating stopped at four.
For a company that builds tools by feel, that gap mattered. Product teams had scores, but not the reasons behind them.
How Arbor helped
Tradespeople opened a link on their phone and talked. Arbor listened, asked its own follow-ups whenever someone flagged a problem, and showed product images mid-interview.
Every answer was transcribed and analyzed as it came in, so themes and recommendations were ready in days, not weeks.
Three studies, three decisions
- 01
Concept study
What “well balanced” actually means
The company wanted its next hammers to feel balanced. Tradespeople defined it in terms engineers can build to: weight distribution, head-to-handle ratio and grip geometry.
- 02
Pre-launch field test
A new tool tested on real jobs
A new hammer wrench was heading to market. Tradespeople used it hard on real jobs. Nothing broke, and they came back with three refinements for the next version.
- 03
Product research
What to print on a tape measure
The markings are fixed once tooling is cut. The people who read a blade hundreds of times a day chose how the numbers print, and which clip to ship.
What came back
Product development
90%
want a tape measure’s inch marks as legible as its foot numbers.
Concept study
54 / 46
split on whether a hammer’s weight is the head or the whole tool, but 82% trust the listed weight either way.
Price sensitivity
64→26%
were extremely likely to buy a new tape measure, more than halved once a price was attached.
“Our surveys told us how tradespeople rated a tool. They never told us why. This is the first research that came back with something our product teams could act on.”
Why it worked
- Focus-group depth, survey scale
- Full, spoken answers from all 140 tradespeople, at a scale focus groups can’t reach.
- Built for people on a job site
- One link on a phone, no app. They talk instead of typing, and they finish.
- Every rating comes with a why
- Arbor asks its own follow-ups in the moment, and shows designs on screen mid-interview.