Since its start in 1968, Hot Wheels has been a prominent leader in the toy industry. With nearly 500 million units sold each year, their signature Hot Wheels cars remain the number one selling toy in the world. While their products are widely successful with children under the age of eight, they have struggled to create products that capture the attention of children eight and up. In fall of 2019, Hot Wheels partnered with the Iovine and Young Academy to develop new design strategies to capture this market.
Over the course of five months, I worked with a team of students from my cohort to develop a detailed strategy for Mattel to reach children age eight and up, complete with 3D printed prototypes, 3D models of product parts, detailed product descriptions and illustrations, and a go-to-market strategy. My primary role on the team was working on the concept and detailed design strategy for our proposed solution.
Vagueness warning: Because much of our work with Mattel is protected by a non-disclosure agreement, I'll be vague around some of the specifics of our findings and what our team went on to build.
How can Hot Wheels better attract kids above the age of eight?
We began our research with a dive into developmental psychology and an analysis of successful competitors in the market. My experience in childcare helped guide our team as well, and we were able to interview a number of children within our target demographic directly about different toys and games on the market. Mattel also provided us with extensive documentation on their own research and findings within our target demographic and further market analysis for us to reference.
Using our findings from desk research, we developed a set of questions and conducted several rounds of focus groups with boys and girls between eight and fourteen years old at Mattel's Imagination Center in El Segundo. For liability reasons, these were conducted by a talented Mattel researcher in one of the company's usability labs while we watched and took notes from a connected observation room.
During the research process, we found that kids ages 8-10 are drawn to toys that challenge them and make them think. Sandbox and strategic games like Minecraft (with over 176 million copies of the game sold) and Roblox (with over 100 million monthly active users) have gained a lot of traction among this age group. With games like these, kids are pushed to think strategically about what they are going to do, involving both their creativity and ability to imagine various outcomes.
“I play Minecraft like two hours a day. My cousin made a server and we all have to compete to build things and steal each others’ stuff. It’s pretty cool.” - Jack (Boy, 8-10)
“I like to play Minecraft and Roblox with my friends. We build cities and castles and train lots of animals.” - Leia (Girl, 8-10)
With further research, we found more evidence of this trend towards challenging, strategic, and creative games, as the most popular physical toys on the market are those that are mentally stimulating, and involve some component of building. Amazon toys, for example, in the 8-13 age range strongly focus on buildable toys such as LEGOs, art toys, and robotics. Internationally, The LEGO Group's sales have drastically risen from 0.9 billion euros in 2003 to 4.87 billion euros of sales in 2018, a 441% increase. During our focus groups at Mattel, children consistently showed excitement when asked if they play with LEGOs, talking about things they had built. We also found that all toys at the top of the market had some creativity-driven component that still had clear goals per play session (which could change each time the game is played). All of these games could be easily made social, so kids could play with friends or by themselves.
At this stage, children are developing more complex relationships, becoming more peer-motivated, and using the context of the people around them to decide if they’re good at something or not. Achievements are the make-or-break metric for development during this time. Toys that focus on creativity and have clear goals at the end of a play session help a child achieve unique accomplishments that can grant them a sense of identity among their peers. Children feel pride in what they accomplish, giving them confidence in their own abilities. This sense of accomplishment and pride is a key driver of children during this developmental stage.
In typical consulting fashion, we proposed three promising directions we could take based on our findings. The Advanced Play design team at Hot Wheels was very excited about our third (and favorite) direction in our proposal.
Yeah, so unfortunately this is where I have to shift to majorly vague descriptions of everything. I am, however, able to share more about this project one-on-one and know the limitations of the NDA, so feel free to ask! I just might not be able to answer.
Together, my team spent the next three months building out our concept, interviewing relevant stakeholders, and working with Hot Wheels to make our solution as useful to them as possible. By the end of the project, we were able to deliver detailed documentation on a new product, 3D printed prototypes of the solution, additional 3D models (including the cover for this page, though I can't explain what it is), a product name, usage guidelines and descriptions, and a go-to-market strategy.
I learned a lot about user research and user testing from this project. This was my second time in a usability lab, but by far the most educative. It showed me how much I enjoy fast-paced design challenges that push me to create new features and products. I loved brainstorming and building out our ideas with my teammates, and had really enjoyed presenting those ideas to the designers at Hot Wheels. While I enjoyed approaching this kind of design strategy and product design from a consulting perspective, it did show me that I would much rather work for one individual company so that I can be a part of the product's growth and development beyond the proposal.