Measuring product "coolness": developing a measurement instrument.

Cool products provide a leap in value and they increase a company's market share. The widespread adoption of iOS and Android devices resulted in a radical change in the role of technology in people's lives. And anecdotally people exclaimed about how "cool" their devices were; "I can't go back" to what I had before and "I can't stop talking about it--it's so cool!". In 2010 InContext Design launched The Cool Project to understand the underlying principles which make a product "cool." The research goal was to discover the core drivers of the cool user experience. This consumer research used qualitative research to identify seven core constructs associated with "coolness" that appeared independently of device or software or even technology product. In 2011 SAP became interested in developing a metric to measure "coolness" and in a joint research effort with InContext Design validated the constructs with business users and co-designed a cool metric. The final result is a repeatable process for measuring cool through a quick survey, the results of which provide implications to product teams on how to improve their products to increase "coolness". This case study outlines the process of using qualitative data to design a valid quantitative measure.