The Challenge

A leading hygiene player had historically designed its products for Western-style sanitation, but a large part of its addressable market used Indian-style squat toilets—spaces often emotionally distant, physically taxing, and visually hidden from mainstream narratives.

The brand wanted to understand:

What prevents adoption—not just functionally, but culturally and emotionally? And how can cleaning be made less dreaded, more doable, and meaningfully supported?

Our Approach

We built an immersive, culturally layered methodology to move beyond verbal barriers into lived behavior:

• 50+ ethnographies across 4 regions, including 150+ hours of live cleaning observations in squat toilet households

• Detailed gesture and posture tracking—from how users bend, brace, prep tools, and protect themselves, to how they emotionally ready for the task

• Symbolic decoding of cleanliness rituals—viewing the cleaning act as a form of armour, shame-cleansing, or domestic warfare

• Co-creation labs with consumers to test packaging, format, and tone of voice shifts

• Cultural and semiotic framing of posture, caste history, spatial segregation,and the emotional coding of purity/profanity within the bathroom

What made it distinct:

• Cleanliness was treated not just as a task, but a high-stakes emotional transformation

• The study used visual storytelling and embedded gesture analysis to surface unconscious pain points

• Culture, behavior, and design came together to reframe the product’s role—not just in the toilet, but in the user’s self-regard

The Impact

• The work catalyzed a rethinking of the brand’s format and pack mix for squat toilet environments—supporting better grip, reach, and preparation for the “battle” of cleaning.

• More importantly, it shifted internal stakeholder understanding—from one of rational barriers to deeply embodied, emotionally loaded behaviors—ensuring future interventions are grounded in how users feel, move, and manage stigma in the most intimate space of the home.