When LoveHoney was developing its latest sex toy, it turned to its consumers to understand what they liked, what they hated and what they loved when it came to their pleasure-based products.
Speaking with Gizmodo Australia, Tobias Zegenhagen, the chief product officer at Lovehoney Group explained how user feedback is the “whole reason” they have their new Womanizer Next product.
“As this new device and technology is so heavily reliant on the feeling for the user, we continually worked closely with our trial team to ensure the changes that were being made by our engineers were having the desired outcome,” he said.
The development of this new sex toy began in 2017, when Lovehoney began conducting surveys across a large user group.
“Even though the technology was loved and worked efficiently for a large group of women we asked ourselves how we could improve the pleasure air technology (PAT) stimulation even further,” Zegenhagen said.
“That’s when we started conducting surveys across a large user group so that we could better understand what potential there was in terms of improvements to be made to the existing Womanizer PAT toys on the market.”
Three themes
During the survey phase, Zegenhagen explained three “major themes” were identified.
First, was the reduction of noise.
“The first was pretty straightforward and an obvious one to us but the toys made too much noise for the bedroom which can be quite a distracting factor, and this is a concern that most users have across the toy market,” he said.
“The objective for us became understanding the origin of the noise amongst PAT toys and how this can be minimised or removed altogether.”
The second came with the stimulation from the toy when it is in use.
“We had user feedback ranging from both ends of the spectrum showing that PAT was not soft enough for some users, whereas for others they would have preferred an even more intense stimulation, showing us that the current device functionality was too limited for vulva owners, especially as they progress through their sexual wellness journey,” Zegenhagen said.
The last theme was also the most challenging according to Zegenhagen which focused on having a “natural” feeling while using the toy.
“This feedback point led us to dig deeper, however, as this point had no tangible outcome it relied heavily on user testing and feedback,” he noted.
Zegenhagen said Lovehoney suspected that their current devices had air pressure changes that were a bit too high.
“Therefore, we had to reduce the speed of the change in pressure remarkably to make the feeling more natural,” he ended.
The Womanizer Next is available now for $319.95 at Lovehoney.com.
Image: Lovehoney