Our Work
Case Studies
GE Healthcare · Healthcare & Medical
Optimized an Anesthesia Device for Global Surgical Teams
Replaced Costly Hardware Retooling with Human-Centered Workflow Design
GE Healthcare expected to fund a costly device revision. Sylver embedded researchers with anesthesiologists in live procedures—using video, eye-tracking, and post-case walkthroughs to see where and how the care journey was breaking down.
The Insight
Don't fix the device. Fix the workflow around it.
The Activation Outcomes
Sylver workshopped the findings with GE's product team—mapping the sequential attention shifts that drive anesthesiologists' decisions. By focusing on behavior rather than mechanics, we unlocked new software and workflow innovations that bypassed the need for costly hardware retooling.
Saved millions in hardware revisions
Secured one new patent, strengthening GE's IP
Defined three viable solution paths for GE Healthcare to act on
Mapped the end-to-end anesthesiologist workflow
Frito-Lay · Food & Beverage
Four New Products Launched
Designing the Growth Formula for Frito-Lay's Hot & Spicy Portfolio
Frito-Lay wanted to scale the explosive success of Flamin' Hot Cheetos across its snack portfolio. Sylver’s Symbolics™ hybrid qual-quant methodology was used with over 1,800 consumers to dig beneath surface-level product attributes and decode the category's "emotional architecture." The results gave Frito-Lay the definitive sensory and psychological playbook needed to dominate the spicy snacking landscape.
The Insight
The ultimate hot and spicy experience is a four-stage emotional journey–Spark, Burst, Sizzle, and Fuel–not a generic heat one.
The Activation Outcomes
Sylver’s findings supported Frito-Lay's Brand and R&D teams to engineer these precise sensory and emotional guardrails into product innovation, communication, and packaging, resulting in:
The most-talked-about Super Bowl ad in PepsiCo history (Blaze + Mountain Dew Ice).
Launch of four new products using this growth formula: Blaze, Flamin' Hot Nacho, Flamin' Hot Limon, and Flamin' Hot Cool Ranch.
Every new product performing above market expectation.
Marriott International · Retail & Consumer
An Award-Winning Innovation Pipeline Developed
Charted the Innovation Roadmap for the "Always On" Traveler
Marriott sought to decode how mobile behavior intersects with the modern travel journey—in order to uncover the invisible friction points and unmet needs that could spark next-generation mobile features for brands in the Marriott portfolio. Sylver engineered an immersive, two-phase qualitative deep dive across the US—fusing real-time Travel Diaries with Asynchronous, Online Qualitative Interviews to track the unfiltered habits of travelers.
The Insight
A comprehensive "Travel and Mobile Needs Framework" identified several hidden psychological drivers of the guest journey—from planning to travel to home.
The Activation Outcomes
Multiple innovation territories emerged from this work, each informed by real consumer needs. Activation of these territories:
Led to the design, build, and introduce of three new app experiences: Mobile Check-In, Mobile Requests, and Mobile Key.
Resulted in Marriott winning the “World's Most Innovative Company” by both Fast Company and Forbes.
NASA · Public Sector
Workflow & Technology Aligned to Create Efficiency
Optimized the Collaborative Workflows of the International Space Station Planning Team
NASA engineers built an internal collaboration tool—and then barely used it. Assuming poor usability was to blame, they brought in Sylver Consulting. Instead of jumping to quick fixes, Sylver designed a project plan to pressure-test that core assumption.
The Insight
Low adoption wasn't caused by UX, but by workflow. The platform's architectural design was fundamentally misaligned with how NASA teams actually collaborated to do their work.
The Activation Outcomes
By shifting the focus from superficial feature updates to root-cause workflow integration, NASA was able to make intentional investments in collaboration that had real workflow payoff.
A three-year roadmap was created to better enable collaboration across the seven core systems of the International Space Station (ISS) at that time.
Global ISS Teams became more unified in their missions—supporting more seamless collaboration.
City of Paterson, NJ · Public Sector
Won a $1M Implementation Grant
Supported the Prototyping and Testing Journey of "Real Fix"—an Opioid Response Offering
The City of Paterson had a brilliant concept on paper called "RealFix"— designed to stop opioid overdoses by making it easier for people to access help than to find their next fix. Sylver‘s design coaching put the idea through a rigorous "test-and-learn" process, which ran live role-plays and a mini-pilot with real residents to smooth out every single hand-off in the chain.
The Insight
Dry runs prevent live failures. When RealFix hand-offs proved messier than expected, full end-to-end rehearsals allowed the team to catch and fix hidden process flaws before launch.
The Activation Outcomes
This “test-and-learn” process helped Paterson deliver on its promise, transforming a bold concept into a massive success story.
The RealFix team blew past their first-year goals, reaching and helping 85 unsheltered individuals when their original target was 25—a 340% success rate.
The city won one of 15 $1M prizes to support implementation of "RealFix.”
Awards
Bloomberg Philanthropies Mayor's Challenge Winner
Evie Carshare · Public Sector
Carshare Program Solves the "Last Mile" Challenge
Co-Designed an All-Electric Carshare Model with the Community
In 2019, as part of the American Cities Climate Challenge, Minneapolis and Saint Paul set out to launch the Twin Cities Electric Vehicle Mobility Network, an all-electric, one-way carshare meant to cut greenhouse gas emissions and widen access to transportation. Everyone involved agreed it had to be built around the needs of residents first. Sylver facilitated the human-centered research and prototyping process, using focus groups, interviews, and collaborative workshops with residents across the planned service area. We asked what freedom of movement meant in their daily lives, what kept them from reliable transportation, and how an EV carshare could fit their routines and goals.
The Insight
Residents wanted flexibility, affordability, and independence. They needed a service that could replace or supplement owning a car without the cost and upkeep, and one that respected their time. As one resident put it, "This service makes me think twice about buying a car."
The Activation Outcomes
Community input shaped the service design at every step, resulting in a program that has far exceeded the program's goals. Since launch in 2022, residents of Minneapolis and St. Paul have:
Made 495,000 trips
Saved $44 million in transportation costs.
Reduced 16,000 tons of pollution in the local region.
Lowe's / Shur-line · Retail & Consumer
Boosted Retail Growth
Redesigned the Paint Aisle for DIY Shoppers
Shur-Line and Lowe's wanted to grow national paint aisle revenue by making it easier and more enjoyable for DIYers to shop. To find where consumers were getting stuck, Sylver used an in-store shop-along methodology, conducting 12 real-time interviews and observing shoppers at the exact moments they faced friction in the aisle.
The Insight
Novice DIYers were making decisions through visual proxies, not labels—which meant the aisle's information architecture, not its product mix, was the lever for driving future sales.
The Activation Outcomes
Sylver coached the internal design teams of Shur-line and Lowe's on how to rapidly apply the findings to maximize revenue-per-square-foot.
Insight-to-mockup turnaround in 2 days.
New paint aisle design implemented across all Lowe's stores nationwide.
Shur-line category growth exceeding that of competitors.
NWEA · Education
225% Annual Revenue Growth
Developed Education Leader Personas to Enable Personalized Marketing
NWEA wanted to scale its education assessment offerings, but was marketing to Assessment Directors, Principals, Curriculum Directors, and Superintendents all in the same way (same message, same channels). Sylver conducted 25 in-depth interviews across these four leadership roles—mapping their responsibilities, seasonal workflows, trusted information sources, and support needs.
The Insight
Sylver identified two key barriers in NWEA’s go-to-market strategy: outreach occurred outside the primary decision-making window for educational leaders, and a one-size-fits-all marketing message failed to address the distinct needs of four key leadership personas—ultimately stifling purchase intent.
The Activation Outcomes
NWEA restructured the timing of their marketing and sales outreach to match the buying cycles of their educators and shifted from one-size-fits-all to role-specific outreach. This supported:
225% annual revenue growth.
The acquisition of NWEA by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in January 2023
Paslode (ITW) · Industrial & Manufacturing
Zero Return Spike at Launch
Supported a Smooth Launch of Paslode's Cordless Framing Nailer
Paslode had redesigned its flagship cordless framing nailer with a completely new fuel system that was not backwards compatible with old accessories. The company feared a backlash from contractors who inadvertently purchased incompatible equipment. To forestall this launch problem, Sylver simulated the real shopping experience with 19 contractors who shopped a mock retail aisle searching for fuel and accessories.
The Insight
Paslode discovered that signage was ineffective in stopping contractors from buying the wrong fuel out of habit. To solve the cognitive challenge, Sylver showed that gifting the new orange fuel cell with the initial purchase effectively grounded contractors in the proper accessory combinations.
The Activation Outcomes
A high-risk accessory challenge was transformed into a flawless retail launch:
Zero spikes in product returns occurred.
Zero increases in customer service calls occurred.
Vocollect · Technology & SaaS
Turned Around a Failed Product Launch
Rescued AccuNurse, Stabilized It for Acquisition
Vocollect’s update of AccuNurse was not well received and customers were seeking to get out of their contracts. Sylver ran a series of seven iterative co-creation workshops to define customer success and AccuNurse's role in supporting it within long-term care facilities.
The Insight
The core product wasn't the problem—poor implementation and onboarding were driving customer churn.
The Activation Outcomes
Sylver re-engineered the product delivery, implementation, and training processes to drive customer success and scale operations.
This eliminated contract attrition and stabilized the customer base.
Once the customer base was stable, it attracted a buyer—Honeywell.
Pitney Bowes · Industrial & Manufacturing
Developed Three Next-Generation Offerings
Designed Next-Gen SMB Shipping for Pitney Bowes
Pitney Bowes knew it was a market laggard in SMB shipping solutions, but lacked clear guidance about what it would take to leapfrog the market. Sylver conducted in-depth ethnographic interviews with small- and medium-sized business owners, then hosted workshops to define new interventions and what it would take for Pitney Bowes to step into them.
The Insight
The interviews defined the customer problems to solve around shipping. The workshops helped the team design three distinct product concepts, each engineered to disrupt the industry in a different way.
The Activation Outcomes
To ensure immediate traction, these new concepts were roadmapped against existing development priorities, giving leadership a clear, unified view of which efforts to fund and focus on first.
Mozilla · Technology & SaaS
Built GTM Specs for a 30-Country Launch
Directed Firefox OS technical specifications and Latin American GTM rollout strategy
Mozilla engaged Sylver as its lead research partner for Firefox OS, generating the strategic vision and tactical requirements to drive both the global product definition and the Latin American regional rollout.
The Insight
Regional user requirements were transformed into unified global specifications that anchored the worldwide Gen 1 Firefox OS rollout.
The Activation Outcomes
Crucial partnerships were secured: On-the-ground insights guided Mozilla’s regional strategy, helping them forge their strongest and most successful carrier partnerships across Latin America.
30-country release was fueled: Backed by these validated market strategies, the Firefox OS device successfully expanded its footprint, ultimately launching in 30 countries.
ETS · Education
5 commercial applications ideated
New Applications for a Proprietary Technology
ETS partnered with Sylver to identify viable marketplace applications for a proprietary text-adaptation technology. Sylver brought members of the client team and industry experts together for a multi-day co-creation workshop to map out new commercial pathways for the tool's capabilities.
The Insight
The workshop surfaced that the text adaptation technology had genuine commercial relevance well beyond its original context, across multiple industries.
The Activation Outcomes
Over the course of just three days, the strategic collaboration accelerated ETS's go-to-market pipeline in two key areas:
Rapid venture ideation: The workshop successfully generated five distinct, feasible commercial applications for the proprietary tool.
Multi-industry diversification: The newly defined application frameworks strategically positioned the technology to scale across five entirely different industries.
ACT · Education
Aligning the enterprise around a single customer truth
Building Multi-Segment Personas and Journey Maps for ACT
Product and marketing teams at ACT lacked reliable data, and struggled with untested hypotheses about core enterprise client segments circulating in the org. Sylver conducted qualitative research to build comprehensive personas and journey maps for core enterprise client segments: teachers, education administrators, students, parents, and admissions officers.
The Insight
The research replaced the internal guesswork with a single, validated source of truth for the customer segments, and aligned org strategy around actual customer needs.
The Activation Outcomes
The deliverables:
Served as foundational strategic and action-planning documents.
Fueled targeted design sprints to surface new Horizon 2 and 3 growth opportunities.
Delivered a unified language for product development and marketing across all five core customer segments.
LiftMaster · Industrial & Manufacturing
Expanding into new markets
Motorize More Doors
LiftMaster, a maker of commercial-grade automatic garage doors, wanted to explore expanding its commercial door offering into the warehouse channel. They installed commercial doors inside a working refrigerated warehouse for a full month, with Sylver conducting ethnographic research to identify how the new equipment’s impact – and then sizing the potential market for this new application.
The Insight
The research revealed that the ability to manage and track who was entering and exiting made motorizing more commercial doors in the warehouse domain appealing. “Access control” was the unlock potential.
The Activation Outcomes
This work and approach helped to:
Greenlight LiftMaster’s expansion into refrigerated warehouses: Combining live prototyping with market sizing gave the executive team the validation needed to fund the investment.
Deepen LiftMaster’s market defensibility: Extended advanced myQ features to commercial clients, building a strong competitive barrier against new market entrants.
Arity · Technology & SaaS
Blue Ocean strategy co-created
Finding Blue Ocean Growth in Telematics
Arity, a telematics service provider, had a technically robust product that lacked wide-scale insurance industry adoption. The company wanted to understand the current market mental model of telematics, and sought a “blue ocean” of new value-creating offerings for insurance agencies. Sylver conducted exploratory interviews with insurance executives, a "What If?" ideation workshop, concept evaluation interviews, and a Lego Serious Play workshop.
The Insight
The overall work identified parts of the business to be eliminated, reduced, raised, or created to reach a "Blue Ocean" strategy, while the concept evaluation component surfaced three product platforms to pursue.
The Activation Outcomes
Internal work-streams were established for four key attributes to add to its strategy canvas, each addressing unmet customer needs overlooked by competitors, creating a potential “blue ocean” for Arity to exploit.
Fritos · Food & Beverage
Top box scores up 13% points in 6 months
Making Fritos the Stand-Up Chip
The Fritos brand had become "a brand bought out of respect for my grandmother," but the company wanted it to be: "a brand loved for its role in my life." Sylver used its proprietary hybrid qual/quant Symbolics™ methodology to decode the emotional meaning of Fritos and define what it would take to claim a new positioning as the "stand-up chip that is down for everything" with the family-value-oriented "Heartsteader" consumer.
The Insight
The Heartsteader consumer wanted to reconcile two distinct drives in their life and the brand would need to encompass both.
The Activation Outcomes
Workshops with the team leveraged these findings to re-align the brand's messaging strategy, culminating in a new GTM communication strategy brief that detailed exactly how the Fritos portfolio could resonate with the Heartsteader segment.
The new GTM strategy successfully moved the brand's top two box metrics by 13 percentage points in less than six months.
The methodology, approach, and blueprint framework of this engagement became PepsiCo Frito-Lay’s internal corporate gold standard for tribe-based messaging platform work.
BAKED · Food & Beverage
Brand relaunched in 2026
Understanding the BAKED Tribe Consumer
The original 1996 "less fat" value proposition of the BAKED brand had lost market distinctiveness, and the BAKED sought to get reacquainted with their consumer tribe with a newly honed positioning. Sylver deployed a three-phase qualitative approach: a 90-minute "Setting the Stage for Success" kickoff, consumer qualitative research, and a collaborative brand pulse workshop.
The Insight
The research revealed the human truth and core tension that drives the current BAKED consumer.
The Activation Outcomes
Workshopping helped the BAKED team align the brand, insights and R&D team on a new (and unexpectedly powerful) positioning, culminating in a successful brand re-launch that targeted their current tribe.
Who their consumer was: A profile that differed from initial assumptions
A strategy for how to reposition the brand that was going to be resonate with this new consumer.
Armed with these strategic guideposts, the BAKED brand successfully relaunched in January 2026 to better capture and support its modern consumer tribe.
Incisive Technologies · Healthcare & Medical
New GTM strategy for innovative dental product
GTM Strategy for a New Dental Product
An Australian start-up was introducing a novel dental product called BlueCheck to the highly competitive US market. Sylver used 20 in-depth interviews and feature-ranking sessions with dentists and hygienists across various practice types to: identify the product's core value proposition, target receptive practice types, and map out how to integrate the tool into existing practice workflows.
The Insight
Dental providers didn’t want to use the new product for caries detection - they wanted it as a tool to educate patients about caries prevention.
The Activation Outcomes
Sylver aligned the product's positioning with how clinicians actually wanted to use it, giving Incisive a clear, validated commercial strategy for its US rollout:
Incisive got 2 distinct targeted Go-to-Market plays, each one comprising: Audience segments + service structure + technology support + exact steps needed to engage practice decision-makers for the product’s US clinic launch.
BioFilm · Healthcare & Medical
Award-winning product launch
Prototyping Spray 'n Glide Before Launch
As a precaution before the high-profile launch they prepared for the new Spray 'n Glide personal lubricant, BioFilm wanted to identify any critical pivots needed to product formulation and design. Sylver’s team fielded a four-week qualitative discussion board of 34 participants, each one doing an In-Home Usage Test (IHUT) of a high-fidelity prototype of the product. The research findings were fed into a “targeted improvement workshop,” where the R&D team made critical refinements that paved the way for immediate market success.
The Insight
Clearly identified optimal product formulation, packaging, marketing positioning, and messaging.
The Activation Outcomes
Packaging ergonomics and aesthetics were optimized during the workshop based on user diary data.
Spray 'n Glide drew acclaim in the industry, winning the Pure Beauty UK Awards 2022
Highly Commended placement by GQ for Best New Sexual or Intimate Care Product
Novantas · Financial Services
Launched a new service capability
What Drives Distinction in Consumer Banking
To augment its set of analytical advisory tools, Novantas wanted to identify the range of drivers behind consumer demand and choice of a retail bank. Sylver recruited 306 bank consumers to take part in 60-minute one-on-one interviews using an AI-powered qual-quant platform.
The Insight
Sylver mapped 34 distinct value drivers into five core themes: Show Me You Care, Teach & Empower Me, Meet My Needs, Reward Me, and Bring the Bank to Me. Crucially, these drivers were separated into baseline expectations (the stakes to play) versus true switching triggers (the reasons to win).
The Activation Outcomes
Novantas gained an enduring asset for the consultancy’s advisory business – a structured strategic framework that their clients could use to diagnose exactly where and how financial brands can stand out in crowded, regional markets. It is now a foundational pillar of the consultancy’s value proposition service offerings.
Thrivent · Financial Services
Shaping a new digital banking experience
Building “Financial Clarity” into Thrivent’s Digital Banking Experience
Thrivent wanted to know what it would take to deliver on its value proposition of "financial clarity through empowerment" in an online, digital banking experience, built on pillars of simplifying financial goals, building resilience, and propelling progress. Sylver ran a two-phase plan: a 3-hour ideation workshop that generated seven concepts, then IDIs with 20 participants testing each concept for fit with the value proposition and likelihood of use.
The Insight
The research showed how each concept laddered to Thrivent's value proposition, and where to prioritize the build—what worked, watchouts, lingering consumer questions, and suggested updates.
The Activation Outcomes
Thrivent was able to de-risk the launch of its “financial clarity through empowerment” value prop, and create the playbook to amplify that promise in every digital touchpoint of the brand.
USAA · Financial Services
Anchored the 2024 messaging framework for the brand
Refining the USAA Membership Value Proposition
USAA wanted to refocus its brand identity and core value proposition, and better understand how they stack up against the competition, Sylver moderated 24 in-depth interviews with individuals across USAA’s life insurance, P&C insurance, and banking services to uncover exactly how different audiences perceive the brand’s ultimate value.
The Insight
The team mapped out how the brand’s distinctive value resonates across distinct segments—including veterans, spouses, and dependents— thus giving the brand a clear framework for targeted messaging.
The Activation Outcomes
USAA successfully:
Modernized its market position and overarching value proposition for their 2023/2024 brand rollout.
Expanded its audience reach into highly valued, under-tapped military dependent segments.
Mary Kay · Retail & Consumer
Shaped the relaunch of a pillar product
Unlocking the Next Chapter of Growth for Mary Kay TimeWise
Mary Kay teamed up with Sylver to build a global growth strategy by uncovering the product improvements that customers of its TimeWise Miracle Set 3D line wanted. Sylver ran four 3-hour co-creation workshops—bringing together independent beauty consultants, Mary Kay personnel, and researchers—to dive deep into product performance, customer jobs-to-be-done, packaging aesthetics, and daily routines.
The Insight
Customers sought simpler ingredients and routines supported by corresponding messaging guidance from advertising and packaging.
The Activation Outcomes
Co-Creation Workshops delivered a straightforward, dual-focused roadmap that gave the team an immediate, practical blueprint for modernizing the line with a simplified and globally-validated value proposition
Recent TimeWise Miracle Set 3D product updates a now guided by this clear overarching strategy.
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