Lessons Learned from Hamster Owners

Photo: Ontario SPCA

I was a hamster owner as a kid. A bad one. I would put my hamster in a ball and he would fall down the stairs. He would escape its cage and be lost in our house for weeks sometimes. I didn’t feed him consistently. Somehow my hamster didn’t seem to need much human intervention – he was a survivor and lived much longer than he probably should have. 

Many years later, I had a project to learn about small animal (hamsters, gerbils, & bunnies) owner behaviors and attitudes. I was working with product designers and the goal was to uncover insights to guide new product development. As a first step, we wanted to connect with hamster owners which generally consisted of in-home interviews. This was the first project in a long time where I did not think in-home interviews were necessary. I’d owned hamsters. They’re an entry-level pet. What did we possibly have to learn?

I could not have been more wrong. Speaking with hamster owners, nearly 20 years past my personal hamster ownership, proved to be a goldmine. Consumable products were different (cedar chips were out, natural paper bedding was in). Cages were different (modular vs the too-far-apart wires of my day). A stay-at-home mom speaking about her emotional attachment to a jet black gerbil was far beyond what I’d expected. Teenage kids arguing over whose responsibility it was to clean the cage felt relatable, but now I saw it as a great opportunity for product development. 

While the hamster category didn’t seem new to me, being an active observer and listener in this category was new. I’d gone into these interviews thinking there wasn’t much to learn, but as an interviewer with product development goals, I was able to appreciate hamster caretaking in a different way. I could listen for pain points. I could catalog sources of satisfaction and disappointment. I could differentiate between chooser and user behaviors. I met house bunnies and learned that rats actually made great pets (still un-tested by me).

These interviewers were a reminder of a great saying in consumer research: “Know your user, and no, you’re not the user.”