“Extreme research” can help you build products customers love. Heres how one company does it.Getty 108inShare Would you shoot yourself with a laser to make a better product?

Researchers at the design firm Continuum have–to test the effect of a treatment for toe fungus. They’ve also rappelled down the side of a building, ridden in milk trucks in Bangalore, and performed operations on cadavers, all in pursuit of one thing–empathy with a products customers.

That empathy is what leads to better, more compelling products, explains Anthony Pannozzo, managing principal, Research & Innovation at Continuum. “Whats the experience someone is having on a day-to-day basis?” he asks. “We look at what the best experience could be, whether its digital, or a physical product, or a combination of the two.”To get to the heart of user experience, Continuum researchers use four extreme research tools.

Try them  yourself to get a better idea of how customers interact with your products:1. Use technology to get an inside look.When Continuum set out to help Tetra Pak improve its juice boxes, researchers wondered, How do people drink juice? “Its an odd question because people dont really think about how they drink juice,” Pannozzo says.

The company turned to technology to find out, designing a special prototype bottle with a camera in the bottom of it to observe what juice drinkers actually do.

Continue:  4 Secrets for Better Customer Research | Inc.com.