Of course. This is an excellent problem that is foundational to developing a successful product. As a novice consultant, framing your research correctly is the most critical first step. Here is a comprehensive business research proposal to guide your insights study.

Business Research Proposal: Uncovering User Needs for an Anxiety-Reducing Wearable

This proposal outlines a two-part plan for your insights study. We will first focus on Information Collection to gather the necessary raw data, and then move to Information Analysis to transform that data into an actionable product strategy.

The ultimate goal of this research is to produce a User-Centric Product Strategy Document. This document will serve as the north star for your product development, marketing, and design teams. Specifically, it will deliver:

1. Core User Personas: 2-3 detailed profiles of your key target users, outlining their goals, behaviors, and pain points related to anxiety.
2. Prioritized User Needs & "Jobs": A ranked list of the specific functional, emotional, and social "jobs" that users would "hire" this device to do for them.
3. Contextual Usage Map: A guide detailing when, where, and how users would interact with the device throughout their day, highlighting key moments of intervention.
4. Feature Value Matrix: A prioritized list of potential features (e.g., real-time sensing, breathing guidance) based on their ability to meet core user needs and create delight.
5. Critical Design & UX Guidelines: Actionable recommendations for the device's physical design, app interface, and overall user experience to ensure it solves user problems effectively and ethically.

Recommended Frameworks: Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) & The Kano Model

To build this strategy, we will use a combination of two powerful frameworks: Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) to understand the "why" behind user needs, and the Kano Model to translate those needs into a prioritized feature set.

• Framework Teaching:

  • Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD): This framework shifts the focus from the product ("What is it?") to the user's goal ("What does it help me achieve?"). It posits that people don't buy products; they "hire" them to make progress in their lives. Our goal is to understand the "job" your users are trying to get done—in this case, "achieving emotional balance" or "regaining a sense of control during an anxious moment." We need to uncover the context, the struggles with their current solutions (e.g., meditation apps, deep breathing, or even doing nothing), and their desired outcome.
  • The Kano Model: This model is a tool for prioritizing features by categorizing them based on how they impact user satisfaction. Features fall into three main types:
    • Must-be: Expected features. If they are absent, users will be very dissatisfied (e.g., a watch that doesn't tell time).
    • Performance: The more you have of these, the more satisfied users become (e.g., longer battery life).
    • Attractive (Delighters): Unexpected features that cause a positive reaction. Their absence doesn't cause dissatisfaction, but their presence creates delight.

• Applicability Explanation:

  • JTBD is perfectly suited for your question because you need to understand core pain points, daily contexts, motivations, and barriers. It forces you to move beyond surface-level feature requests and uncover the deep, underlying needs driving a potential purchase.
  • The Kano Model provides the crucial next step. Once JTBD uncovers the "jobs," the Kano Model helps you decide which features are the most effective tools to help users accomplish those jobs, ensuring you invest development resources in what truly matters to them.

Part 1: Information Collection Plan

To effectively use these frameworks, we need to collect specific information from the market and from potential users.

A. Web Search

This initial search will provide market context and help you understand the competitive landscape. This information will make your user interviews more informed and targeted.

• Search Content & Purpose:
  1. "Reviews of [Cove], [Apollo Neuro], and other emotional wellness wearables": To understand the pros and cons of existing products from a user perspective. This will reveal initial pain points and unmet needs. For example, users might complain about battery life, inaccurate sensors, or a bulky design.
  2. "User forums [Reddit] anxiety management technology": To find candid, unsolicited conversations about what people currently use to manage anxiety (both tech and non-tech solutions). This provides raw, unfiltered language about their struggles and what they wish they had—key for defining the "Job to be Done."
  3. "Women's mental health technology trends 2025": To gather macro trends and statistics that validate the focus on women and contextualize the market size and opportunity.
  4. "Criticisms of mental health wearables" and "Biometric data privacy concerns": To proactively identify potential barriers to adoption, such as data privacy fears, the stress of constant tracking, or skepticism about effectiveness.

B. User Interview Plan

This is the core of the study. The goal is to go deep into the user's world to uncover their underlying motivations.

• Interview Subjects:

  • Primary Group: 10-12 women, aged 25-45, who self-report experiencing regular stress or anxiety.
  • Segmentation: Ensure a mix of professions and life situations (e.g., corporate professionals, students, new mothers, creative freelancers). This diversity will reveal different contexts of use.
  • Sub-Groups:
    • Early Adopters (3-4 users): People who have used or currently use a competitor device (e.g., Oura, WHOOP, Apollo Neuro). They can speak directly to what works and what doesn't.
    • Analog Solvers (5-6 users): People who actively use non-tech methods like journaling, meditation apps (Calm/Headspace), or therapy. They can articulate their "job" without being biased by existing hardware.
    • The Unserved (2-3 users): People who struggle with anxiety but haven't found any solution they stick with. Their barriers and frustrations are a goldmine for identifying a breakthrough opportunity.

• Interview Purpose & Core Questions: The interview should feel like a story-gathering session, not a feature checklist.

  Part 1: Uncovering the "Job to be Done" (JTBD)

  • Purpose: To understand the user's struggle with anxiety in their own words and context.
  • Core Questions:
    1. "Think about the last time you felt particularly anxious or overwhelmed. Can you walk me through that day from the beginning?" (This reveals the context, triggers, and the full timeline of the emotional experience.)
    2. "At the moment you started feeling that way, what was the first thing you did? What did you hope it would do for you?" (This identifies their current solutions and the immediate outcome they desire.)
    3. "What, if anything, have you tried in the past to help manage these feelings? Tell me about that experience. What did you like or dislike about it?" (This uncovers "hired" and "fired" solutions, revealing pain points with what's available.)
    4. "If you had a magic wand that could provide the perfect support in that moment, what would it do or how would it make you feel?" (This helps articulate the ideal outcome, free from the constraints of existing technology.)

  Part 2: Concept and Feature Reaction (Kano)

  • Purpose: After understanding their "job," you introduce the concept to see how it fits. Then, you can probe the value of specific features.
  • Core Questions:
    1. "Based on what you've shared, I want to describe a concept: A wristband that can subtly sense when your stress is rising and quietly prompt you to, for example, take a few deep breaths. How does that idea land with you in the context of the story you just told me?"
    2. Now, for specific features like 'silent haptic breathing guides,' 'a connected app with meditation library,' or 'mood journaling prompts':
       • "If the device had [feature], how would you feel?"
       • "And if the device did not have [feature], how would you feel?" (This pair of questions is the classic Kano approach to categorizing feature importance.)

Part 2: Information Analysis Plan

This is where you synthesize the collected data using the frameworks to build your final strategic document.

1. Extracting Jobs-to-be-Done from Interview Data:

   • How to do it: Go through your interview transcripts and highlight phrases related to situations, motivations, and desired outcomes. Use a spreadsheet to log these "job stories."
   • Specific Execution: Create columns for "When..." (the situation), "I want to..." (the motivation), and "So I can..." (the desired outcome).
   • Example in action: A user might say, "Right before a big presentation, my heart starts pounding. I just want to calm down without my team noticing so I can feel and appear confident."
     • This translates to the Job Story: "When I'm in a high-stakes professional setting, I want to discreetly manage my physical symptoms of anxiety, so I can maintain my composure and perform effectively."
   • Final Result: This process directly produces your Prioritized User Needs & "Jobs". You can rank them by how frequently they appeared in interviews.

2. Developing Core User Personas:

   • How to do it: Cluster the "Job Stories." You will likely see patterns where certain "jobs" and contexts group together around a specific type of user.
   • Specific Execution: If you find multiple interviewees who are mothers struggling with the "job" of "finding a moment of calm between childcare and work," you can combine their stories, demographics, and attitudes into a single persona, like "Sarah, the Overwhelmed Multitasker." Give her a name, a backstory, her primary goals, and list her top 3 "Jobs to be Done."
   • Final Result: This delivers your Core User Personas.

3. Building the Contextual Usage Map:

   • How to do it: Use the detailed daily walkthroughs from your interviews ("tell me about your day").
   • Specific Execution: Create a timeline of a typical user's day (e.g., Waking Up, Commuting, Mid-Morning Slump, Pre-Meeting, After Work, Bedtime). For each block, map out the anxieties or needs that surfaced in interviews. For example, "Morning: Anxiety about the day's to-do list," "3 PM: Stress from back-to-back meetings." Then, brainstorm how the device could intervene in each moment (e.g., "Morning: 2-minute guided breathing prompt," "3 PM: Silent haptic reminder to stand and stretch").
   • Final Result: This creates the Contextual Usage Map, which is invaluable for the UX design team.

4. Constructing the Feature Value Matrix (Kano Analysis):

   • How to do it: Tally the answers to your "how would you feel if you had/didn't have this feature" questions.
   • Specific Execution: For each feature, plot the responses on a Kano grid. For instance:
     • If users say they'd be dissatisfied without a step counter but aren't thrilled by its presence, it's a Must-be.
     • If they would be unhappy without long battery life and happier with more of it, it's a Performance feature.
     • If they aren't bothered by the absence of a feature that shares their mood with a therapist, but would be delighted if it existed, it's an Attractive feature.
   • Final Result: This generates your Feature Value Matrix, which provides a clear rationale for engineering priorities: secure all "Must-bes," invest in key "Performance" differentiators, and sprinkle in some "Attractive" delighters.

The interviews with five professional women—Chloe Ascent, Isabella, Alex Chen, Maya Sharma, and Chloe Balance—reveal nuanced insights into the anxiety and stress management needs of high-achieving, tech-savvy women navigating demanding careers alongside personal lives. Collectively, they highlight a strong demand for discreet, proactive, and personalized wearable solutions that integrate seamlessly into busy lifestyles, offering real-time, context-aware support without adding cognitive or social burden.

Core Emotional & Psychological Challenges

These women share common struggles: persistent fear of failing to meet both professional and personal expectations, feelings of losing control, and the mental toll of overthinking and mental fog during anxiety spikes. Anxiety symptoms range from rapid heart rate, muscle tension, and disrupted sleep to irritability and difficulty concentrating. The emotional burden often spills into personal relationships and sleep quality, exacerbating stress.

A key psychological pain point across interviews is the feeling that current coping methods—meditation apps, exercise, to-do lists, or breathwork—are either reactive, cumbersome, or insufficiently discrete for professional settings. They desire interventions that feel supportive rather than pressuring or judgmental.

Desired Wearable Features & Intervention Contexts

The interviewees emphasize the need for a wearable device that acts as an “intelligent co-pilot” or “secret ally” capable of subtle, personalized micro-interventions, such as gentle haptic breathing prompts, before stress escalates. These interventions should be discreet enough to avoid unwanted attention in social or work environments, ideally requiring minimal conscious effort or screen interaction.

Key moments for intervention include:

• High-pressure professional scenarios: meetings, client presentations, project reviews, unexpected crises.
• Transition phases: wrapping up workdays, entering social or networking events.
• Pre-sleep periods when anxiety causes racing thoughts.
• Overstimulation during commutes or crowded environments.

Specific desirable features include:

• Real-time, context-aware stress detection based on physiological signals.
• Personalized, subtle haptic feedback guiding breath or grounding exercises.
• Predictive analytics that anticipate stress based on calendar events, routines, hormonal cycles, or behavioral patterns.
• Companion apps offering actionable and tailored insights into stress triggers and coping efficacy.
• Integration with broader health and lifestyle data, including hormonal cycle tracking for women, to tailor support.

Motivations and Barriers

Motivations:

• Optimization of mental state and emotional composure through seamless technology.
• Prevention of stress escalation before symptoms become overwhelming.
• Desire for discreet, stigma-free aid preserving both professionalism and personal dignity.
• Data-driven, personalized insights empowering self-mastery and efficiency.

Barriers:

• Concerns around data privacy, security, and clear control of sensitive emotional and physiological information.
• Fear of over-monitoring leading to “anxiety about anxiety” and potential over-dependence.
• Distrust or skepticism toward gimmicky or ineffective solutions lacking scientific backing.
• Device design aesthetics—must be non-medical, comfortable, and blending with personal style.
• Battery life and reliability concerns to ensure continuous, uninterrupted support.

Women’s Specific Needs Highlighted

• Balancing career demands with intimate personal relationships (e.g., new marriage), with anxiety often fueled by perceived insufficiency in multiple roles.
• The importance of hormonal cycle considerations influencing energy, focus, and emotional regulation.
• Need for interventions that do not disrupt workflow or social interactions while providing real-time relief.
• Support for reducing work stress carryover into home life, promoting better sleep and recovery.

User Profiles Summary

• Chloe Ascent (25-35, Project Manager): Seeks discreet, real-time anxiety management to balance high-pressure projects and new marriage stress.
• Isabella (28, Marketing Specialist): Tech-savvy, desires transition from data logging to intelligent, pre-emptive emotional support integrated with existing wellness tools.
• Alex Chen (32, Senior Software Engineer): Early adopter needing an unobtrusive, reliable, predictive device that provides actionable, personalized interventions and helps optimize cognitive performance.
• Maya Sharma (24, Junior Marketing Associate): Craves a subtle, stylish, discreet “secret ally” wearable to achieve genuine calm in social and professional anxiety-inducing situations.
• Chloe Balance (32, Project Manager): Values hormonal cycle integration and low-effort, proactive intervention to combat inconsistent coping amid fluctuating energy and emotional states.

Conclusion

There is a clear, shared need for wearable technology that transcends traditional reactive stress tools. Women interviewed desire intelligent, context-sensitive, discreet devices that provide proactive micro-interventions grounded in data privacy and scientific reliability. Such a device should fit naturally into professional and personal environments, offer personalized coaching without judgment, and adapt to women’s unique physiological and lifestyle variations, thereby empowering sustained well-being and high performance.

The interviews with Maya Zen, Eleanor Vance, Luna Serenity, David Miller, and Sarah Chen offer a nuanced understanding of anxiety management needs across diverse demographics, informing the ideal design and function of a wearable anxiety-management device. Despite varied backgrounds and anxiety triggers, notable common themes emerge around discretion, subtle support, and meaningful insight.

Key User Pain Points and Contexts:
All participants experience anxiety primarily driven by professional pressures, performance expectations, and emotional overload. Anxiety often disrupts their "inner equilibrium," causing mental fatigue, difficulty disengaging, and reduced well-being. Triggers include demanding deadlines, high-stakes meetings, constant stimulation (especially in urban or fast-paced environments), and the burden of self-care routines themselves.

Users require discreet support in public or work settings to manage anxiety without attracting attention or stigma. In private spaces, they seek tools enabling deeper relaxation and reflection through holistic methods like meditation, yoga, journaling, or contemplation.

Design and Interaction Preferences:
Discretion is universally paramount. The wearable must blend seamlessly into everyday style—akin to elegant jewelry or a minimalist timepiece—with natural, hypoallergenic, or sustainable materials preferred. It should be lightweight, ergonomic, and avoid overtly "techy" or medical looks.

These users overwhelmingly favor passive and subtle support over intrusive, active notifications. Gentle, almost imperceptible haptic prompts for breathwork or grounding are ideal, functioning as a "quiet companion" rather than a commanding device. Active alerts or flashy feedback are seen as anxiety-provoking or disruptive.

Information and Insight Needs:
Users want retrospective, contextualized, and actionable insights rather than raw data or scores. Key data includes identification of anxiety triggers (time, situation, physiological markers), correlations with lifestyle factors (such as menstrual cycles, sleep), and the effectiveness of personal coping strategies. Visualizations should be intuitive and not require analytical effort.

Data must validate subjective feelings, fostering self-awareness and proactive management rather than adding pressure to "optimize" mental states. Several users emphasized the importance of scientific rigor and transparency behind sensor accuracy and algorithms to build trust.

Trust, Skepticism, and Ethical Concerns:
Trust hinges on perceivable, tangible benefits — feeling calmer, recovering faster from stress, and experiencing less mental clutter. Users reject devices that amplify anxiety by delivering overwhelming metrics, intrusive alerts, or gamified systems that feel performative rather than therapeutic.

Older users, like Sarah Chen, highlight concerns about depersonalization of complex emotional experiences, fearing reduction of human nuance into impersonal data points. Ethical data privacy and respectful handling of sensitive emotional information are critical to acceptance.

Existing Solutions and Gaps:
Meditation apps, CBT, holistic practices (gardening, yoga, journaling), and nature walks are generally effective but often lack real-time discreet support or fail to integrate with physiological monitoring meaningfully.

Past wearable devices tested by users were criticized for focusing on raw metrics without personalized guidance, increasing mental load rather than alleviating it. Simplicity, subtlety, and complementing—not replacing—established self-care routines are key to successful adoption.

User Profiles in Brief:

• Maya Zen (31, Senior UX Designer): Analytical, mindful, seeks minimalist, elegant wearable as a discreet “quiet companion.”
• Eleanor Vance (Senior Data Analyst): Data-driven, critical of gamification, wants scientifically validated, clear correlations between physiological and subjective anxiety.
• Luna Serenity (26, Junior Marketing Manager): Digital native, overwhelmed by fast-paced demands, desires a chic, jewelry-like device with non-intrusive prompts and motivational yet gentle guidance.
• David Miller (Elementary Teacher, father): Practical, skeptical of data tech, prefers straightforward, subtle support that improves subjective feelings of relief without complexity.
• Sarah Chen (50, High School Teacher): Reflective, values psychotherapy and holistic practice, cautious about depersonalization and data ethics, favors elegant, passive, low-interruption support.

Summary Conclusion:

To effectively support anxiety management, a wearable device must prioritize subtlety, discretion, and ergonomic design that fits naturally into users’ personal aesthetics. It should function as a silent ally providing gentle, context-aware prompts that respect users’ mental space. Instead of overwhelming users with raw data or performance-driven gamification, it should offer clear, personalized, and scientifically grounded insights that foster deep self-understanding and empower proactive coping.

Trust depends not only on data accuracy but on delivering a tangible internal shift toward calm and reduced mental fatigue. Ethical stewardship of sensitive emotional data and honoring the complexity of human experience are essential.

Ultimately, the wearable should complement and enhance established holistic and cognitive strategies rather than attempt to replace them, serving as a discreet, elegant, and intelligent companion in users’ journey to balance and well-being.