Reframing User Segmentation for Surgical Robotics
A surgical robotics team needed a more useful way to understand its users than traditional role-based segmentation.
I led the engagement, helping the organization challenge existing assumptions and adopt a behaviorally grounded model that better reflected how users actually worked.
The new segmentation gave product and marketing teams a stronger foundation for focusing product development and shaping how they engaged different user groups.
Keywords: Problem Framing · User Segmentation · Human-Centered Discovery · Stakeholder Alignment · Product Strategy · Surgical Robotics
Project Info
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We began by working with client partners to understand their Single Port robotics business, the users and customers it served, and the procedures supported by the platform.
I used those conversations to clarify the decisions the personas needed to support, surface assumptions about the user population, and align stakeholders around the questions that mattered most.
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I directed a qualitative study designed to understand the demographic, behavioral, and attitudinal factors influencing how surgeons and support staff experienced and used single-port robotic surgery.
Including both primary users and supporting care teams broadened the organization’s view beyond professional role and exposed how factors such as experience, hospital environment, and team structure shaped adoption and everyday use.
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As the evidence emerged, it became clear that professional roles alone did not adequately explain meaningful differences between users.
I guided the team in identifying the factors that mattered most while regularly bringing our emerging point of view back to client stakeholders to challenge assumptions, build confidence in the evidence, and create alignment around a different segmentation model.
Hospital size, years in practice, team structure, and experience with robotics ultimately proved more useful in explaining attitudes and behaviors than job title alone.
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We translated the new segmentation model into four persona profiles that made the differences between users understandable and actionable across the organization.
I worked with client stakeholders to determine what information mattered most, built alignment around the profiles, and ensured the model could be applied by teams beyond the immediate project group.
By the end of the engagement, the organization had moved from its original role-based framing toward a more behaviorally grounded way of understanding its users.
Project Overview
Client: A Leading Manufacturer of Surgical Robotic Equipment
Time: 2021, 3 Months
Role: Project Lead, Strategist, Principal Investigator
Key Takeaways
Challenging the Original Segmentation Model
The client initially expected personas organized primarily around clinical roles such as surgeons and respiratory therapists.
Our work revealed that organizational context and experience were often equally, if not more, influential in shaping attitudes toward robotic technology.
Because stakeholders had been engaged throughout the process, we were able to challenge the original framing while maintaining trust in both the evidence and the direction.
Recognizing the Role of the Care Team
Looking beyond the primary physician user revealed how hospital staffing models could affect onboarding, mastery, equipment ownership, and attitudes toward troubleshooting.
Teams that worked together consistently developed different relationships with robotic technology than environments where staff rotated frequently between procedures.
This broadened the client’s perspective from individual users toward the organizational conditions shaping successful adoption.
Challenges
Balancing Evidence and Interpretation
Developing a useful segmentation model required maintaining traceability to the evidence while synthesizing individual experiences into patterns the organization could recognize and act on.
My role was to guide the team in deciding which differences were strategically meaningful, helping tell a clear story that maintained enough nuance and rich detail to effectively ground decisions.
Building Organizational Adoption
The model needed to be analytically credible but also simple enough to travel across the organization.
I worked with the client team to prioritize the information that mattered most and create a two-level format that provided a clear primary narrative with additional depth for teams that needed it. That balance helped the client socialize and apply the model after the engagement ended.