Kevin Taylor | Reflection | Learning Launch | Coursera Assignment Submission | 4th July 2020

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Reflection – Learning Launch    Challenge & Selection  As a software architect and system designer, my day to day work entails, convincing the  stakeholders about the viability of the technological solutions to solve a business problem. To  achieve this objective, I use visualization, storytelling, and prototyping of brainstormed ideas. Out  of these aforementioned tools, I have had the most success with prototyping and eventually  learning launches.    The stakeholders are most impressed and convinced when they see a hypothesis in action.  Visualization does help in bringing all the parties on the same page but when the ideas come alive  that is when their interest is sparked and a plethora of feedback is generated.    A while ago, when I was working with a banking product company, I was tasked to generate ideas  for 'one to one messaging-based payment system'. The challenge was to delve into an uncertain  domain, evaluate the existing solutions, and then come up with ideas, prototypes to show how a  better solution can be designed to help the customers leverage their existing messaging platform  to do monetary transactions.    We picked the most convincing ideas from the idea generation phase. Since we were dealing with  a moving target, we wanted deeper insights into an uncertain requirement and its associated  challenges. We thought that to get to the bottom of the requirement we must develop a quick  prototype and bring it into the hands of a small set of actual users. As it is also mentioned in Ricardo Nummer's description of the tool - "The purpose of the learning launch is a search for the truth".    I was certain that this "Learning Launch" design tool will help us reach our users directly and early  in the process of finding out the worth of the idea. If our initial facts about the solution are  corroborated then we can safely proceed with the solution at a larger scale.    Application   To start with, we went ahead and created a mobile app to tap the SMSs sent and received in a very  specific format to identify the Payor/Payee and the purchased items in a transaction. The mobile- enabled users to select specific items based on the registered merchants and the items they offer.  To get significant data we launched the program as an alternative payment system in the company  cafeteria. I convinced the five vendors in the cafeteria to allow specific users to use SMSs to pay  for snacks, beverages, and lunches. On the other hand, we asked the users of the application to  submit a set limit of the cash amount which will be translated to the digital amount in the mobile  application.    To monitor the daily transactions, we set up an automated reporting pipeline. Each transaction  would be recorded in the database as a credit or debit transaction. Then reporting scripts would  generate pivots for each registered merchant. At the end of each day, we would visit all the  merchants with the transaction report of that day and make a payment in cash to them. Of course,  this set up was manually orchestrated but we wanted to focus on the channel-based payment  solutions instead of other operational aspects.

Kevin Taylor | Reflection | Learning Launch | Coursera Assignment Submission | 4th July 2020

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We ran the program for 90 days. With everyday feedback, we kept fixing the race condition errors  and usability issues. We learned a lot about user behavior and merchant behavior.     Many times, users were on different mobile plans. Each plan has a different signal strength in the  area. Which caused disparities in receiving SMS confirmations and subsequently delayed the  propagation of the notification to the POS receipt printer. Many users were not happy with the  delays and complained that they had to wait for the receipts to be printed due to network delays.  To help those users we gave them an on-demand receipt printing option so that they can complete  a transaction any time and later they can simply approach the merchant and print the receipt token.    Merchants complained about the extra work of monitoring different categories of users (SMS  Payment Users) and having to wait for the final payment until the very end of the day. We  addressed their concerns by appointing one of our team associates to sit with the merchants during  the peak hours to support sample users and added additional incentive of 1% extra payment to  participate in the exercise.    The learning launch of our program was super effective to unveil the hidden challenges and must- have features for such a payment methodology. The key factor to our success was being empathetic  to our sample users and quickly adapting to the discoveries in the requirements.    Insights  We gained valuable insights from the learning launch. Though the aforementioned solution was  not completely adopted. But many of its components and research insights became instrumental  in giving birth to new growth initiatives. It spurred great enthusiasm among all stakeholders that  they got interested in our other endeavors as well.     We documented all the hurdles, customer apprehensions, and gaps in the solution. The modules  created for POS and SMS modem communication were received well and were adopted in another  line of business to incorporate a similar feature. The wonderful insights gained from customer  behavior in the cafe paved the way for a punch card-based payment system. We learned a lot about  mobile transaction security and accuracy.     Transparency with our sample users gained their confidence and they even expressed their desire  to be part of the future experiments as well. We not only reaped tangible benefits but we also  fueled important organizational parameters like innovation culture and growth mindset.    Approach  I have been part of many "Learning launches" and this course has reinforced my understanding of  the methodology. It has helped me to explain and convey the approach better. My future learning  launches are going to be crispier and better planned with the techniques I have learned in this  course. I love the feedback on a live product and will use it not just on technology solutions but in  Process enhancements as well.

