Design Thinking Assignment.

Challenge.  I work with an EU machine manufacturer for pulp and paper industry, and, as advisor of the  innovation team, they came to me to support them to overtake a project that was developed  by other team in the company and wasn´t working at all.

IT team together with Sales team developed an online spare parts shop for customers. The  machines we are talking about are full of replaceable parts that should be gradually replaced  for safety and productivity so this generates intense contact between customers and the Sales  team. Spare parts orders are regular, repetitive and often predictable so could be easily  automated. Here was born the idea of an online shop and customers developing directly theirs  orders through lists which they could automate or customize.

It looked a great idea, but it wasn´t working at all, no customer was using the web shop, and  after the investment, the situation remained similar to the previous. They called innovation  team for help.

Selection.  It was an already developed project, done by other colleagues. So, we were directly entering to  analyze the idea and the whole development to surface possible mistakes or even question the  whole. So, we went directly to experiment the project with customers in a Learning Launch.  We wanted to get feedback from customers, surface assumptions and learn over the practice.

Application  Hypothesis & Key assumptions- The idea was, make faster an easier ordering spare parts,  easier to handle for clients and even for the company, automated tool versus human handled  process, win-win scenario. Lots of data was gathered and trends said lots of industrial  companies are developing such online shops and platforms as a new way of communicating  with their customers, it´s trendy.

Design of the Learning Launch – We developed a special campaign to A customers, for just for  three months, with heavy discounts over a huge catalog of spare parts, only if ordered through  the online shop. We mailed but also called personally, offered help in the process (if they  needed) and ask them for an interview in the end. We wanted to stay close to them, because  we wanted to learn and get feedback over the tool, the process and the whole idea of  automating this process. Most of the people was very helpful.

Insight  We found that everything in this project was built over confirmation bias. IT and Sales Teams  were so in love with the idea that they forgot the customers. Over the Learning Launch, we  tried to surface assumptions such as “easy, fast, efficient, trendy” and none of them was really  analyzed together with the potential users before, and they had quite a different point of view.  The experiment taught us that customers needed that human contact in the process, ¿why?  Most of pulp and paper companies are ruled and driven by chemistry experts, they know  about pulp, paper making process and different paper outputs but they don’t know really that  much about the machinery and they truly rely on their providers. When the ask for spare parts,

they need to talk to an expert, talk about the doubts and potential problems, they seek  knowledge and approval. During the experiment, almost everyone called for help for their  online orders, not for the tool, which they found ok, but to ensure they were doing ok.

After this process we recommended to maintain the current process and framework for spare  parts business and to revise the whole idea from the beginning to define, in a wider way, how  do we want to use the potential of IT tools to engage, intensify and accelerate our relationship  with our customers. The idea was approved and we hope to do so next year over the Design  Thinking framework, step by step.

Approach  In our case I believe the development of this project must be revisited from the beginning and  we hope to do so with the Design Thinking framework we´ve learned. But, we only could arrive  to this conclusion through the Learning Launch experience, a great idea to experiment and get  feedback of stakeholders, we will apply it further more and I think it was the best idea in this  case because we needed feedback, evidence, facts and we also needed to be a bit gentle with  our companions (This way it wasn’t us, it was the potential users who said so). That why we  think we did the right way.

