Reflection - Learning Launch

Challenge

We are all living in a global world with millions of products but still we must deal with the scarcity of  time and budget. Especially in the design industry, the products are nearly same however there is  large scale of pricing. In addition, because of the limited time, we are likely to consume the best  option we come across between few alternatives. However, the marketplace is huge and there are  many other products that maximizes our satisfaction in terms of design, quality, and price but we  aren’t aware of them.

To solve this problem, me and my colleagues, had the idea of creating an application that the users  will take the picture of the product that they like and the application will provide the worldwide  similar alternatives according to the picture they uploaded. The main challenge for us is, there are  giant platforms like Amazon, Alibaba etc. that provides large scale of products. Therefore, the main  question is: “Are these platforms and filtering systems while searching for a product sufficient in  these platforms, or they are not? Is there need of a platform consists our idea, or not?”

Selection

The tool that I selected for this challenge is learning launch. Since we have limited budget and time,  we should do low-costed experiments that will give response quickly. In this tool, our main goal is to  “learn” if our idea will work or not, by getting feedbacks from the public. By using learning launch, we  will reduce the risk of experiencing big failures at the end. We will have the opportunity to test our  idea and be able to take accurate actions.

Application

For making rational experiments firstly, we determined our potential customers. Our main goal is to  attract the people who already uses online shopping. According to Eurostat’s data, the biggest share  of online shopping belongs to the population aged between 16 and 24. However while making our  surveys we considered that due to Covid-19 outbreak, the number of higher aged e-shoppers will  increase.

After determining our potential customers, we designed a survey for them. In the survey we asked  questions like “Before buying a product would you like to see other similar products? If yes, how  many products will be enough? Did you experienced regret, after buying a product because of you  missed another alternative? If yes, how frequent it happens?”. Lastly, we designed a small prototype  of our idea. We wanted from our participants to share the last cloth they bought with us. After, we  provide them 5 more similar alternatives and asked, “Do you want to replace your cloth with one of  our alternatives?”

Insight

After bringing the learning launch to life, we find out how consumption habits change according to  gender and age. In additions we had more accurate assumptions to the question of “Will our idea  work?”.

Firstly, while both men and women wanted to see the other alternatives, men were satisfied when  they saw less options than women. On the other hand, while most of the women who participated to  the survey felt regret after they bought a product and saw its better alternative, most of the men  declared that they didn’t felt any regret at all.

In addition, no matter the gender X generation wanted to see more alternatives than Z generation.  This result was not surprising for us however, it is significant. Even though the e-shoppers are mainly  members of Z generation, people who most wanted to see the alternative products were the  members of X generation. Therefore, our business model should include and prioritize generation X  as well. Most significantly, more than half of the people who tried our prototype, declared that “If  they had a chance, they would replace their product with one of the alternatives we provided.”

Approach

As a result, by using learning launch tool we gained many valuable information. Firstly, it helped us to  determine our potential customers correctly from the very beginning.  Secondly, it showed us that  our idea may work however some of our assumption were incorrect. For example, participants were  generally satisfied with seeing less alternatives than what we expected or generation X was our main  potential buyers, but we were about to miss it. Learning launch tool, allowed us to step in the shoes  of the customers. It taught us about their mindsets and their needs. It also lighted the path for  reaching to them. Finally, if we had a chance to change the tool that we used, probably we would  prefer to stay with learning launch. Since our idea is based on an idea in the future, for making it  clear in the minds of our potential customers, making prototypes and surveys are the most efficient  way of gaining information.

