LPG GAS CYLINDER ONLINE METERING EXPERIMENTATION - LEARNING LAUNCH

CHALLENGE:

I currently reside in Nigeria, and the most common energy means for cooking in the country is using  either wood/coal, kerosene stove and Liquefied Petroleum Gas- LPG. To improve the use of green  energy rather the use of fossil fuel such as wood, coal, and kerosene, I and my team then decided to  explore the use of IOT metered LPG cylinders in rural communities where this non-green energy  cooking methods are most dominant. The CHALLENGE with the people using LPG is the high cost  involved in buying the LPG when compared to how much the fossil fuel are gotten. So, my team and I  came up with idea of introducing a pay as you use system of consumption in these communities; the  members of these community live on daily wages when compared to the cities. We realized this  technology are already in use in Kenya and Tanzania, but we were not so sure how it will be embraced  in Nigeria. We decided to get a prototype of about 10 (ten) units, and we decided to deploy for some  handful of community dwellers for few weeks.

SELECTION:

As a team, we decided to use the learning launch tool. We believe this will help us fine tun the design,  make it simple, yet effective technology that our target customers can easily navigate through and  use. Working with some few community dwellers and mind you we have already gone through several  redesign thinking activities to come up with a customized go-to-market prototype for Nigeria.  These  pre activity knowledge has helped us to select the learning launch tool for our challenge and working  with these prototypes will help us experiment the idea with a small group of community residents.

APPLICATION:

Our first launch, we focused on guiding the consumers on downloading a mobile application that runs  on a smartphone, which enable them place orders/buy LPG and monitor remaining gas level/quantity  in the cylinder. This process helped us understand our market, many residents liked the idea behind  the technology, however, most of them did not own a smartphone and they had limited or no internet  services due to their rural geographical locations. Most dwellers phone runs on Symbian operating  system and the telco signal for 3G was weak. It guided to rather go with an USSD- code transmitting  approach rather than the 3G dependent application approach.

INSIGHT:

By applying the learning tool, we designed and tested our solutions. Through the learning process we  got to improve our mobile application to meet user’s expectation and available infrastructure. My  team and I used the results of this process to re-strategize our marketing campaign. Moving forward  our business will focus on human centered design to improve our product and services.

APPROACH:

The learning launch is the appropriate tool for our business. We need as a team to review the insight  gained from our first two launches and incorporate this insight into future launch designs as this is  the most effective and ideal way of approaching and implementing solutions. Future launch designs  should reflect insight gained, progress made, and come closer to a compelling solution ready for full  roll out

