Learning Launch

Challenge

I, along with two of my friends, was thinking about creating a startup. Our plan was to

manufacture a Nutbar consisting of healthy and sugar-free ingredients. We did some research

and found out that there were many similar products on the market. But most of them were

imported from abroad. The few which were manufactured in our country lacked proper

packaging or branding and covered a niche market. So, after finalizing our recipe, we needed to

find a great packaging that would WOW (referencing the 3rd question of the week 1 video: What

wows?) the customers. But as there weren't many existing ideas for us, we had to start from

scratch.

Selection

So, to solve our problem, we used the tool Learning Launch. As it was a creative problem, it fell

into the scope of design thinking. And I found it to be very useful as it gave me the scope to

learn first hand more about the needs of the customers and get better insights about their

preferences. I tried to apply the knowledge from the Learning launch lesson of Week 4.

Application

We started by designing a prototype. We knew it had to go through the process of iteration so

we tried to keep it simple to keep the cost of research and development down. We came up with

the prototype design and after packaging the product with it, we presented it to some of the

customers. We kept a written record of both their non-verbal cues and also asked them some

specific questions(e.g. Taste, crunchiness, packaging, color, texture etc.) regarding the product

and the packaging. After collecting all the data we analyzed them and made improvements in

our design.

Insight

After several attempts, we finally came to our final design of the packaging along with different

colors for the different products. We went through the process of iteration where a few of the

designs were popular with the users and some were disliked. But as we made different attempts

we got to know a lot more about the customers and that's what I think is the goal of design

thinking, to focus more on the needs and wants of the customer rather than applying one’s own

choice. To use the power of observation and also involving the end-user in the design

process(Referencing to the good kitchen story in week 1). The design was well received in the

market and numbers in sales far beyond our expectations.

Approach

Using the learning launch tool helped us to get to the best possible design for our product. It

was proposed by me to the teammates who were a bit skeptical at first, but after seeing the

results they have agreed to use the whole process of design thinking for our next product line as

we are thinking of expanding. Moreover, I want to apply the Mind Mapping tool next time to find

patterns and get insights for the huge amount of data that we have gathered in the last time.

