Assignment-  Learning Launch

Challenge

As a product manager for a company which makes chips for cordless phones, my challenge was to  improve the user experience in terms of voice quality and reception at the end of the usable range of  the phone. The target was to provide a better quality than our competition while reducing product  returns due to low perceived quality. The main challenge was to improve the quality, while controlling  the very sensitive cost structure of the product. All of this had to be done within the next product launch  cycle in 90 days.

Selection

The learning launch tool was used to select between 3 different ideas which have been suggested by the  engineers to improve the quality. This tool was selected since consumer voice quality experience is  extremely subjective and cannot be predicted by engineering simulations and measurements. The early  launch tool was the best way to get early unbiased feedback without spending too much resources and  be able to “fail early” on nonproductive approaches which would be “tabled” .

Application

Early launch was done to a group of 20 students, who would serve as consumers. The consumers were  given 3 different prototype products utilizing different engineering solutions (antenna design, noise  muting and advanced signal processing) for assessment. The students were then asked what solution  sounded best to them.  This provided early subjective feedback without confirmation bias.

Based on the student feedback, we concluded that a combination of two of the ideas (noise muting and  improved antenna) seemed to provide a better solution.  As a result, repivoting was done, and a  prototype utilizing the combined solution was put to the test of the student group   to confirm that the  combined solution was superior to the individual solutions.

Following affirmation of the proposed solution, the solution was implemented in the next product  yielding greatly enhanced user experience, increased sales and reduced field returns.

Insight

Utilizing the learning launch tool enabled an accelerated learning cycle. This enabled reaching the  market with a suitable solution which was different from the singular solutions originally proposed by  the engineers. The small-scale launch facilitated very quick feedback and enabled repivoting of the  original concept and producing a product with better consumer experience while keeping budget and  schedule to a minimum.

Approach

It seems that the learning launch tool is the right solution for problems in which market response is  difficult to predict due to the subjective experience of each consumer. Alternative approaches could  have been launching the product in mass scale, without going thru the early limited launch approach.  This could have resulted in launching a suboptimal product which would provide less consumer  satisfaction.

