Learning Launch - Design Thinking for innovation

Application  I am a UX Strategist and my job is to help young entrepreneurs to create products people really  want to use. A few weeks ago a client came to me and said that for ﬁnancial reasons, the time we  had left to launch a product on the market was 3 weeks. As 2 weeks were estimated necessary to  develop the product, we only had 5 days to « test and learn ». This kind of situation force you to be  extremely disciplined and reactive. So my challenge as a consultant was to think and ﬁnd the best  tool to do that.

Selection  As the main issue i was facing was a lack of time, the idea of using Design thinking seemed  appropriate to me. Depending of the size of the company, the process can be more or less  important, but it is ﬂexible. And as i work with entrepreneurs and small companies, I had the  advantage of reactivity. The learning launch process is all about conducting experiment on the  marketplace quickly and inexpensively. It also emphasizes on learning on the main assumptions  we have at this stage, and that was exactly what we needed to do.

Application  The ﬁrst thing we did was to organize the 5 days we had with a great precision to make sure we  go through all the process without missing any step. So basically we made a one page guide that  listed the main assumptions we still had to clarify, the ones you only learn when the product is  facing « real customers » on a « real market ».

Then we focused on all the data we needed to track, measure and verify the relevance of the  assumptions we were about to test. It can sounds like a simple task, but I think it is quite difﬁcult.  You can easily fall into what is called « vanity metrics » and not track the right metric.

Now that we know what to learn and how to measure it, we ﬁxed some quantitative objectives. As  the clock were running, we didn’t want to lose time by doing the test for too long, so we decided a  « roof », a limit for each metric. When that limit is reached, we could consider we have enough  data to make statements and express an impartial feedback on a given assumption.

Note: In this case we already had (before the learning launch) tested the main assumptions, that  could be considered necessary to validate the value proposition. So the aim of this work were  more to deﬁne how to « dress » the value proposition to have a perfect match with the user needs,  as they shared earlier in the process.

Insight  Innovative entrepreneurs I work with are very often in technology, and they usually have a (bad)  habit and focus on product design and launching fast. In other terms they usually miss the  importance of a user centric approach. The Design Thinking Process and that tool of learning  launches are a perfect way to combine user feedbacks and fast cycles of production.

Approach  As a UX Strategist, my approach is quite related with the idea of User centric Design. The Design  Thinking set of tools is perfect for me as it is ﬂexible according to my client needs. I have been  taught for a long time the following process: decide -> produce -> measure, and there is nothing  about learning. As i see it, new companies are no longer in a top - bottom approach and when we  give them the tool to co-create their product with the right customers, they actually love it (as  much as i do).

