DESIGN THINKING FOR INNOVATION

TOOL – LEARNING LAUNCH

I am working with marketing team at startup called ACPS, which believes that the education  system in India needs a major reform in their approach towards the concept of education. Hence, the  company developed an app called ‘HOTS’ – Higher Order Thinking Skills, which focuses on developing  fundamental learning abilities in students such as pattern recognition, problem solving, comprehension,  logical reasoning, etc. rather than just simply memorizing texts and focusing on scoring marks in exams.

Challenge & Selection –

Being a startup the company had no brand recognition and hence it was unviable to sell a subscription  based application without generating some brand awareness first. What the company needed was  thorough market research in order to understand its target audience and to curate the application to  their requirements. The Company also needed people to understand what they were attempting to  achieve with this app and how beneficial it would be for their child’s development. In order to tackle  this, we used the ‘learning launch’ tool in order to get a better understanding of our target market and  also create brand awareness in the process.

Application –

The idea was to conduct summer camp workshops in over 200 apartments across the city, where we  would conduct fun quizzes, competitions and games for kids and also give a couple of demo classes in  each apartment. With each summer camp we ensured that we strongly advertised our brand and  collected maximum feedback from parents. We also sold toys, photo frames and t shirts that were  subtly branded. The whole process was a pretty big upfront investment for the company but it definitely  achieved its objective as we were able to collect very huge amounts of data which would further  improve the app.

Insight & Approach –

The workshops were conducted for about 6 months at the end of which we had a clear understanding of  what resonated with the crowds and where we needed improvement. After the workshop we  redesigned the app’s layout and structure to make it more appealing. From the feedback collected from  parents we were able to determine a pricing strategy and also added a couple more learning skills which  were in demand.

The workshops served as a prototype business model for us, with the help of which we were able to  recreate the experience virtually through our app and reach out to millions of potential customers.

