Reflection - Learning Launch

1. Challenge

I work for an organisation that provides medical alarms to the ageing population. While our devices  serve our current clients well, we know that Baby Boomers are more technically savvy and have an  increased level of expectations around what their alarm device should be able to do.

Our stakeholders were keen to combine a number of IoT devices in the home along with a wearable  biometric device as a full solution. Our challenge was to identify whether Baby Boomers feel  comfortable having this level of technology in their home and whether they have a preference for  smart monitoring over the traditional monitoring and medical alarm hardware.

2. Selection

After working through the initial steps of design thinking and coming up with a series of  assumptions, we were ready to run our experiment to test our hypothesis. We felt we needed to  implement a learning launch to be able to observe our testers interact with this technology.

According to Axel Ebeling’s lecture, a learning launch is a small experiment that tests your idea in the  real marketplace.  For our experiment this included a show home set up, a home where all the  devices were on display and could be interacted with in a home like setting.

As outlined in Axel Ebeling’s lecture, we established the following:

We had a hypothesis to test:  People aged 60-80 would purchase and install an IoT enabled  monitoring solution from us if it allowed them to live safer and longer in their own homes

A specific group of customers we called our testers: Baby Boomers aged 60-80 living with a chronic  illness that requires support.

Identified a specific need / a customer pain: The need to feel safe and protected, both in and out of  their home.

An idea meets or solves that need:  A wearable and series of smart home devices to keep them safe  and monitored wherever they were.    As outlined in the lecture we identified that this customer group must feel comfortable having IoT  monitoring technology in their home for this idea to be a good one. If they were not comfortable  and untrusting of it, there is no way it would sell.

3. Application

The learning launch tool was selected, because many of our testers had not used (and some not  heard of) this technology before and were unfamiliar with IoT.

This tool was really effective in seeing how people really feel and act with this technology versus  how they thought they would feel based on their perceptions of what the technology was. Having

the ability to hold, test and see results of the technology for themselves gave our testers a reference  and the ability to understand how it would work in their daily lives.

Insight

Some of our insights included;

The higher the need of the client to feel safe, the less they were concerned about the technology  and its implications including privacy concerns. Surprisingly age and technical ability was not so  much a factor in their feeling towards this technology, this didn’t support our assumption that tech  savvy people would see more value in this product.

The higher the need for social interaction also meant more desire towards having this technology in  their homes. Although initially resistant, those suffering from social isolation loved having the ability  to talk with their smart home speaker. Something that surprised a majority of them also.

These insights would not have been realised if we hadn’t used a design thinking approach. The  learning launch, provided context to a lot of unknowns and uncertainty for both us and the testers  using it.

1. Approach

Next time, in our second learning launch - I would love to give this learning launch even more  context by having it in people’s homes for an extended trial period. It would be interesting to see  how perceptions and use change over time – does it become more valuable and appealing or does  the novelty wear off and it just becomes bothersome.

The design thinking approach, has provided quick insights and learning in a cost effective way that  would not have been possible with our previous approach to product development.

