Reflection Paper – Learning Launch

Challenge:  I along with my friend co-own a business of interior designing. We involve services of many stakeholders  including welders, carpenters, painters, electricians, customers etc. The process of carrying out a task at  a call requires so much of a hassle, contacting the right person out of the workforce for the right task.  We involved all the stakeholders in the what if? Process of design thinking and came up with the idea of  creating a digital app as a platform. Through this platform we’ll create ease for each of our stakeholder  through reducing the efforts on collecting and aligning tasks.  The challenge was on how to build an  optimal interface of the platform for all of our stakeholders.

Selection:  First, we carried out the detail secondary research on existing online markets. After gathering enough  data, we started in-depth ethnographic interviews with our customers and our workforce too as they  too had to be on the platform. After having all the required data and insights we were ready to launch a  beta version. We chose learning launch as tool to first test a prototype on a very small scale with a  segment of our customer base to quickly test the feasibility of the idea.

Application:  For our leaning launch, we chose a stratum of customers and a portion of workforce signed up with us  and specifically gave them access to the beta version of our app to understand what value could be  added to the platform, without putting the app in the market. We gained very valuable feedback on a  few of the customers and workforce experience and we jotted those down, worked on those  suggestions and rolled out second version of the beta app to other group of customers and workforce.  Feedbacks this time were very fruitful.

Insights:  Our assumptions about the online platform included simplicity, user-friendly and streamlined were  tested during the earlier launch and we gained very valuable insights after the first launch. The  customers required authentic and credible persons from the workforce based on other customers  recommendations. The workforce required multiple payment options and a tip option in the platform.

Approach:  After gaining the insights and working on the suggested and founded customer pain-points, we again  launched the version 2 of the app on a different group of customers and workforce. This time the results  were very positive, and we decided to launch the platform in the market and posted in on the Playstore  and iStore. It was as an instant hit as all the stakeholders were involved in the process.

