Reflection- Learning launch

Challenge

As a final project of my design career, we had to group search for a problem to be solved and  carried it out. We decided to work with the same educational institution where we studied,  where there was a clear problem: the students used the cell phone excessively at school,  making it a distracting device. The authorities were extremely concerned about this issue,  which was reflected in the decline in student academic performance and social relationships.  Therefore, we were funded and tasked with finding a solution to reduce cell phone use and  improve attention, performance, and students’ relationships.

Selection

After an arduous investigation, where we had interviews with various specialists and where we  were able to look for existing information on the subject in question, getting fully involved in it,  we decided that it was time to try the learning launch. This tool helps to quickly and cheaply  check ideas and prototypes, being able to see if the hypotheses are true.

Application

For our first learning launch, we wanted to check if the way we had approached the solution  was the right one to make students reduce their phone use. Inspired by the flight mode that is  used when we travel, we developed the "school mode". This was activated instantly once the  students connected to the school's Wi-Fi network, and through it, social networks were  blocked and only calls and messages could be received from essential contacts. We were able  to verify what we believed: the constant notifications were those that encouraged students to  be distracted by this device, so if they did not receive them, they were not tempted to use it.  However, we could see that there was a problem: since searches were not allowed in the  browser when they had to look for information during the class, one had to activate their  mobile data. This not only disabled the “school mode”, but also made students lose focus with  the notifications that reappear.

That is why we intended to modify this and it occurred to us to do so by changing the browser  settings. We add the possibility that Internet searches can be made only in Google academic  mode. Next, we did another learning launch to see if this change worked out well and  prevented students from connecting to mobile data. Luckily, we were right and we could see  perfectly how effective this modification was. Students were able to access internet searches  without having to deactivate school mode and the results were much more appropriate and  useful. We could perfectly verify that this was an efficient solution, which allowed young  people not to isolate themselves using the cell phone and to be able to relate to each other,  strengthening friendships.

Insight & Approach

By applying the learning launch tool, our team was able to verify our assumptions and improve  the prototypes to find the most effective solution possible. Although we were pretty sure that  the school mode was successful from the first moment, the learning launch made us realize

that we were not totally right and allowed us to see where we had failed. Not only was it  extremely accessible to us to check our hypotheses and learn from our mistakes, but it allowed  the team to realize what we had to modify. Despite being highly involved in the problem in  question, the learning launch allowed us to see failures that we had not taken into account  before launching the proposal officially. We saved money and improved the school mode  exponentially and because of that, I would choose the learning launch tool again.

