LEARNING LAUNCH TOOL

CHALLENGE

Agriculture is the main occupation in my country. Unfortunately, farmers here still live in

poverty conditions. This is because they lack information on where to get market for their products

and on market prices for which they must depend on exploitative middlemen who take advantage

of their ignorance. There is also a long distribution chain that dilutes their revenue. As we are

working for an online platform that links small scale farmers to buyers using mobile and web

technology. Our challenge here is to create a simple technology that can be easily accessed by

famers considering that most of the farmers live in the rural areas with little access to internet

services. The project scope includes IT personnel and the marketing team together with our key

stakeholders, where they will help us in structuring the first prototype of the technology. The

timeline for this project should run for at most 60 days, for the software development team to

create a prototype of the technology. Our marketing team will help us with the first go-to-market

research once we come up with the prototype.

SELECTION

Our team decided to go with the learning launch tool. Learning launch is a small experiment

that tests our new idea in the real marketplace quickly and inexpensively. This tool will help us to

go through an iterating process that will improve our solution. In accordance to a full new product

roll-out, a learning launch is a learning experiment conducted with low expense to gather market-

driven data to determine whether a growth idea has enough merit to warrant detailed investigation

with the commitment of further time, people and resources. Working with the prototype will help

us experiment the idea with a larger group of farmers.

APPLICATION

In our first launch we focused on providing a mobile application that runs on a smartphone,

with incredible features like image capturing, chat and location. This was to ensure we capture

quality information about farm products that farmers would like to sell. We mainly focused on

how farmers interact with the mobile platform. This process helped us understand our market,

many farmers liked the idea behind the technology, but most of them did not own a smartphone

and they had limited or no internet services due to their geographical locations. We spent the next

3 days with both our marketing and IT teams together with the farmers to improve on the

technology to run on a feature phone. We worked through all possible solutions and we settled on

creating the USSD platform.

As already discussed, learning launch is an experiment to let customers experiment with

the new solution for a fixed period of time. So, our second launch was to release the new platform

to a group of farmers to see how they will interact with it. Our focus was to observe to see if there

were any gaps or drawbacks. This whole process helped us understand our market and what our

users considered simple. After testing the second platform we conducted interviews with the

farmers who interacted with it to understand their experiences and to find out if this second

prototype was easy to navigate. Our at most priority was to ensure that the farmers could

use the platform with ease.

INSIGHT

We finally succeeded in designing and testing our solutions, by applying the learning tool.

Through this process we got to improve our mobile application to meet user’s expectations and

realized that the farmers were more comfortable with the second prototype. Our marketing

department used the results of this process to re-strategize our marketing campaign. Moving

forward our business will focus on human centered design to improve our product and services.

APPROACH

Applying the learning launch tool was appropriate for our business. We required as a team

to review the insight gained from our first two launches and incorporate this insight into future

launch designs as this is the most effective and ideal way of approaching and implementing

solutions. Our future launch designs should reflect insight gained, progress made, and come closer

to a compelling solution ready for full roll out.


LEARNING LAUNCH TOOL CHALLENGE Agriculture is the main occupation in my country . Unfortunately , farmers here still live in poverty conditions . This is because they lack information on where to get market for their products and on market prices for which they must depend on exploitative middlemen who take advantage of their ignorance . There is also a long distribution chain that dilutes their revenue . As we are working for an online platform that links small scale farmers to buyers using mobile and web technology . Our challenge here is to create a simple technology that can be easily accessed by famers considering that most of the farmers live in the rural areas with little access to internet services . The project scope includes IT personnel and the marketing team together with our key stakeholders , where they will help us in structuring the first prototype of the technology . The timeline for this project should run for at most 60 days , for the software development team to create a prototype of the technology . Our marketing team will help us with the first go - to - market research once we come up with the prototype . SELECTION Our team decided to go with the learning launch tool . Learning launch is a small experiment that tests our new idea in the real marketplace quickly and inexpensively . This tool will help us to go through an iterating process that will improve our solution . In accordance to a full new product roll - out , a learning launch is a learning experiment conducted with low expense to gather market- driven data to determine whether a growth idea has enough merit to warrant detailed investigation with the commitment of further time , people and resources . Working with the prototype will help us experiment the idea with a larger group of farmers . APPLICATION In our first launch we focused on providing a mobile application that runs on a smartphone , with incredible features like image capturing , chat and location . This was to ensure we capture quality information about farm products that farmers would like to sell . We mainly focused on how farmers interact with the mobile platform . This process helped us understand our market , many farmers liked the idea behind the technology , but most of them did not own a smartphone and they had limited or no internet services due to their geographical locations . We spent the next 3 days with both our marketing and IT teams together with the farmers to improve on the technology to run on a feature phone . We worked through all possible solutions and we settled on creating the USSD platform . As already discussed , learning launch is an experiment to let customers experiment with the new solution for a fixed period of time . So , our second launch was to release the new platform to a group of farmers to see how they will interact with it . Our focus was to observe to see if there were any gaps or drawbacks . This whole process helped us understand our market and what our users considered simple . After testing the second platform we conducted interviews with the farmers who interacted with it to understand their experiences and to find out if this second prototype was easy to navigate . Our at most priority was to ensure that the farmers could use the platform with ease . INSIGHT We finally succeeded in designing and testing our solutions , by applying the learning tool . Through this process we got to improve our mobile application to meet user ’s expectations and realized that the farmers were more comfortable with the second prototype . Our marketing department used the results of this process to re - strategize our marketing campaign . Moving forward our business will focus on human centered design to improve our product and services . APPROACH Applying the learning launch tool was appropriate for our business . We required as a team to review the insight gained from our first two launches and incorporate this insight into future launch designs as this is the most effective and ideal way of approaching and implementing solutions . Our future launch designs should reflect insight gained , progress made , and come closer to a compelling solution ready for full roll out .