Unit 1: Creating Lab Propositions

Activities

Activity 01.
Strategic Questions

The first activity was to review the assumptions linked to the explorations to understand which were safe assumptions and which required testing to be validated, i.e. which were ‘critical assumptions’.

For each of the selected explorations, the lab team went back to the original design challenges and scenarios and identified the initial key assumptions that led to the creation of the explorations. They then considered the original project goals and what the client wanted to explore based on their strategy.  Then, based on all this information, they created a specific strategic question for each proposition.

These strategic questions helped the lab to maintain the right direction during the development of the prototypes, as well as further challenge their thinking. Each strategic question was a synthesis of the hypotheses made about the user, the problem and the solution’s mechanisms, combined with the client’s specific strategic interests in each area.

Activity 02.
Options for prototyping

After the definition of the strategic questions, it was necessary to start thinking about how to prototype and test the critical assumptions.

The objective was to structure the hypotheses into something actionable, which could be tested and validated. So, the team explored different ways of prototyping and tried to get an initial  understanding e of the feasibility and timeframe to build the prototypes. To brainstorm those prototyping options, the lab team imagined how the concepts created for the explorations would look like in the present context, while maintaining the focus of the strategic question.

Thinking about ways to prototype at this stage made it easier for the lab team to narrow down the scope for the definition of the new value propositions, by considering what could be developed with limited time and resources

Activity 03.
Backcasting of value propositions

For users to engage with the concepts meaningfully, the lab team needed to reframe them to make them less provocative and less future-oriented, so they would interact with and critique the concept without spending time questioning the plausibility of the idea and instead to reflect on its impact

The way they did this was by following a methodology called ‘backcasting’, which is a practical approach that starts from the definition of desirable and optimal future scenarios and then works backwards to identify the main steps or mechanisms that can be applicable in the present to realise that future scenario. It is more common to see backcasting applied in the context of sustainability strategy; however, the lab team saw the opportunity to adapt the methodology to the reframing of the explorations in what they called ‘value propositions’.

For each selected exploration, the lab team had a strategic question and a series of critical assumptions. These were used as the starting point for the ‘backcasting’ process. While the importance of ethical exploration had always been present, this was a key moment to delve into it because the concepts were about to be taken to a more tangible level, and put in front of real users. It was the moment to examine more closely the these concepts’ impact on people and how the approaches aligned with the ethical principles of the client. 

Considering all these elements, the lab team used the backcasting methodology to work backwards. From the exploration, which was an extreme idea set in the future, they started imagining how the users could genuinely adopt it. They started analysing how the mechanism they identified in the strategic question could be enabled through a service, how this service would look like if it existed today, what types of features it would have and whether the service could evolve into a future service that contained the critical elements of interest.

The resulting value propositions were not all entirely ethically sound. However, problematic value propositions and the responses they may elicit, still enrich our understanding of the plausibility of potential futures and inform current strategy.

The desirable future scenarios were those where a particular service provides users with more agency over their choices and an improvement to their health and happiness. The way the lab team framed each value proposition was to consider those scenarios as the outcome and then design propositions that could lead there, so they could understand if users also saw those scenarios as desirable. 

In this way, each value proposition was simply a disguised and digestible, intermediary stepping stone into the future – these experiments allowed us to understand if users would engage with that first intermediary step, which tells us something about the potential of subsequent steps.  

Activity 04.
Planning of experiments

With the value propositions defined, the lab team started outlining a plan to prototype and test them with the users. 

As mentioned earlier, the objectives of testing of the propositions were to:

1. validate the critical assumptions;
2.  measure desirability; and, 
3. evaluate the strategic alignment with the client.

For the lab team, it was essential to make the testing results comparable, so that they could make comparisons between the propositions and make an informed decision on which ones to bring forward.

Thus, they included three critical components in the planning: 

1. the research questions that needed to be answered through the testing;
2. the methods that they will use to conduct the testing; and,
3.  the type of audiences they would test with.

The research questions were based on the critical assumptions, and they were related to the user, the problem and the solution. In particular, the lab team wanted to understand if the needs and goals they identified for the user segments were accurate, if the problem they defined was the right one to be solved, and if their proposed solution would be desirable to the user segment.

To find the answers to these questions, the lab team decided to collect qualitative data and feedback about the user, the problem and the solution, by speaking directly to the users. They used an external agency to recruit people who  fit in the specific user segment of each proposition to participate in interviews and workshops. This segment was defined based on the identity of the extreme user profile of the first phase.

For each prototype, the lab defined what type of people they were looking for and created detailed briefs for the agency. The agency then used a ‘screening criteria’ for the participants’ selection, based on the information shared by the lab team.

As each user segment and the proposition were so different from each other, the lab had to ‘standardise’ the ways users would engage with the concept, through the creation of interfaces as prototypes, and using the same structure for all the interviews and workshops.

To test desirability, it was also necessary to think on a bigger scale. Therefore, the team used advertising on social media to present the propositions to the general public. They defined a strategy, which started by researching the best practices for the different platforms, identifying what channels and what type of media to use, and all technical aspects.

Finally, to test the strategic alignment with the client, the lab team proposed an in depth ‘Service Safari’ as a method to present all the concepts together with the insights collected from user testing.

Activities

Activity 1:
Building prototypes

By rapidly testing multiple propositions, the lab team could assess the value of the concepts before investing significant time and resources into developing a smaller selection. The model had to create prototype results that could be comparable with each other and be flexible enough to allow quick and frequent iterations in order to tailor the testing with for different audiences

 To test the propositions with recruited users and the general public on social media – the lab team developed some tangible artefacts to facilitate the interaction.

Starting from the core value proposition, they defined the main features of each concept in a way that would expose the critical assumptions. They then created a specific brand identity to convey  the idea, its context, and who it was for. Then using these elements, the lab team proceeded to design the interactions and touchpoints, mostly by designing app mockups and clickable UIs (user interfaces) for each concept. 

The features and interactions were summarised in a website landing page which was to be used as the destination for the adverts. And for the adverts, the lab team also prepared a series of images and copy. These included variations on the target audience and features in order to test multiple elements at the same time. All of these artefacts posed the proposition as a reality. 

Activity 02:
Discussion of implications

After creating the prototypes, the next activity was to show those prototypes to people in the field to collect feedback and observe reactions. In this first round, the lab team worked with two types of audiences: recruited users and the general public on social media.

The lab team recruited a group of users for each proposition with whom they either conducted a workshop or individual face-to-face interviews. Face-to-face interviews were sometimes more appropriate due to the sensitivity of the topic. For other propositions, the lab team wanted to observe how participants would respond to each other and what conversations would be sparked by the interaction, so they opted for a workshop.

For both the workshops and the face-to-face interviews, the lab tried to standardise the structure by using the same 3-stage process:

1. understand the users;
2.  understand their view on the topic; and,
3.  understand their response to the proposition as a solution to the problem

There was also an extra stage for filling in a standard scoresheet, which collected some quantitative data about the appeal, the impact, the influence on happiness, the significance, longevity, likeliness and trust associated with each proposition.

The lab team presented the context to the recruited users by introducing them to the central topic of health and happiness. They explained how the lab was conducting the research and that the objective was to understand how the users would feel about the service propositions. To limit any discussion about the legitimacy of the idea, the participants were told those concepts were in development and would potentially be released into the market soon.

In parallel to this recruited user testing, the lab team also conducted testing through advertising on social media. The objective of these ad campaigns was to generate comparative data on the performance of each different advert to understand which concepts were more desirable. Therefore, each concept has a standard advert structure and received the same funds. At the same time, they ran experiments with different audiences and highlighted different aspects of the service in order to test their research questions, the relevance of the problem, if their user hypothesis was correct, and the appeal of specific features —all simply by comparing the results of alternative adverts.

For each proposition, they had an image and text introducing the service, a call-to-action to find out more on the website – Then, on the website landing page, the users were prompted to leave their email addresses to get early access. The collection of emails was useful as quantitative data, but also to get permission from interested users to be contacted again.

Activity 03.
Synthesis of insights and discussion of learnings

At the end of this first round of testing, the lab team assembled the qualitative and quantitative data and feedback. From the recruited user interviews and workshops, they collected a series of comments and questions that they synthesised into insights. The insights were either about the user, about the problem or about the solution (following the same three categories used in the experiment).

For the more complex social media data, the lab team examined and compared metrics across all the propositions. They collected quantitative data from the performance of the ads and insights about demographics as well as some qualitative feedback through the users’ comments under the adverts. By analysing all the insights and data collected, they were able to validate or invalidate some of their critical assumptions and answer key research questions. This moment of synthesis was an advantageous point to make a strategic decision for each proposition, before entering the next prototyping round.

In the lean startup methodology, the options for this decision moment are called persevere, pivot or kill. For some of the propositions that reported quite successful results, the decision was to persevere, meaning they would enter the second round of testing without major changes in strategy. For others, the decision was instead to pivot, which for the lab team meant considering variations of the concept or hypotheses for further testing, such as a change in target audience or brand positioning, or even combining two propositions. This allowed them to explore and test other possibilities instead of killing the idea entirely because of less successful results. Only a few concepts were “killed” after  a team assessment that determined they were not worth being brought forward, especially if they had not been as convincing from the start.

Active 04.
Refinement of prototypes

Based on the learnings of the first round of testing, the lab team assessed each  proposition to see if there was a need for further testing with users. They took the insights and turned some into new research questions to test. The additional user testing was conducted through adverts on social media, which proved to be a quick iterative method to test alternatives. Some poor-performing propositions were excluded from this round. In contrast, for others, the lab team proposed different branding to test the appeal to different genders, or combined similar concepts to see if the proposition had stronger results. For these alternatives, they created new prototypes, such as interfaces and ads, and they modified the landing pages when necessary, which enabled them to experiment online with the public and collect fresh quantitative data.

Activity 05.
Second round of experiments

The second round of experiments included further testing with users and with the client to assess the strategic value of the propositions.They prototyped and tested some alternatives of the propositions using social media advertising, as they had done in the previous round of experiments by varying branding, features and positioning and then comparing success metrics to answer their questions. They tested only a few concepts, leaving out the ones that had great performance (and were already successful) and those that had poor performance in the first round. This process was intended to decide on ambiguous concepts.

The second type of testing in this second experimentation round was with the client. The lab team prepared for a workshop to present all the propositions and their main insights to allow the client’s team to become familiar with the concepts and discuss how strategically aligned they were with  the organisation’s strategy and current objectives.

The type of workshop they conducted with the client is called a Service Safari, which allows the participants to take the point of view of the users by experiencing the services in first-person and by imagining the contexts in which those services would be used. For this, the lab team created a template to present all the elements of each proposition, such as links to UI prototypes, descriptions, features and insights.that In this way, the client’s team would have an instant overview of the entire service as well as information about the original problem and the strategic question.

The workshop had two parts associated with two objectives: 

1. To share with the client the progress made on the development of the ten selected concepts; and,  
2. to discuss the concepts together to better understand which propositions were more strategically valuable and to vote on which were priorities.

Each member of the client’s core team was asked to express a preference on the propositions by prioritising them using a scale from 1 to 10 and justifying their choices.

Activity 06.
Synthesis and conclusion

The lab team then reviewed the results internally, collecting and analysing all the insights from both experimentation stages and compared the data. The intent was to make sense of the qualitative and quantitative data and the strategic insights they got from the different audiences they had tested with, and therefore identify the potential opportunities for each proposition. They also internally reviewed everything they did during the prototyping stage, assessing what they did wrong and what could be improved, as well as the effectiveness of the testing methods they used.