The next time you watch a child face a new problem, take a moment to look at their attitude toward it. When we’re small and face something unknown, our first impulse is to experiment, to try, to get it wrong and try again: children are little scientists by nature. As we experiment with our surroundings, we develop rules, patterns and heuristics about how to solve this or that problem. As adults this is clearly beneficial, saving us time and effort by drawing on our memory and what we’ve learned.
But what happens to that urge to experiment when we try to innovate inside our companies? What holds back that natural impulse, and how can we get it back? Some of the fears have to do with things like accelerated time to market, tight budgets that increasingly seem to leave us no room to do something different, internal pressure to deliver results, a lack of knowledge about other areas that should be involved, or our own uncertainty about whether the idea in our head really is good.
We hear these fears and concerns from our clients every day, and that’s why at Soho we created Agile Product Launch (APL), an alternative that lets our clients experiment, test and iterate again while minimizing those fears and their associated risks.
APL is a way to find the courage to explore with fresh eyes again, to discover opportunities without fear of getting it wrong, iterating and testing with our users and answering concerns such as:
I don’t have time
One of the big arguments made when trying to innovate with the needs of the business and of users in mind is how little time there is day to day, with the focus on putting out daily fires and no way of creating the spaces that encourage creativity and thinking.
APL sets out to solve this through an agile methodology in which, over 6 weeks, we carry out internal research with stakeholders to understand the business’s needs and with users to surface new opportunities; the UX prototype, validated with users through testing; and the UI, with visuals tailored to the business.
I don’t have the resources
But time is only one of the resources our clients tend to worry about: in-house experience and design expertise is often scarce too.
At Soho, APL lets us bring our expertise in research, surfacing opportunities; in UX, focused on the importance of the experience; and in UI, focused on an aesthetic aligned with the business strategy.
My departments are disconnected
In the day-to-day dynamic, another complication is the difficulty of creating spaces where the different areas needed can interact in the search for new opportunities.
APL creates that necessary space for co-creation, fostering a culture of collaboration between different areas and promoting open communication, alignment and a shared vision.
Does my idea add value for users?
Just as creating spaces to work internally tends to be complicated, so does bringing users in: at best, they’re heard at the end of a design process, with the costs that implies if changes have to be made.
APL involves users early and often in the product development process, making it possible to gather valuable feedback, validate assumptions and make sure the product meets real-world needs. It’s a collaborative journey in which users become partners in co-creating value, driving innovation and success in the market.
At Soho we invite you to return to that natural urge to experiment while minimizing the risks: speeding up timelines, optimizing resources, aligning visions and focusing on the user with a business perspective, by implementing Agile Product Launch.
If you’d like to implement APL in your projects, you can fill in your details and our experts will get in touch, or find out more about our experience design services.
