Lean Startup Project - Weclub
Summary
In this project my team and I used our interaction design skills to design a product and a business venture. The goal was to simulate how startups really get built and, by extension, understand how to be a more effective and mindful designer.
Team Involvement ( Team Name MIT+D)
Ted Huang - CEO
Dayeon Kim - CTO
Irene Wang - CMO
Mikayla Zhang - CFO
Skills and models
Startup | Design/User Research | UX Design | Prototyping | User Testing | Business Model Canvas | Customer Acquisition
Project Length
15 Weeks (Fall 2019)
Problem Statement
Context
To design a digital product for an existing problem as if we are running a startup business.
Challenge
People often have a difficult time finding a club that meets their needs and preferences.
Opportunity
How might we help propsective clubbers minimize the effort of searching, and maximize the fun they will be having.
Key Features
Click This Demo Video to See How Our Product Work!
Meet the Team!
Our Design Journey
In this three and a half month intense startup project, we semi-pivoted and shifted our core ideas several times. Our initial idea did not end up becoming our final product.
We managed to have a well-planned design sprint every week. We were motivated to go outside of our campus to interview real potential customers and come back, iterating our concepts and product.
In my role as CEO I established our weekly goals, strategized tactical plans, and ensured our team had what it needed to grow and flourish.
User Research
How and where did we start?
In the first couple of weeks, we spent most of the time conducting user research and interviews - trying to explore the area (the problem) we want to focus on.
We picked an area where we all agreed to explore - The drinking experience of people who go out. We mapped out the entire drinking journey map to find insights and to see the bigger picture.
At this stage, we saw an opportunity where we thought it would be worth researching - Drinking and driving.
Secondary Research and Interviews
1. Validating Our Concepts and Ideas
First, we used sticky notes to brainstorm the assumptions we had about people’s drinking experience. We selected the final assumption we wanted to validate and revised it into a hypothesis.
2. Talking and learning about them
While we went to SFSU public library to find the most precise and exclusive data to help support our assumptions about drinking and driving, we also conducted several interviews throughout the problem-exploring phase and on-site investigations on two major locations - Castro district and Mission district in San Francisco.
3. Questionnaires and surveys
We created several questionnaires and online surveys to collect quantitative and qualitative data about our potential users.
Results and Insights
Problem: Most people don’t have basic drinking knowledge.
Opportunity: How might our product help them to gain basic drinking knowledge without being a “buzz kill”
Problem: People have experience drunk driving before.
Opportunity: How might our product prevent them from drink and driving
Problem: People want to get drunk on purpose - to feel relaxed and to loosen up. It’s hard to manage their drinking limit while having fun.
Opportunity: How might our product assist them to have a safer drinking experience while they having fun.
Product Development
Ideation
Before we pivoted later in our project, at first, we named our soon-to-be product as Snapbar.
Zeroing in on our target audience, we accordingly brainstormed several MVP (Minimum viable product) ideas to test plausible solutions.
By making the decision-making process more effecient, our team used a prioritization matrix and dot voting method to help prioritize and strategize these MVPs.
Validation & Iteration
We used Build — Measure — Learn technique by The Lean Startup Method to guide us through the further interviews and MVP testing phase.
We tested out five different MVPs in the course of 3 months. Each week, we listened and gained useful insights from our target users and progressively revised our features according to each week’s feedback.
App Integrated with a breathalyzer
Built - we created a storyboard that shows the experience of tracking users’ drinking limit by using app integrated breathalyzer.
Measured - we wanted to see our testers would understand the storyboard and be willing to consider using this type of method.
Learned - we learned that, most of the people think if they are drunk, they might forget about using the breathalyzer; The price of a breathalyzer could also be expensive for a lot of first-time users.
Location Sharing Concierge
Built - we considered one of the features as location tracking while providing drinking and safety tips for the users. We asked testers to share their real-time locations with us while we “faking” the feature of sending out tips accordingly.
Measured - to see if users would think our tips are useful or helpful in any way.
Learned - half of the participants did not read our messages because they were having too much fun. Some of the testers read our tips, but they did not put too much effort to take the tips into consideration.
Pop-up Notification
Built - we built couple UI mockups of “Daily Tip” app notification for testers to read through.
Measured - we wanted to know that if people would care to read the pop-up notification about drinking knowledge.
Learned - while most of the people think they are some good drinking tips, however, they did not think they would read it carefully while going out.
In-App Notification
Built - We designed a UI flow for testers to perform a specific task; afterward, a subtle notification about drinking knowledge would pop-up after one task is done.
Measured - we wanted to see if our testers would be enforced to read the drinking tip since it’s part of the UI flow.
Learned - Surprisingly, this time, most of the testers did not complain or mention about the in-App notification. They claimed that they also read the notification content and thought it was pretty cool.
Pivot Point
We learned that:
People just want to have fun when they go out. We thought, since having fun is the priority when people go out, why not providing an app service that can help people to make their night out more satisfying?
There is a significant difference between bars and clubs - distinguishable demographics: most of the younger adults we have interviewed tend to go to clubs more often than bars. To narrow down our target users more precisely, we removed bars from our target list to just focus on clubs.
At the beginning of the ideation phase, our value proposition is to help people who go out to drink to have a safer drinking experience, but now, with all the insights and feedbacks we have gathered, our new value proposition is to provide a new way for people to have fun at the club.
Out of all these interviewees and user testing participants who mentioned their priorities are to have fun, we had follow-up interviews with them and tried to find out - out of all these clubbing experience, what are some problems they faced before. And we found out that:
It’s hard to find detailed information online since the information changes weekly.
When people go out together, it’s hard to match everyone’s preferences and tastes.
There’s no existing app for searching for clubs. Yelp and Google doesn’t have exclusive information about these local clubs.
Our new opportunity - How might we people to find clubs more conveniently by providing detailed and updated information.
Comparative Landscape - Looking Into Existing Solutions
We conducted other interviews with 20 people, 15 of them are related on friend’s recommendation. Why does this interview matters to us? We thought most people would reply on google and other apps to find clubs, but it turned out the behavior is not what we hypothesized - Since friend’s recommendation has becoming a mainstream for the clubbers, we want our users to design something that can encourage people to use together.
Existing Apps
Why people still looking for club by relying on their friends mostly? because there are no existing application for searching clubs. So we did a market study of the app that has any information about finding clubs and these studies focusing on accessibility and preference.
Our three major goals of Weclub
Versatile and user-friendly
Finding out detailed information in just one click
Fun and fresh
(Our final product is at the beginning of this page)
Business Development
How would we make money
Our market research showed us that companies spend billions of dollars on app advertising each year. Similar to Yelp, we expect to sell our app’s unique searching tool to local clubs who want their business and events promoted.
As a simulated startup company, we used the business canvas model to break down our structure fundamentally. We also created and calculated two TAM SAM SOM framework to define the size of our market - both for users (clubbers) and customers (local club owners, promoters). And last but not least, we calculated our burn rate and how we would generate our revenue.
Customer Acquisition
How did we gain traction
After the first couple of MVPs were made, back when our product was still named Snapbar, we started our early customer acquisition immediately. We put up two types of poster along with two landing page we created each week around the city each week.
In total, we had 103 visitors and 20 subscribers.
Pitch Day
On our final pitch day, we had a “mock” presentation where we pitched our product to practitioners, designers, and investors from the field such as Lyft, Reddit, Yahoo and different startup companies. With a $400,000 initial ask to fund our startup, we successfully acquired $275,000 from 5 out of 10 investors.
Thinking Forward
Self-Reflection
As taking the role of CEO, I have learned that a true leadership takes patience, mindfulness and solidarity. I wouldn’t done this without my teammates. I also experienced what it’s like to work with a full team for a long period of time, sometimes we might have small hiccups, but I learned that as long as you have faith in your team, you will reach your goal together. As one investor told me - invest in your team is super important, your company’s ideas can always change, but you wouldn’t want to change a good team.
Project Challenge
We had many frustrations throughout the process of each phase as a team. We had a hard time to finalize our product features, and we also struggle upon deciding what features we should keep and what to get rid of. We learned that this is a startup project; it’s about pivoting and shifting ideas adaptively. We realized, at some point that, we were dwelling too much on something that didn’t work for the users but simply because we liked it a lot.
Lessons For the Future
User testing is very essential to startup company, we should keep iterating and improving our product basic on the feedback and updated trends. I wished we could talk to more customers (club owners) to see whether if they would willing to buy our business and why.