“It’s about catching customers in the act, and providing highly relevant and highly contextual information.” Paul Maritz, CEO at Pivotal
A company in the Fintech industry, Lytepay approached me to develop a process for validating their new product concept SEED, which was still in its infancy but had the potential for long-term benefits. They also sought to identify and address any potential challenges along the way. After conducting a thorough investigation of the company and understanding their market position and product's unique characteristics, I crafted a flexible and adaptable process tailored to their specific needs. This comprehensive approach covers various aspects, such as marketing, community building, and both qualitative and quantitative research, ensuring that the validation process is effective and provides valuable insights for the company's product development journey.
LytePay's Seed Product Ideation Testing: A Case Study
LytePay created an innovative concept called Seed, a finance app designed for freelancers to collect and invest their income, earning interest on their investments (referred to as Fruits). The company sought my expertise in developing an outline to test their ideas and hypotheses for the long term.
Client's Brief on Seed
Seed is designed to position LytePay as a leading income management app for freelancers. It reintroduces the idea of a long-term pension with short-term rewards, creating a daily-use finance app that passes the toothbrush test. LytePay manages users' seed funds, generating interest as users enjoy the fruits of their income growth and effort investment.
Challenge
Given that Seed is in its ideation stage, a comprehensive testing process is required, incorporating social media community building, qualitative and quantitative surveys, and word-of-mouth marketing to establish trust in the market. Testing individual features would not provide sufficient insight into the product's validity, nor fully utilize the potential user base.
The company also needed to amplify their online community building efforts to establish a solid user base and generate trust in the digital finance and cryptocurrency age.
- Building an Effective Full Circle Process as seen bellow
Outlined below is an Effective Full Circle Process for product validation:
Build the Community:
Develop an active online community through Facebook, Twitter, Discord, Reddit, and LytePay's customer service. This creates credibility, trust, and a potential testing pool for future use.
Conduct Sprints and Set Goals:
Utilize Google Sprint meetings to clarify goals among the team and stakeholders while building an online community. This process involves focused sprints to address critical features and potential risks.
Day 1:Morning:
Focus on one key component for testing
Gather input from stakeholders and experts, addressing questions and concerns
Identify issues and challenges
Detail the customer journey
Afternoon:
Sketch wireframes and storyboards to address challenges related to the selected key component
Encourage open brainstorming and idea sharing
Day 2:Morning:
Present sketched solutions for voting
Narrow down options and select the most suitable solution based on voting results
Afternoon:
Develop detailed wireframes and storyboards of the chosen solution
Create a comprehensive, low-fidelity visual representation
Day 3:
Allocate time and resources to produce a high-fidelity prototype
Ensure the prototype closely resembles the final product in both appearance and user experience
Aim for accurate representation to elicit precise feedback from customers
Note: Coding is not required; a Figma prototype is sufficient for this stage.
Build a Landing Page:
Create a professional and informative landing page, showcasing the app's core values, benefits, and features, and encourage users to sign up for early access or beta testing.
Conduct Surveys:
Utilize open-ended questions to filter potential users, understand their priorities, goals, and personas. Twitter Polls and other community engagement tools can be valuable resources for gathering data.
Test Time:
Create short, interactive prototypes for testing, incorporating post-test surveys to cover any issues or concerns, and collect user feedback.
Qualitative Interviews and Re-Testing:
Implement changes based on test results, conduct re-tests and semi-structured interviews with users, and analyze reactions and feedback for further improvements.
Conclusion
In conclusion, LytePay's ongoing implementation of the comprehensive product validation process showcases the immense benefits of utilizing a mixed-methods approach. By strategically engaging with their target audience, conducting iterative testing, and continuously refining their Seed product based on valuable user feedback, LytePay is working towards launching a user-centric solution tailored to the needs of their market. This approach not only enables LytePay to build trust and credibility with their user base but also fosters a loyal community that drives the company's growth and innovation. As LytePay continues to embrace this adaptable and data-driven process, they demonstrate the importance of harnessing the power of product validation to create winning solutions that resonate with their target audience.
