Prototyping for Rent the Runway

"We never did research in an academic sense. We did real world research. Which was that we went to Bloomingdale's , bought about 100 dresses, all in our own sizes so that if this experiment didn't work out we would have an awesome new wardrobe. We spent a lot of our savings on this. We hosted a pop-up at Harvard undergrad. And we invited different groups of Harvard undergrads to the pop-up. And the idea behind this was to learn (a) will women rent dresses; (b) what do they rent, how much will they pay, what brands do they want, and most importantly if they do rent what happens to these garments after they rent. Do they get destroyed? Can you send them through the mail? How do you dry-clean these items. And so on and so forth."

"Our first pop-up was in April 2009".

"I got the sense that it would work because I saw the emotional effect. So in this pop-up I saw girls stripping down, trying on these amazing dresses, and feeling beautiful. And you saw their facial expressions change. And they threw their shoulders back, and tossled their hair. And they walked with a new sense of confidence. And you know I really thought this could be a business that isn't just about offering her a rational or smart choice, but it can also be a business that is delivering something emotional to her. Making her feel beautiful every single day."

- co-founder Jenn Hyman, Rent the Runway

Source: How I Built This podcast, http://one.npr.org/?sharedMediaId=541686055:541701331

Prototyping Buzzfeed

Jonah Perretti used the Nike ID sweatshop viral email and Black People Love Us as experiments into what goes viral. This would go on to form the basis of Buzzfeed.

Source: How I Built This podcast, http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this 

The right prototype

Source: http://usblogs.pwc.com/emerging-technology/the-power-of-picking-the-right-prototype/

Best ways to get insight - Mike Harris

When I hired him to speak to a corporate group Mike Harris (First Direct founder) said the best ways to get insight were:

• Use your own product
• Spend a day with them
• Talk to customer service staff
• 1 to 1 insight
• Prototyping
• Watch them, e.g. hang out in a branch

AG Lafley:

• What are they trying to get done with our products?
• What's working and what isn't?

Noble failures at Charles Schwab

Charles Schwab have a history of "noble failures".

It took numerous tech-based failures before they hit on a successful online service, e-Schwab.

For more info see: The Art of Innovation book, Tom Kelley, p232

"Fail often to succeed sooner"

An IDEO saying.

Source: The Art of Innovation book, Tom Kelley, p232

Prototyping snowboard goggles in an ice cream freezer

An IDEO team needed to perfect the design for snowboard goggles in summer. So they borrowed an exercise bike, a fan for wind, and borrowed the freezer of a local family-run ice cream company.

Source: The Art of Innovation book, Tom Kelley, p103

Prototyping a Phone System

Brett King points out that you can prototype and IVR using index cards to lay out the menu. Users can then try to complete a task while someone reads out the prompts.

This can be used to test the 'champion' current system against a 'challenger' new system.

Source: Bank 2.0 book, page 125

The Palm Pilot Experiment

Edited extract from Pretotype It (e-book PDF), 2nd Pretotype Edition, Alberto Savoia, Oct 2011



Introduced in 1996, the Palm Pilot was a palm-sized digital device with four basic functions: a calendar, an address book, a to-do list and a simple note taker.  The Pilot was the first successful PDA. According to a March 1998 story on Time magazine:


Hawkins, Palm's chief technologist and Pilot's creator, designed one of the first handheld computers, the GRiDPad, a decade ago. It was an engineering marvel but a market failure because, he says, it was still too big.  Determined not to make the same mistake twice, he had a ready answer when his colleagues asked him how small their new device should be: "Let's try the shirt pocket." Retreating to his garage, he cut a block of wood to fit his shirt pocket. Then he carried it around for months, pretending it was a computer. Was he free for lunch on Wednesday? Hawkins would haul out the block and tap on it as if he were checking his schedule. If he needed a phone number, he would pretend to look it up on the wood. Occasionally he would try out different design faces with various button configurations, using paper printouts glued to the block.


People must have thought he was crazy. But that piece of wood with paper printouts convinced Hawkins that he was on the right track. He had answered the first, and most important, question: “If I had a Pilot, would I actually carry it with me and use it?”  And his answer was a definite “yes!”  Now he could focus on the next set of questions, such as: Can we build it this small?  How much would it cost to build?  How long would the batteries last? 

The IBM Speech-to-Text Experiment

Edited extract from Pretotype It (e-book PDF), 2nd Pretotype Edition, Alberto Savoia, Oct 2011

I probably got a few details wrong, but in this case the moral of the story is much more important than the details. A few decades ago IBM was best known for its mainframe computers and typewriters.  In those days, typing was something that a small minority of people were good at – mostly secretaries, writers and some computer programmers. Most people typed with one finger – slowly and inefficiently. IBM was ideally positioned to leverage its computer technology and typewriter business to develop a speech-to-text machine. This device would allow people to speak into a microphone and their words would “magically” appear on the screen with no need for typing. It had the potential for making a lot of money for IBM,  and it made sense for the company to make a big bet on it.

However, there were a couple of major problems.  Computers in those days were much less powerful and more expensive than today, and speech-to-text requires a lot of computing power.  Furthermore, even with adequate processing power, speech-to-text translation was (and still is) a very difficult computer science problem. Tackling it would have re-quired a massive investment – even for IBM – and many years of research.  But everyone would have wanted such a device.  It would be a sure-fire hit.  Or would it?

Some folks at IBM were not convinced that all the people and companies who had said they “wanted and would definitely buy and use” speech-to-text machines would actually end up buying them. They feared the company would end up spending years in research and lots of money developing something that very few would actually buy: a business disaster. After all, people had never used a speech-to-text system, so how could they know for sure they would want one?  IBM wanted to test the business viability of such a device, but since even a basic prototype was years away, they devised an ingenious experiment instead.

They put potential customers of the speech-to-text system, people who said they’d definitely buy it, in a room with a computer box, a screen and a microphone – but no keyboard. They told them they had built a working speech-to-text machine and wanted to test it to see if people liked using it.  When the test subjects started to speak into the microphone their words appeared on the screen: almost immediately and with no mistakes!  Actually the computer box in the room was a dummy.  In the room next door was a skilled typist listening to the user’s voice from the microphone and typing the spoken words and commands.

So, what did IBM learn from this experiment? Here’s what I’ve heard: After being initially impressed by the “technology”, most of the people who said they would buy and use a speech-to-text machine changed their mind after using the system for a few hours. Even with fast and near perfect translation simulated by the human typist, using speech to enter more than a few lines of text into a computer had too many problems, among them: People’s throat would get sore by the end of the day, it created a noisy work environment, and it was not suitable for confidential material.Based on the results of this experiment, IBM continued to invest in speech-to-text technology but on a much smaller scale – they did not bet the company on it.

As it turned out, that was the right business decision. Keyboards are proving hard to beat for most text entry tasks. Thirty years ago most people could not type; but look at any office today and you’ll see people of all ages and professions typing away.  In devices where a full-size keyboard is not possible, such as mobile phones, speech-to-text can be the  right  it, but otherwise the keyboard is still the device to beat.

Euclid Elements - bricks and mortar sensors and tracking

Euclid provide a sensor that tracks customers around real world stores.

Phone call tracking

For call tracking Kevin at Corke-Wallis recommends AdInsight.com.

Unbounce.com

Use a template to create landing pages.
Optimise for higher conversion with simple A/B testing.

Testing which shop should come to a neighbourhood

-Put an electronic billboard in vacant shop window.
-Write rotating series of ads with different shop brands saying 'to register for opening offers [QR code/email]
-See which gets more responses, use that to pitch to shop that they should open (e.g. say to Tommy Hilfiger that they did very well and should open)

Experimentation & Testing

Useful post on different types of testing on the web.

Includes:
- A/B testing
- Multi-variate testing
- 'Experiential' testing (didn't really understand this)

http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2006/05/experimentation-and-testing-a-primer.html

Testing: give away cheapest products and boost sales of premium one

A software company found in testing that giving aware their cheapest product actually increased sales of their premium product.

Source: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2008/11/experiment-die-reasons-awesome-testing-ideas.html

Expedia - testing 'Vacations' and 'Packaging'

At Expedia back in the day, when packages launched, we tried a tab that said "Packages", one that said "Vacations" and one that said "Vacation Packages" - the latter increased BOOKINGs ~30%.

This if from a guy named Steven Brewer who some Googling shows used to be Software Design Engineer at Expedia, not sure when.

From a comment here: http://dustincurtis.com/you_should_follow_me_on_twitter.html (see other post)

Prototyping at Harrah's

Harrah's offered 2 groups of customer either:
- a $125 package, including a free room, 2 steak dinners, and $30 in chips
- $60 in chips

The $60 offer generated more gambling revenue than the $125 offer.