Inspiring desirability at Atlantic Labs Startups

Inspiring desirability at Atlantic Labs Startups

Knook, G.

Kleinsmann, M.S. (mentor)
De Lille, C.S.H. (mentor)
Skribanowitz, P. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Product Innovation Management

Master of Science Strategic Product Design

2014-11-21

This thesis considers three startups at Atlantic Labs (a Berlin based venture capital firm) that are each bringing an innovation to the market. Mimi aims to make the hearing aid market more accessible by bringing hearing technology to your smartphone, Medigo wants to globalize the healthcare market by providing you with the opportunity to book your abroad treatment online, and Vimcar strives to democratise the second-hand car market by introducing a quality seal for used cars. Atlantic Labs believes in user-centered products and the startups were eager to explore how design could work together with the lean startup (Ries, 2011) methodology to foster successfull innovations. To that effect an exploratory project was undertaken, in which the context of the three startups was explored first in order to understand their way of working. Simultaneously solutions in the form of interventions were iteratively tested during this process. This thesis describes the analysis of a year worth of innovation by the startups as well as an exploration of the application of design in this context. It was found that the evaluation of their companies is of critical importance to the startups, especially at an early stage. The main priority the startups have is therefore to increase their investment readiness level (Blank, 2014). Design can facilitate in achieving higher levels of investment readiness both quicker and more proficiently by facilitating the harmonising of desirability, feasibility and viability. Design is used to this end in two ways: (1) In the application of the user-centered process and (2) by taking cues from design as an approach. In this thesis a guide is suggested which Atlantic Labs can provide their startups. The lean design guide explicitly tackles the application of a user-centered process for the startups; which tools/methods are relevant for the startups and when they can best apply them to proficiently achieve higher levels of investment readiness. The guide consists of six workshops, nine core tools and 39 additional tools. The workshops have been specifically developed for the startups and help them apply the core tools. They are divided into two sets, working towards problem/solution-fit (level 3) and product/market-fit (level 5) respectively: * Set 1 (towards problem/solution-fit) * Business model canvas workshop * Interview workshop * Storyboard workshop * Set 2 (towards product/market-fit) * Ideate workshop * Prototype workshop * User test workshop By facilitating the workshops Atlantic Labs has the opportunity to inspire the implementation of a process which allows the startups to develop a product that harmonizes desirability, feasibility and viability. Using the experience from these workshops, and leveraging the online component of the guide the startup can successfully implement design as an approach; increasing the likelihood of successful innovation.

user-centered design
lean startups
innovation process

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:00aab9a3-df8c-4c60-908c-16ba16d8f99e

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Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2014 Knook, G.