CONNECTRY
A Startup Accelerator for Hardware Tech Startups
Overview
In January of 2020, I worked with a small team to create the next startup accelerator. It focused on understanding the challenges around the increase in the failure rate of hardware tech based startups leading to a drastic decline in consumer trust in startups.
Timeline
January 2020 - March 2020
Tools
Design Thinking, User Research, Human-Centered Research, Ideation, Prototyping and Usability Testing.
Creative Brief
Challenge
Every year, 1.35 million hardware startups open world wide, out of which 97% fail or frizzle out without a large exit. Every startup failure creates a negative impact and deeply affects the purchasing decision of the consumers. Customer trust have reduced from 52% to 22% in the last 10 years, which leads to increased failure in hardware tech startups.
Solution
There is an opportunity to develop a unique framework for upcoming tech startups. By creating a shared platform for entrepreneurs and its users to connect at every stage and receive honest feedback required for a startup to grow and succeed.
Design Process
The process includes the six key steps to gain in-depth knowledge about the problem using quantitative and qualitative techniques, analysis and synthesis of gathered data and ideating and prototyping the concept by creating low-high fidelity wireframes and finally designing the solution.
Umbrella Question
How might we use design thinking to help hardware startups to build consumer trust for a sustainable business?
Secondary Research
Research started with mapping out all the stakeholders and categorize them to understand how they are each affected by the problem. It helped me narrow down the stakeholders and focus on the ones I needed to interview - Entrepreneurs, Customers and Influencers. To understand the market competition, I plotted existing startup accelerators on a 2 by 2 matrix to find the opportunity space.
Primary Research
Customer Interviews
The interviews were conducted with 8 consumers. The interviewees were narrowed down on the basis of their buying history of tech products and their interest towards startups by creating screener guides.
Entrepreneur Interviews
I conducted 4 interviews with entrepreneurs and 2with Startup Mentors and 2 with Youtube Influencers.
Analyze
With over 800 data points, the data was analyzed and synthesized using various tools like, affinity diagramming to create a design criteria chart and empathy maps to develop user personas. The customer journey map is created to create a visual tool for anyone to recognize the current experience and opportunity areas in each activity which later helps in the conceptualization stage.
Ideate
At this point everything is narrowed down into a few key ideas that will eventually lead to a final solution.This phase includes conducting sessions for brainstorming and sketching out the ideas. Using a creative matrix chart, a designed concepts for each Persona as per the 5 E’s - Entice, Enter, Engage, Exit and Extend. After narrowing to 4 main concepts, a workshop was conducted to gain detailed feedback on each concept and finalize on a final solution.
Business Innovation
It all began with an idea, and that idea was getting converted into a business model. To turn an innovation into a business, multiple processes were used, starting with ZAG 17-Steps Process, Business Model Canvas, SWOT Analysis, Brand Pyramid and ABCQ. These processes helped in the brand alignment and defining the value proposition of the brand.
Prototype & Test
In the prototyping stage I started with an Information Architecture to focus on organizing, structuring, and labeling content in an effective and sustainable way. A style guide was designed to provide guidelines for the way a brand should be presented from both graphic and language perspective. The goal was to help users find right information and be able to complete task with minimum number of steps. Using the Information Architecture, I developed Wireframes and later created the UI and UX of the software. To understand how easy and adaptable the design is, I conducted usability testing on a user which gave us valuable insights and helped us evaluate and improve the performance.
Introducing Connectry
Connectry is an innovation platform that creates a shared platform for selected startups and its users to come together and create a better and more innovative world. Connectry is a platform that creates a cohesive environment where innovators meet their actual users help build product that they actually want to use which will help them grow and succeed in this competitive world.
