Guldn

A tale of insight and innovation

Client
Innovation-track at de Volksbank

Role
Validation by experimentation, Growth Hacking, User Research, Visual design, Prototyping & Testing

Project time
may 2019, 3 weeks

In the quest for innovation and with a mission to enhance financial resilience, the saga of Guldn began. We were a three person team, unfettered by rigid roles, delving into the realm of unverified assumptions and untapped data. Our objective? To forge a concept robust enough to convince the innovation board to allocate the necessary funding.

A Three-Week Sprint

With a blend of audacity and a dash of fortune, we hit the bullseye within a mere three weeks. A conversion rate of 12% stood as testimony to the strength of our process. We navigated through Design Thinking and Lean Startup methodologies, striking a balance between empathy for the problem and efficient validation of our solutions.

The Dawn of Understanding

Our journey commenced with desk research, immersing ourselves in the Volksbank’s already rich repository of knowledge on financial resilience. Armed with these insights and our expertise, we started out with some assumptions and hit the streets, seeking the people’s voice. The interviews showed us our initial assumptions as invalidated. People were not living paycheck to paycheck nearly as much as we thought they would. But the interviews did illuminated a real stumbling block as well: medium to long-term financial planning.

Defining the Direction

These newfound insights steered us toward a path not only evidenced but also naturally fitting with the Volksbank. A digital tool for financial planning emerged as the clear next step, given the sparse competition in the Dutch market and the potential to scale.

The Power of Ideas

In the ideation phase, concepts sprang from our collective wisdom in innovation, strategic management, and design. After several brainstorming sessions, we had two promising candidates to further explore.

Prototyping and Testing

I transformed the concepts into tangible mock-ups, presenting them to key stakeholders and potential users. After three quick successive iterations, we had a concept with significant validation, ready to address the issue faced by our target audience. For these iterations we took the prototype into the streets and leveraged facebook and instagram campaigns with a mock-up landing pages.

Results and Learnings

Te last landing page prototype coupled with a Facebook ad campaign yielded an impressive 12% conversion—a rarity in this domain. Yet, as it happens with innovation, the strategic direction of the organization shifted, and our concept, despite its potential, was shelved.

Takeaways:

Agility and Validation: Speed combined with thorough validation can lead to extraordinary outcomes in a short time.
Role Flexibility: A small team without fixed roles can focus on synergy and creativity.
Strategic Adaptability: Even the most promising of concepts can succumb to shifting organizational priorities.