The next phase within the side hustle in Leadership and Innovation is the validation phase.
Purpose
The purpose of gaining feedback and validation on any idea is to determine whether the inputs will result in the desired outputs. Our goal is to sell our travel.active products for teenagers and young people on the go. To ensure that we are targeting the right people and whether they are actually interested in our product, gaining information on their views of our product will be beyond valuable. Once provided with our target audiences feedback, we will be able to determine whether it is worth putting our time and energy into an idea if it has little chance of success with our customers.
Preparation
We were provided the opportunity to get feedback from students within our school. To be able to gain product validation and feedback, we must have something on display to show our potential product. I decided to showcase our first sewn prototype, a small powerpoint presentation including design patterns and a forms to collect information. The powerpoint on display is attached below.
We came up with this list of questions below, depending on how Question 5 was answered changes which one of the following three questions are provided to answer.
We decided to ask for peoples names and Year group to be able to formulate a mailing list for the future to provide first choice to the people that helped our side hustle grow. The other questions were asked to provide an insight into what people genuinely thought about our product. The final part to gaining feedback was to provide an incentive for people to complete our forms. Knowing our target audience, they probably wouldn’t use their time to do something if they see no immediate benefit. This is why we chose to provide free mentos to any participants who filled out the forms. I also printed out a poster as shown below to have on display as well. Since we were going to aim to get feedback in the public space of school during lunchtime, having multiple items on display on a table would hopefully grab peoples attention to check out our stall.
Event
Once setting up the stall prior to lunchtime, we were ready to get feedback. It was slightly windy so no posters could be displayed. Apart from this, the presentation displayed on an ipad, forms to fill out on a computer, prototype display and bowl of mentos was all that was needed for success. It was a busy time period throughout lunch with lots of people willing to provide feedback on our product.
Results
The results we received from the forms were highly valuable. A couple snippets showing this is below.
The overall results were very positive with 31 responses. We received a 4.06 average star rating and 22 certain people who would purchase this product. Most people would pay between $10 – $15. We found this feedback useful in determining whether we carry on with our idea for our product, knowing that we have several potential customers out there. From here, the production phase can proceed which will be discussed within the next post.