Validate, validate
Just a tad faster
About two years ago we set out on an experiment to build a new kind of lost & found solution for the day-to-day.
Something that would go against the grain and would do without the need for smart tech and expensive hardware. Something that would challenge the approach taken by the largest company in the space— Tile.
We wanted to create something that would work just as well if not better and would follow our product philosophy of simple, user-centric, well-researched design.
Fast forward to the present day and we have pretty much got there.
And then, as of the past few weeks, so did they.
Tile, the company we set out to challenge, just released a very similar product, uncannily so.
This is the story of how we went about developing and validating our concept, how Tile has caught up to us and what comes next.
Who we are
We are Pebble Design, a strategic design & product studio from Sydney Australia. We work with companies to explore new concepts (products/services/ventures) or improve and innovate upon existing ones.
We weren’t lost & found enthusiasts, we didn’t have a dream to fix this space once and for all. We simply had the need, had a concept we wanted to explore and were in the mood for trying new things.
And product aside, we also wanted the opportunity to further test and develop our design and research approach.
And with that, we took on the lost & found mantel.
Going against the grain
The grain
‘The grain’ we were trying to challenge was the use of smart hardware such as Bluetooth trackers in solving the lost & found equation.
The key aspects we wanted to challenge:
- They were expensive— about $25 a pop or more.
- They were chunky— small as they may be, there was a heap of things you couldn’t put them on.
- They didn’t actually solve the real problem — Bluetooth trackers were great at finding things you lost around the house, but they were close to useless when it came to finding things that you lost ‘out-in-the-wild’. Lose something on a bus/at a cafe/on the beach and you could kiss your sweet item goodbye.
- Finally, we didn’t like the philosophy behind the product— smart trackers are based on the assumption that you are an individual in the world, who cannot trust others and must look after yourself. Hence if you wanted to protect your things, you should get some expensive hardware for them, and when you did lose something you better find it quick, before somebody else does.
Against the grain
First, we required a philosophy shift.
We built our philosophy around the following two premises:
- Most things that are lost in the wild are eventually found by someone.
- That person is likely to be a kind stranger who would love to help you get your — AirPods/sunglasses/water bottle back. They simply have no way of finding you.
Next, we required a user shift.
While most of the existing products in the market focused on the item owner, as the person to design for, we wanted to focus on the item finder, just as much.
We believed that finders would go out of their way to return an item, if only we gave them a way to do so; and if we made it easy, then even more so.
Finally, we followed some useful product principles.
At Pebble, we have a few key principles for product design.
Core amongst them is that big problems could be brought down by well-polished, simple solutions.
Another amongst them is the perspective that ‘if you want a new idea, open an old book’ (coined by Ivan Pavlov).
Accordingly, we cast our brains back to our school days when labels were used by our parents to make sure that at least some of our items would come back home safe.
Tacky and embarrassing as they may have been, those labels were effective and could perhaps be brought back in a new way.
A concept emerges
The concept:
With a new underpinning philosophy, a shift in user focus and some guiding product principles, a concept emerged: Lost & found stickers for the modern world. A simple, lo-tech, well-designed sticker that would connect item owners and item finders.
How it would work:
- The stickers— will be small, simple, well-designed and hardy.
- On them— they would have either a QR code or a link.
- The link— would direct the item finder to a page where they could provide their contact details (instead of sharing the owner’s contact details).
- These details— would be sent to the owner by both text and email (no fancy app required).
- The owner— would be able to then get in touch with the item finder and retrieve their lost things in no time.
We called the concept Accio— from the Catalan word meaning action— i.e. giving the item finder an action they could take, something that is usually unavailable to them; not to mention an obvious wink at the Harry Potter lost & found spell.
Its advantages over existing products:
While simple and lo-tech, the concept had a few key advantages over its hi-tech alternatives.
- The size — small, thin and coming in multiple shapes it could fit on almost everything.
- The cost— very cheap. Allowing you to protect all your precious things at about the same cost (or less) of one Bluetooth tracker.
- Actually designed for the problem at hand— that is, great at finding things that were lost in the wild.
Validate, validate, validate
The approach
At Pebble, we believe in a process of constant testing, discovery and iteration. Take a concept, flesh it out, put it to a test, discover unexpected things in the process, iterate accordingly and then rinse, repeat.
When applying this process, we follow the mantra of guide & kill— Kill bad concepts early and guide good concepts toward their best selves.
With a clear concept at hand and a process to follow, we were ready to start.
The Assumptions
Every concept could be broken into assumptions, such that could then be tested through various means.
In our case, we had 4 key assumptions— one that was already well supported and 3 that required testing.
Assumption 1— ‘the need exists, at scale’.
Like almost every concept, our first assumption was that— ‘the need exists at all’. You’d be surprised how often this assumption goes unarticulated and untested by product teams.
In our case, this assumption was already quite well supported. We knew that the need—finding items that are lost in the wild— existed since, after all, we ourselves encountered it pretty often.
That the need existed— ‘at scale’— we thought was also quite well established, after all, Tile has created a whole empire around this assumption, despite not being very good at actually solving for it.
This assumption would later be further validated with the release of AirTags, showing that even the mighty Apple believed there was a market worth pursuing out there.
Assumption 2— ‘People would return found objects.
With the need established we moved to solution territory.
Here laid another crucial assumption— ‘that people would actually return found items.
If they didn’t, then this whole solution angle would be in vain.
Testing this assumption ended up being one of the funnest things we have done as designers.
First, we made a working prototype— sticker, QR/link, automated texts and all. We placed these stickers on 100+ items— AirPods, old phones, wallets, sunglasses and such — scattered them all across Sydney and then waited to see what happened.
Fast forward some time later and the numbers appeared to be in support. People turned out to be much better than we expected, with about 75% of the items returned.
Even more excitingly, each of these returns came with fascinating stories. People driving on scooters in the rain to return what they found, people leaving items at their home mailboxes or inviting us to meet them at work. In short, our faith and hope in people went through the roof.
Interestingly though, it didn’t quite start that way. At the beginning, the return rate was a mere trickle— about 25%. It made us question what we were doing, big time. But with every item returned came a user interview, and with every interview came some insight that helped us further improve the product and the approach.
When we got the return rate to the realm of about 75% we knew we could move on to assumption #3.
Assumption 3— ‘people would put our stickers on their things’.
Knowing that a solution works is different to having people use it. Would people put our still scruffy stickers, on their precious, beautifully-designed items?
If they wouldn’t, then the solution though it worked, may not actually be used.
To test this we first went about identifying the kind of user persona we were targeting. Giving it to the wrong group and finding that they wouldn’t use it would be as meaningless as not trying it at all.
We selected two personas— ‘the avid item loser’ and the ‘responsible planner’.
We then went about our network, identifying people who we thought fit the category. We gave them some stickers to try and again, sat back and waited for the results.
A few weeks later we checked to see who ended up using them and a few more months later checked again to see who still had them on.
We chatted with both those who used the stickers and those who didn’t and learnt a lot of things that helped us further refine both our target user and the product.
When we got to the point where almost every person we gave the stickers to was putting them on, we knew that we were ready for our 4th and final assumption.
Assumption 4— ‘people would pay for this’.
There is a big difference between people using a product you gave them for free and paying to use a product of their own volition.
To test this, yet another experiment.
We went out, crafted a landing page and allowed people to purchase our stickers online.
We then put it out on social media and waited to see what would happen.
The results were both very good and very bad.
The good—within days, our posts went boom. Hundreds and then thousands of people were reacting to it. Some were liking it, others were commenting on it or tagging their friends. It seemed like we nailed it.
The bad— we didn’t. After what was the most positive reaction we ever had to a concept, our net sales were a perfectly round— 0.
At the start we thought something in our selling mechanism was broken. But after reaching out to some of the people who reacted to the product and conducting some quick user interviews, we found out the problem was the usual suspect— the product itself, or an aspect of it, in this case, the business model.
You see, we put the product out there as a subscription service at a price of $49/year. While our experiment further validated the interest in our product, it also completely invalidated our chosen business model and price point.
Luckily, in this field, even bad news is good news. We quickly iterated based on what we learnt— we changed the business model, turning it into a one-and-done model and lowered the price point. And then, as though by magic, we watched as the sales began to come in.
We were ready for the next step.
Life post assumptions
Deliver on our promise and learn along the way
Celebrating our assumption validation was short-lived. We now had a whole bunch of customers on our hands waiting for the stickers that they have paid real money for.
We decided to shift our focus from selling to satisfying the orders we had and then learning more from the customers we collected.
We also discovered that making something on even a small scale, was much harder than it seems. Supply chains were disrupted, our simple tech kept breaking, customers were complaining— we had a lot to do and learn.
We spent the next little while slowly working on this, polishing, iterating, tweaking, improving, and keeping the dream afloat.
One final question to answer
After about 2 years of tinkering we knew four things to be true:
- We knew that the need was there.
- We knew that our solution worked.
- We knew that people liked it, a lot.
- And we knew that they would be very happy to pay for it.
But we had one final question to ponder and eventually answer —
Was this concept going to be worthwhile pursuing seriously? Was it big enough and interesting enough for us to chase as a business?
For 2 years his whole endeavour was sitting in ‘side-project territory’. We built an MVP, got customers and gave it occasional love.
Pursuing it seriously though would require a lot more time, money and effort— a rebuild, a team, proper marketing efforts and such.
The time has long been approaching for us to answer this question.
Unbeknownst to us though, someone else was about to answer it for us.
Beating us to the punch.
The punch
As we took our sweet time pondering the question, someone else answered it for us. A few weeks ago, Tile, the company we set out to challenge, released a new product to market and boy did the media love it.
‘Lost & Found stickers that help people reunite with their lost things’, ‘QR codes and simple design as opposed to smart tech’, ‘trusting the kindness of strangers.
It was all a bit too familiar.
The first punch was seeing a product that was very similar to us in market— the product, the copy, the approach.
The second punch was seeing how well people/the media were reacting to it— hailing it for going against the grain.
Whether by copycatting or by convergent evolution, Tile arrived at a very similar solution to us and gained all the deserved buzz for it.
Back to the question at hand
Punches aside, let’s recall the question at hand— ‘is this a worthwhile business to chase?’.
Tile releasing this product to market seemed to indicate that it may very well be and the buzz around it seemed to indicate further validation.
They beat us to the punch and it hurt, but they helped us answer our long-pondered question. With that, we now had a new question to answer, what were we going to do next?
What’s next
Love it or hate it, one of the world’s largest lost & found companies had released something very similar to our product. For us that seemed to mean one of two things.
Option 1 — let’s do better next time.
One way of looking at it is bittersweet.
Tile’s move seems to have indicated that we were very much on the right track and that this concept and business model indeed had a place in the world.
But with Tile after it and soon, an army of copycats, we may have missed the boat. We could simply call it off now and apply the same approach to a new idea, albeit a tad faster.
Option 2 — the validation we needed
Another way of thinking about it is that this is exactly what we needed.
If Tile is after the concept then the market opportunity is likely there and with a product already in market, a small passionate community behind us and a heap of learning and insight from the past few years, we are well-placed to go after the opportunity.
What do you think?
We put this question to a few people we respect and the reaction was interesting— not quite option 1 or 2.
We were recommended to ignore Tile for a moment and just consider the concept and the business, in and of itself.
Do we believe in this as a business?
and are we excited to go after it?
If we were, then we should go with option 2 and take Tile’s move as a very useful validation.
If we were not, then we should go with option 1— give ourselves a tap on the back and hop on to the next thing.
Honestly, we haven’t quite decided yet.
But we will likely have to decide soon.
What do you think? Let us know in the comments.
Oh and if you want to check out the product, you can see it all at — www.accio.co
And that’s a wrap.
Yours,
The Accio team— aka Pebble Design.
