PIGEON POST - LEAN STARTUP
A gifting service that is dedicated to helping introverts reconnect and maintain their relationship through tangible and pressure-free interaction in the post-pandemic era
Validated Persona
We used the insights and the patterns found to develop a persona that matches our target audience archetype. To give a short description of her, Lily is a young adult who has the habit of reaching out to her friends to form a intimate bond with them. Due to the pandemic and changes in life, she could no longer achieve that. This persona helped us empathize with our target audiences and gave us directions when making design decisions.
Market Sizing
So where are we see ourselves in the market? Our total addressable market is The US Gift Shop & Card industry’s revenue which is $18 billion according to IBIS World
For our serviceable available market, we take a look at one of our direct competitors Touchnote- a mobile application that sends e-greeting cards. More about them in our competitor analysis but we know that their estimated annual revenue currently is $9.6 million per year.
In the next year, we assumed our serviceable obtainable market to reach 0.5% of the serviceable available market which makes $48,000 per year. With each postcard being $7, we expected to have roughly 7000 orders per year or 600 orders a month
.png)
Complete Molecule
We refined our molecule and added the solution molecule based on the information we have. We want to tackle the problem of not being able to reach out to friends in a tangible way during the pandemic. Moreover, we want our users to keep the intimate relationships they had with their old friends, bringing real human touch and authenticity into play.
Developing a viable startup project through validating customer segments, locating market fit, and establishing a comprehensive business structure.
Lean startup, collaboration, user research, group interviewing, market sizing, MVP development, comparative research, business structure development, pitching.
Interviewer, survey distributor, feedback evaluator, MVP developer/distributor.
12 weeks, Fall 2021
CHALLENGE
SKILLS
ROLE
TIMELINE
Pigeon Post Pitch/Introduction
Competitive Research
Our competitors range from traditional USPS services to apps that build close relationships, such as Instagram. In our competitive landscape, we developed two sets of metrics to understand our potential competitors: tangible versus intangible communication and pressure-free relationship management versus general relationship management.
Our product aims to create tangible and pressure-free social interactions. Three competitors in the same quadrant as our product caught our attention. However, none of our competitors focus on providing a precious and heart-warming experience as Pigeon Post does.
PIGEON POST
Competitive Landscape
The Common Circle
Our team, "The Common Circle," consists of three members, all of whom came with the background of studying UX design, each taking on different roles and responsibilities. For my role, since I have experience conducting and synthesizing interviews, my roles in the early stages are interviewer and interview evaluator, the evaluation is crucial when it comes to customer validation. In addition, in the later stages, my roles transferred to technology specialist and MVP developer and distributor.
Touchnote provides postcard delivery service, but users complain about not being able to pay for one-time service, and tracking the status.
Uncommon Goods provides a wide range of gift options, but the high average cost of each gift does not bring a pressure-free experience.
Happy box, with each box costing at least $50, making it inaccessible for people with less budget.
Explainer Video
We established a set of unfair advantages based on the findings we learned from the competitive research. Next, we embedded these unfair advantages into our product concept and made a demo video. This explainer video will serve two purposes later on:
1. We can use our concept video as a guideline and develop our product features around it.
2. We can use it as a video MVP that helps us validate whether our concept is appealing to our target audience and potential investors
Value Proposition
So how does Pigeon Post differ from its competitors? Our product wants to differentiate in these four features...
Team Introduction & Roles
Market Research
Solution
Business Structure
Sign-up MVP
We conducted minimum viable product experiments with eight testers in total. Our sign-up MVP is an acquisition MVP that we have not launched yet, and we used it to test product concepts. Testers said we have a welcoming branding. But they wish to see more service details.
.png)
“It has an interesting idea and name. It is a service that helps me send a voice memo postcard but I wonder how does it help me send it? Maybe I can send a gift along with it?”
“It is clean. I can tell the brand name. I think the branding looks apparent and clear. I know it is about mailing and connecting with friends.”
Events Reminder
Users can set a reminder to remind themselves of important dates. When the date comes, Pigeon Post will notify users, so they will remember to celebrate the events with their loved ones.
Business Model
As a distributor of personalized services, we work as a B2C intermediary service that allow user to create tangible and intangible social interactions to maintain important relationships.
Reflection
What I Learned
As an interaction designer, conducting user research and obtaining their insights are our daily practice. However, the Creative Founder class pushed us outside of our comfort zone and allowed us to have a taste of what is it like to step into the business world. In order to understand whether our business plan was viable, we needed to construct our lean canvas, a canvas that consisted of many business jargons and numbers. We were really struggling on that but after extensive secondary research and competitive analysis, we were able to create a business model that seemed really viable. I was really proud of that particularly.
As a designer, I now will try to develop a way to encourage my future user research participants to give me straightforward feedback because the creative founder class taught me the power of constructive criticism especially how efficiently such feedback can help me fix the deficiency within my design. On the other hand, I would also want to cultivate the habit of having a business mindset when I am designing. By doing this, I can make sure my design can go further and help more people.
Let's work on something exciting together!
Anh Troung
Finance
Marketing
Operations
Bruce Hsiao
Technology
Operations
Distribution
Shuyun Chen
Messaging
Investor Relations
Brand & Sales
Kick-off & Ideation
Problem & Opportunity
We used the Molecules Structure to generate our first set of product ideas. The molecule includes our provisional target audience and an existing question we are trying to solve. We were able to locate a molecule that all of us were interested in, helping introverted people (people) maintain and rebuild their intimate relationships in the post-pandemic world (problem). The reason behind this was that based on our own experience, we assumed that just like extroverts, introverted people also need to build intimate relationships within their social circle, but due to the pandemic situation, people are facing more difficulties reaching out and actively maintaining their relationship with others.
At this stage, we had not done the research to validate whether our provisional target audience has such a problem. Thus in the next step, we will conduct user research and develop an initial outline for our solution.
User Research
Recruiting
In order to validate the assumption we made regarding the people and people molecules, we went out of the building and conducted user research. First, we sent out a survey on multiple social media to recruit potential interviewees. our ideal interviewees should consider themselves introverted people and had to have a hardship connecting with their friends during the pandemic. We gathered 36 responses in total and many of them fitted our ideal interviewee archetype.
.png)
TAM/SAM/SOM
Choose & Send a Gift
With Pigeon Post and its diverse e-commerce collaborators, users can choose from a wide range of gift options and send them using our low-cost shipping service.
Personalized Postcard
Users can embed their voice memo or a video recording into a QR code on the Pigeon Post postcard to bring a real human touch. The authenticity and the heart-warming experience are what we aim to create.
Tracking / Delivery Status
With Pigeon Post, users can track the delivery status of their packages to make sending postcards and gifts an enjoyable and pressure-free experience.
Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
Sign-up MVP
-
A digital waypoint that allows users to sign up for our service
-
Reach out to users who subscribe through the landing page
Video MVP
-
An explainer video that shows how our service work
-
Demonstrate our unique service in real-life scenarios
Video MVP
After watching the explainer video, all of our participants showed a great interest in our service, and they seemed like they could understand almost all the details regarding our service. One of the testers commented on the video and said it was engaging and easy to understand, and our service was human-centric.
“I think it is a good idea cuz I don’t always go to the postal office, and that’s a thing that stops me from sending letters to my friends.
I prefer handwritten messages over voice postcards mainly because I’ve never tried them before.”
“I love it! I can use this app to send gifts or mails to isolated friends and reconnect with them. The QR code voice message on the postcard is human-centric. I wonder, can I also send a video?”
Concierge MVP
We selected two testers to try out our service. We chose to test one of our service features, the voice memo postcard feature, by providing a personalized pigeon post service to our testers. The standard process goes from designing the actual voice postcards, delivering them, and the feedback is that they want to see the product's aesthetics reflect our brand’s value propositions.
Cost Structure
As a starting business, we assume 100 customers in the first month, which gives us about $1200 revenue stream per month, with a monthly cost of about $7000. We estimate our net burn rate is approximately $6000 per month for the first three months.
Lean Canvas
We developed our lean canvas after we worked out our cost structure. It offers a visual chart with elements describing a firm's or product's value proposition, infrastructure, customers, and finances, assisting businesses to align their activities by illustrating potential trade-offs.
Acquisition
For the next step, we want to actively post our ads on TikTok and Instagram. We aim to get users to visit our landing page. Once they sign up for our service reminder, we will create event reminders and send them notifications weeks ahead so users can browse different collections and choose their favorite service. To grow viral speed, we will reward users who post photos on their social media and send referrals to their friends.
Next Step
The Molecule (People/Problem)
Validated User Persona
Initial Interviews
Our next step was to interview the 22 people who agreed to participate in our online interviews. We were trying to understand their experience with maintaining relationships during the pandemic. Then using the patterns and signals we gathered from the interview findings, we were able to refine our molecule and construct our solution molecule.
.png)
Insights Synthesis
Using the interview findings, we were able to locate the following patterns and signals:
1. Introverted people have a hard time reaching out to their friends during the pandemic, but they do not feel lonely and isolated;
2. Introverted people do not know how to maintain their relationships during besides using social media;
3. The low intimacy feedback the social media can bring to the users the does not usually satisfy them, this satisfaction can be the factor that stops users from actively reaching out to their friends;
4. The lack of tangible feelings often makes the process of connecting mundane.
The Molecule
Explainer Video