From Discovery Research to MVP
Laserhub is a digital platform that simplifies the procurement of custom metal parts, connecting manufacturers with vendors for on-demand production. In order to provide the best service to its customers, Laserhub needs a reliable partnership with its producers. At the time of this research, Laserhub was facing substantial producer churn.
Client
LaserhubMy Role
UX Research & Product DesignPeriod
2023
Producers were frustrated — but why?
Our producers seemed frustrated, but we didn’t know exactly why — pricing was likely part of it, but we lacked specifics. As “The Mom Test” teaches, asking directly tends to produce misleading answers. So instead of asking about Laserhub itself, we asked about their relationships with other customers and the everyday challenges of their work.
Research goals
- Gain a deeper understanding of producers’ main pains in their daily work — independently from the Laserhub platform.
- Understand our producers’ relationships with their other customers: What makes a customer an A-customer?
Hypotheses
By understanding our producers’ main pains, we can use opportunities to reduce their efforts — and therefore their costs — and make it more attractive to work with Laserhub.
Knowing our producers’ A-customer criteria, we can strengthen the relationship, increase Laserhub’s wallet share with them and reduce producer churn.
Approach
I conducted seven remote interviews and visited four of our producers onsite, to gain a deep understanding of their daily work reality as well as their priorities when it comes to customer contact.
Remote interviews were recorded and analysed in Dovetail; onsite visits were documented with notes and pictures, where allowed.
Using the findings to build an MVP
Among several smaller opportunities, one stood out: raw material leftovers were a major pain point for producers, since material is their primary cost driver.
“I wish we could get orders that would let us use up our metal offcuts, which otherwise just sit rotting in our warehouse.”
This insight felt especially promising given a tension we were facing on the business side — producers were frustrated by the low prices we paid, driving churn, while we couldn’t raise prices without eroding our margin. Helping producers make better use of their material leftovers offered a way to address both sides of the problem at once.
The Design Sprint 2.0
Based on this, I organised a Design Sprint with five colleagues from different departments. Since especially those colleagues with a lot of customer contact had limited time, we used the slightly shortened Design Sprint 2.0 by AJ&Smart.
The sprint was built around three hypotheses:
Helping producers use their material leftovers would…
→ make producers more willing to accept our prices;
→ enable better prices for our customers;
→ support Laserhub’s broader goal of reducing carbon emissions.
Outcome
A high-fidelity prototype, aligned among all relevant stakeholders and validated with five real end-users through usability testing. The solution was implemented shortly after I left Laserhub.
