To collect all the data, Repair Café Foundation wanted to have a repair monitor developed: An online tool that allows repairers to easily and securely record their repair experiences. The data entered should be easy to sort and analyze so that conclusions can be drawn from it. Repair Café's main goal is to use this data to start making a change in the industry.
Collaboration
The Repair Café is committed to promoting the reparability of goods. To get government and manufacturers to do this, the foundation first needs to have the necessary statistical data. Repairs were kept locally on paper which makes insightful data impossible. They asked us as a partner because of our expertise in technology and innovation where we always put the end user first.
Repair Cafe
The Repair Café International Foundation is the driving force behind the worldwide successful Repair Café concept: repairing your own broken stuff together with handy neighbors. It's good for the environment and for mutual contacts in the neighborhood. Neighbors meet in a relaxed and surprising way, people with practical repair knowledge are appreciated, things are made usable longer and do not have to be thrown away. And raw materials, energy and money are saved and CO2 emissions are reduced.
Analysis Phase
The big question at this stage was: Who will be the real users? First we had to get a feel for the concept of Repair Cafe. In addition, the main user was not concrete for us, so we had to start visualizing this. We started by visiting some Repair Cafes, had a product repaired ourselves, and held several interviews with the coordinators (end users).
We used the information from the analysis phase to create personas. This helped tremendously in defining the frameworks of the assignment.
In this analysis phase, we also set the prerequisite for the monitor: the form should be fillable within 1 minute with a smartphone.
Technology selection and development
With these prerequisites in mind, we made the choice of a simple form, online and mobile first. We used Google's Material Design for development, a simple and lightweight framework that is very suitable for mobile use.
Based on our defined customer journey, we designed the form and then structured it with the customer and end user.
Testing/ implementation
We iterated by starting small. First we did a try-out, where three users of Repair Cafe International were allowed to test the monitor. Then we started a test group of 10 Repair Cafés that will test and use the monitor extensively until September. The resulting feedback will be used to improve the monitor so that after September a larger group can start using the monitor nationwide. The next step would be to explore the possibility of further cooperation at the international level.
Learnings
The collaboration with the customer is going very well. Because we are working with the tool, a lot becomes more concrete and they start thinking. More and more good ideas are coming up, so you have to be careful not to make it too big. It is up to us to keep it small and effective, after which we can continue to build at a later stage.