How Lyssna is helping the British Red Cross cut MVP delivery timelines from 1 year to 3 months

For over 150 years, the British Red Cross has provided much-needed support to millions in the UK and worldwide during times of crisis. Given this long and rich history, it’s no surprise that innovation is at the heart of their fundraising efforts. 

The Fundraising Innovation team at the British Red Cross constantly seeks new ways to generate income and support humanitarian efforts.

"We develop and test ambitious, insight-led fundraising opportunities that will best answer our supporters' needs. We then collaborate with teams across the fundraising directorate and they take on the products we develop successfully," shares Louis Patterson, Innovation Delivery Officer. 

Louis has the unique role of working on projects aimed at exploring and testing new product ideas. One tool that’s been helpful in his journey is Lyssna. 

He shares how his team uses user testing – from concept and desirability to comprehension testing – to efficiently and effectively gather valuable feedback from their target audience.

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Challenge

Louis and the Fundraising Innovation team are always on the lookout for new opportunities and coming up with fundraising ideas to reach new audiences and generate substantial income. But developing these concepts is no small feat. 

It requires a deep understanding of potential audiences, meticulous ideation, and rigorous testing to ensure that each product is viable and desirable. The team found traditional testing methods were time-consuming and often delayed the decision-making process. 

Louis shares an example of how the team used to test their minimum viable products (MVP): “We require at least a thousand respondents to test on a larger scale. Traditionally, we've looked at doing paid digital or having our street fundraisers show prototypes to people to gather their feedback.”

These methods can be quite costly in terms of time, resources and, of course, price. However, they found an easy fix using Lyssna.

“I was looking through Lyssna and I saw you could get up to one thousand responses, that’s a really quick way we can test something at MVP stage. It’s something we've never been able to do in such a short amount of time so I’m eager to use it for our next MVP testing cycle.”

Louis Patterson

Innovation Delivery Officer at British Red Cross

Solution

Louis explains how Lyssna integrates into their product development process to get real feedback about a new concept. “When we start developing a product or look into an opportunity area, we conduct thorough research, synthesize it, and identify the potential audience to get a better understanding. Then ideate different solutions.” 

“We use Lyssna at this point to learn about our audience's behaviors and understand what they prefer in terms of products or concepts. We also use it to get feedback on a specific product that we're looking to develop and take forward.”

One example that Louis shares is the "Air Miles for Refugees" initiative. This idea came from the department that works to reunite families separated by conflict or disaster. They wanted to explore the potential of using accrued air miles to support refugees in the UK. 

“The idea is that donated air miles would be used to fly family members from other countries to the UK to reunite with refugees. It's a really early stage idea,” adds Louis.

They wanted to understand how corporations and the public could donate air miles to facilitate these reunions. However, the complexity and novelty of this idea required thorough testing to ensure its feasibility and desirability among potential donors.

They did a four-day sprint. This included two days for workshops, a day to develop a Figma prototype, and another day to build a test. The prototype consisted of a landing page detailing the concept and how it worked.

Using Lyssna, they targeted their audience and gathered feedback on the product's appeal.

As Louis mentioned earlier, this is still in its early stages, but he adds that “we can see from the findings that people do understand the concept and the next steps are now to amend the prototype based on the feedback and test feasibility of developing the product from a technical point of view.”

Another popular test that the team uses Lyssna for is comprehension. 

"One of the main things we look for is comprehension of the products we build. After initial testing we then need to validate comprehension.If people don't understand it, then they're either not the right audience or the product isn't right," explains Louis.

“We create a design test. People read through it and then they get asked questions afterwards, and we just make sure that the questions aren't leading. The questions we typically ask are - If you had to describe this to a friend, how would you explain it? Or, in two sentences, what do you think you're looking at?”

Here's an example Louis shared on validating the comprehension of their ShopRed product.

“Sometimes people just don't understand it. And we need to rethink our approach, as we've not explained it right,” adds Louis.

These simple questions help gauge whether the audience truly understands the product, allowing the team to iterate.

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Results

Lyssna has become an essential part of the British Red Cross’s innovation and product development strategy. Here are some of the key benefits the team has experienced since using the platform. 

Accelerated testing 

Louis and the team have been able to significantly speed up their testing process, which was a main OKR for them. 

"This is another reason why we use Lyssna, because we can build a test, send it out the same day, and often get results back within a couple of hours.” 

Louis further explains that before adopting Lyssna, the team used to wait longer to test, aiming to perfect prototypes before sharing them. However, they've since realized the importance of getting early feedback, even on rough concepts. 

"We've had surveys where feedback from the Lyssna panel highlighted something we didn’t explain well in the prototype, which we could then quickly amend. It’s been incredibly useful for speeding up our processes."

Informed decision-making

In addition to concept and comprehension testing, Louis likes to run preference tests. This feature has provided him with fascinating feedback about which prototype designs resonate most with their audience. "I've used the preference test feature a couple of times, and it has delivered some really interesting results," he notes.

For example, "We ran a preference test on 8 products aimed at helping our supporters give to charity without adding to their sense of overwhelm or chaos.”

“Our findings showed the top two products were online shopping and gaming-related, which we're now developing further toward the MVP stage."

Cost-effectiveness

As a charity, budget constraints are always a concern. Lyssna provides the Red Cross team with a cost-effective solution, enabling thorough testing without straining resources. 

Louis adds, "Compared to some other testing platforms, Lyssna is a lot cheaper. As a charity, we don't have big budgets, so Lyssna has been incredibly useful for us."

Clear results analysis

Louis appreciates the straightforward nature of Lyssna's results analysis. He notes, "I've always been able to get what I need from the results. We're not conducting massive surveys; instead, we're looking for trends and directions.”

“Lyssna does a great job of showing us how respondents who answered 'yes' to the first question understand the product further down the line."