Hero App
We are all heroes
Easy access to knowledge
Hero is a multi-platform solution on where students can rent textbooks for defined periods of time.
The challenge
As a student with a limited budget, and as the startup co-founder, I had to identify the pain points and challenges on how to provide a high cost necessity to a user with a limited budget.
Research
This challenge was particularly difficult, because it was a problem that I myself, as a student with limited budget, had to face. Since this was a problem that I encountered all throughout university, I had to ensure that my personal bias did not impact the development of this project as I went through the rigor of investigating, learning and finding a solution for this problem. The team ran quantitative research among our fellow students to understand their needs, learn how they currently deal with the situation and establish their expectations for this type of solution. This was helpful in identifying the patterns in their current habits that helped guide us to find the most viable solution for this.
7 out of 10 students don't buy textbooks.
“Buying an expensive book just for one semester is a bad investment.”
“The only alternative is to download a PDF version online.”
The product
Our product is a mobile and desktop platform for renting academic literature in a digital format, for a defined period of time.
Along with the renting model, the platform serves also a an educational companion tool for students, offering different features and services that can help them study in a more focused, efficient and interactive way.
Some of the features included in Hero are:
Artefacts
Having all the necessary data and insights from customers and partners, we started sketching the first iterations of the product and defining the features roadmap. The first step was to set up an onboarding process, that is responsive and welcoming.
“Excellence, is not an act, but a habit.” Aristotle
It’s all about getting user to come back to the product again and again, until it becomes an integral part of their education career.
Scalable model
Hero’s vision is to provide easy and affordable access to knowledge for students. To achieve this goal we had to get a more in-depth knowledge on the publishing industry, on how do they work, and try to find a fit for our solution in that industry and find ways to collaborate with them to solve this problem.
Having a well defined and scalable product and business model, made it easy to secure partnerships and funding from the industry, because they realised that instead of cannibalising their industry, Hero may represent a new source of income.
* Business model, processes, design artefacts and data can be shown upon request.