How to Develop Better Products for the COVID-19 Era – A 3 Step Process

COVID-19 has transformed the way businesses work, how consumers buy products or services, how supply chains operate, how people interact with each other and so on. When so much has fundamentally changed, it is only logical for small businesses such as Duress to innovate and build better products. The process that is being outlined here has 3 important steps which will help small businesses build better products for their customers. The 3 steps in the innovation process are:

1. Research
2. Prototype
3. Test & Improve

Crises like this pandemic always open new avenues and opportunities. Keeping an open mind and always looking out for new opportunities will immensely benefit small businesses to have a roaring business despite the economic downturns. Here is the story of how we solved our clients’ biggest problems during the pandemic using the 3 Step Process.

1.???Background and Research

As we work in the occupational safety sector, most of our clients have teams who visit peoples’ homes every day. Community organisations, delivery people, government workers, thousands and thousands of people travelling around Australia who help and support our community. The key issue that emerges here is that when they visit unknown people in unfamiliar locations, there is always a big question of the safety of the team. Our A1 graded operations centre operates 24/7 to monitor activations and call emergency services if required. The most common reasons our Operators need to request emergency services, in order, are:

1. Attacks by the person they were there to visit
2. Attacks by another person at the location, who was not the person they were to visit
3. Injury caused by safety issues at the property.

These incidents see team members getting locked inside the properties they were visiting, attacked with hammers or axes, knives, and very rarely, guns. There are also location-specific emergencies, such as electrical or environmental issues, dogs, and vehicles. Keeping teams safe in these wildly unpredictable locations is challenging. Most organisations have traditionally provided their teams with only a ‘panic button’. However, these buttons only cover limited scenarios. Safety is more than gadgets. Things like de-escalation and self-defence training, providing up-to-date safety information, all contribute to a safer work environment.

We are a technology company, so our solutions have always been grounded in using every feature available in a device to keep a user safe, and this has led to some incredible breakthroughs. These have had huge measurable results and incredible feedback not just from the organisations, but the team members themselves. We work tirelessly with our customers on overcoming the safety issues faced by their team, and the majority of features we develop are in direct response to an organisation saying, “This scenario happened, how can we prevent it?”. That brings us to the topic at hand, our innovation breakthrough of the “Check-In” feature.

1.1?The Check-In feature

?Check-In is a system that is used by nearly every public-facing organisation, and it asks users to state they have arrived at a location at a certain time. Another person then acknowledges this, therefore, if the person has been there too long, they can begin investigating if anything has gone wrong. Traditionally check-ins have been done via a phone call, or an SMS, e.g. “I have arrived at 63 Main St. The problem with the check-in is that it relies on the user actually checking in, another person acknowledging the check-in, the user remembering to check out, and the other person remembering to chase them up if they fail to check out within a given amount of time. We worked with local councils, state government departments and community orgs, as they all had the same issues:

• Users were too busy, forgot or couldn’t be bothered to check-in
• Even if users did, managers/supervisors were too busy to remember to check in on their staff.
• And if they did check-in, after how long should someone be notified that something may be wrong?

2.???Prototyping

?Check-in had to be easy, and it had to be quick. If we automated this process, it would be magic. So that is what we decided to do during the COVID-19 pandemic. During the lockdowns in 2020, the Duress team members were working remotely and therefore opened the possibility of testing out different variations of the algorithms. We needed historical data to build these algorithms.

We needed a database of “nominated locations”, i.e., locations that are frequently visited by teams across different organisations. But how do we secure the list to populate this database? For this, we let organisations upload a list of locations. However, we knew that this list would be outdated within weeks, and we needed something more real-time. To solve this, first, we synced with their work calendar to know beforehand what locations they would be visiting. Second, we gave them a button to check-in with a single tap. Our breakthrough came when our algorithms remembered all the locations and automatically created new “nominated locations” automatically in our database. The result was tens of thousands of check-in points, all updated in real-time, and all automatically keeping the teams safe.

Using all this data, our newest algorithm was able to execute automatic check-ins.?Therefore, if a user from an organisation visited any of these “nominated locations”, they were automatically checked in as soon as they reached the location. It also automatically set a safety timer. The next step was to add an auto check-out which would check them out as soon as they leave the location. So, we solved the issues of people checking in and checking out of a location automatically without touching a phone or a button or any gadget.

?3.???Testing & Improving

?To make our products even better, we incorporated another feature that would collect real-time safety data for each location. So, when a user leaves a location, they are asked on their lock screen, “How safe was the location?”. The user can respond with a thumbs up or thumbs down. In the case that they choose a thumbs down, they are asked what the issue is. Right from the lock screen, they can leave a message, for example, “avoid the carpark, lots of dogs”. This information is stored in the organisation’s dashboard to run reports. In addition, the next time any person from that organisation arrives at that location, not only are they automatically checked in, but they also receive the latest safety message from the team.

Hence, we created new features for our range of products that check-in a team member as soon as they arrive at a location, a safety timer is set and the safety update about the location is displayed on the location. All automatically. Magic.

Today, our clients are extremely satisfied with our new features, and we have received feedback on many occasions from them as well as the individuals themselves who use these products that these features have been extremely helpful during COVID-19 and continue to do so.

In conclusion, the key to building better products for your customers/clients is a simple three-step process.

1. Understand your customer/client’s needs, dig deeper and find out everything you can about the issue. Extensive research to pinpoint the issue is crucial to developing the right product.
2. Create a prototype of your new product and test.
3. Learn from the test results and keep improving the product until you get the best version of it.

About Duress:

Duress has specifically tailored products to provide the best workplace safety system. We have 3 product lines depending on your budget and needs. Visit the?Duress Homepage?for more info. Our products are used by Australia’s biggest supermarkets, governments of ACT, NSW, VIC, QLD and several non-profits. If you have any questions, please reach out to?[email protected]?or?[email protected].