When indy-bycicle company ‘VanMoof' began shipping their electric bikes to the USA a lot of the bikes were damaged upon arrival. Annoying for the user and a huge expense for the company. 

EXPERIMENTING TO REDUCE DAMAGE

VanMoof prides itself on doing everything in-house, except delivery. How to solve the shipping-issue? VanMoof experimented with new bike design, tougher boxes, better way of packaging, new shipping partner etc. Expensive adjustments and nothing really worked. 

OBSERVING IN REAL LIFE SITUATIONS

Until they observed that US handlers didn’t seem to realize an electric bike can’t be tosses around and needed a flat-screen TV like treatment, which happened to use similar packaging.  The team quickly realised that the problem was not with what's in the box.

THE RIGHT LEVEL OF INTERVENTION

So they put an image of a flatscreen on every box. They assumed handlers would be triggered to care a little more about the package. And they were right. The small tweak had a big impact. Overnight the shipping damages dropped by 70-80%.

Ask yourself;

• Describe your product or service in different layers). Often each layer has it’s own pace of change.

• Describe your challenge from a human perspective, like the Vanmoof shipping handlers. What goes wrong?

• What intervention might you do, to nudge the behavior or process in the right direction?