The first thing we did as a team was to create
our team culture. We wanted everyone to get
the most out of the project and also to eliminate
any unnecessary friction. We had in our previous
teams seen the importance of a good culture
and how it makes or breaks a crew.
To create the team culture, we used the
team canvas tool (The Team Canvas, 2015).
The first part of the process was a silent brain-
storm to see how we valued different subjects
such as goals, skills, values and activities. We
then talked about why we wanted certain
things out of the team and explained the
importance of it. We also debated what the
purpose of the team should be, and we arrived,
in consensus, that it would be “Learn to enable
change”. We wanted to challenge ourselves to
think differently and shift our perception of
what business transformation could be. The
canvas also showed that we wanted a fun and
open minded environment so everyone could
work in harmony and feel like they were being
heard. We also didn’t make a schedule, just a
draft with some dates on it.
After our first week as a team, we had a few
issues with the culture: we were not communi-
cating effectively with one another. Some mem-
bers expected others to be more proactive,
while others expected to get clear directions
of what to do next. We reflected about it and
added communication to the team canvas. We
also realised that not all expectations had been
addressed during the first round when we built
the culture, and that resulted in some unex-
pected friction for the team. Furthermore, we
had a schedule structure that did not work
and, in order to solve this, we made a stricter
one, with clear deadlines and steps to support
our creative process.
This was a good reflection on how a team
member can be open, while not truly express-
ing in depth the importance behind tools and
values to them. It’s important to be clear and
precise about why something is important to
you and how that impacts the way you work.
Despite that, we still had pendencies after a
week and needed to have a facilitated meeting
as a team to get to the bottom of the problem:
why was our team not working as effectively
and happily as we knew it could? The facilitat-
ed meeting made us realise that as a team we
needed to have reflections everyday. These
should be about what we had done on that
specific day and address any issues or feel-
ings, in order to eliminate any friction that had
occurred and to enable everyone to end the day
on the same page.
After this team development session, we were
anew. It seemed that everyone had understood
each other and was willing to cooperate and
care for the team.
Team Culture

Our client for this module was Very Exclusive,
a sister company to Very and under the Shop
Direct umbrella. They deliver midrange luxury
brands to customers through their own web-
site. Currently, they only have a womenswear
site and their main audience is composed by
women aged 24-45 that want to own designer
brands and care about how they look. The site’s
most popular item is luxury brand bags.
The brief asked us how to create a profitable
menswear site and to tackle the question “How
can Very Exclusive market & retail a premium
menswear range without disrupting its current
womenswear success?” They presented us
their own data which showed that women
tend to buy more menswear than men them-
selves. This directed Very Exclusive’s focus of
the brief: they wanted us to create a product
that targeted women while selling menswear.
This created a few questions for the team
at the beginning and we wanted to see if the
client’s assumptions were true.
The Client & the Brief

Double diamond
The framework of the double diamond helped
us stay on track and plan our work. It predicts
divergent and then convergent behaviour.
The phases went from discovering, ideate,
defining the product, prototyping, testing and
refining it with people. It also made us choose
tools, while making the decisions in a coherent
fashion.
Research sprints
Instead of doing a lot of research in one go,
we decided on doing shorter sprints of two
hours, then talk about what we had found
in order to get more insights. This method
worked for us because we did not lose focus
and got to share findings.
Five Whys
A tool for digging deep and finding the root
of the problem. It is very helpful to see hidden
things you would not realize otherwise.
How might we?
A method of finding one core issue, a question
the group wants to solve and a problem that
the customer faces.
Funnel of focus
We used to Funnel of Focus in complement
with the How might we? questions. It was
helpful when selecting the one we wanted
to invest in. It points whether a question is
too wide (high up in the funnel) or if it is too
narrow (too low in the funnel). It’s all about
visualising the question in another way and
in comparison with the other how might we
questions.
Brainstorm
An essential tool for our team, we used it to
get ideas on the table. To get the most out
of the session, we did various types of brain-
storming.
Prototyping & Testing
We prototyped and tested our ideas to verify
their feasibility. The feedback we got made us
evaluate the idea, see new patterns, change
the prototype and test it again with new people.
Business canvas
First seen in Osterwalder’s (2010) Business
model generation, a handbook for visionaries,
game changers and challengers, the business
canvas is a tool for spotting where to implement
a new strategy and how it will affect the com-
pany. It can also be used to see if the business
is leaking money or if the customers’ values
are aligning with the business values.
Ten types of innovation
A tool from Doblin (2016) that is about creat-
ing innovation inside a business. We used it
to define how our new concept would change
the company. We found it to be a useful tool,
since we referred to it numerous times during
the process.
Our Toolbox

Secondary & Primary Research
Our first step towards research was to identify the
subjects that were missing blocks of the puzzle -
the information that was not already provided
in the brief by the client. We conducted a brain-
storm that helped us define the key areas we
wanted to deep dive into. Hence, as part of the
Secondary Research, we proposed the following
questions that would aid us in understanding the
primary and secondary Target Groups, as well
as the competitor landscape:
• How do men find fashion inspiration?
• How do men behave online?
• What are competing Online Brands doing?
• How to sell men products by targeting women?
We divided the above topics amongst us and
went into a two hour sprint to help us individ-
ually collate all relevant data points. We found
at that according to Rifkind (2014) the idea that
men are not interested in clothes is a myth.
We also found that many fashion trends are
influenced by Twitter and Instagram (Thomas,
2015) and that younger male consumers often
purchase clothing items which are similar to what
their friends wear to experience a feeling of
belonging to a certain group (Thomas, 2008).
We shared our findings and connected the
dots. That helped us arrive at our first set of key
focus areas for our Primary Research, which we
planned around understanding how men be-
have in stores and online whilst shopping. We
collectively agreed on conducting the primary
research at a time when the subject of shop-
ping was most relevant to inspire most valid
answers: while they were shopping in stores.
We also agreed to include two secondary target
audiences to help us get more insights: women
shopping in men’s section and sales staff in the
men’s section. The questions were aimed at
understanding what inspired male shoppers,
their online behaviour, their brand preferences
and their difficulties.
After this process, we had a lot of rich data
and were able to find patterns and consistencies
in the responses. That led us closer to defining
our key insights that would shape the problem
statement. During our desktop research, we
had found out that men are pragmatic shop-
pers (Braddock, 2015). This thesis was validat-
ed by the responses we received in our Primary
Research in the stores: most men confirmed
shopping was a task and mainly driven by need
for them. This took us to our next main insight
about men being quick shoppers. We had inter-
viewed a Retail Merchandiser at Mango store
and he highlighted that men always walk into
the store knowing what they want. Also, they
tend to buy more if clothes are stacked in such
a way that they derive easy inspirations. We
were also able to confirm this data through a
report that suggested men spend 30% less
time shopping as compared to women (Chang,
2012). Furthermore, an important insight re-
garding their inspiration uncovered that men
don’t engage in active research for fashion: their
inspirations are everywhere, especially social
media. Instagram and Twitter, for instance, have
become great sources of inspiration for men.
To add, we found that men trust social media
more than women when comparing products
(Richard et al, 2010).
To validate these even further, we engaged in

Secondary & Primary Research
a qualitative interview with a 29-year-old films
professional to understand his motivations and
hurdles while shopping. The interview helped
us derive further confidence in our direction
and helped shape the problem we wanted to
solve.
To define the problem we used tools to help
us think divergently and convergently. We
started with the use of five whys and applied
the tool on two pressing questions:
• Why do men always know what they want to buy?
• Why are they loyal to brands?
By answering these questions with the help of
our knowledge of the target audience, we were
able to find a conclusive direction towards the
question we wanted to solve for the brief.
We agreed we would spend ten mins silently
brainstorming to individually frame possible
How Might We questions that would address
the brief using our insights. At the end of the
brainstorm we had a lot of options available. To
make an informed choice, we used the Funnel
of Focus to plot the questions based on their
broadness and potential of being solved.
This lead us to “How Might We Make Shopping
Possible Without Spending Any Time Shopping?”

With our problem defined, we started to ideate
solutions. We did several rounds of different
brainstorms this where Silent, Negative, Positive
and Clustering.
This was especially helpful for really broad
divergent thinking. We discarded no ideas and
let our imaginations run freely. By the time we
had done with clustering, we had a few options
available. We started convergent thinking by
logically choosing a cluster that we were keen
on working on, which was “Lifestyle”.
We plotted the top three ideas on the Fea-
sibility vs Impact Matrix. By then, we decided
that one of the ideas was very close to another,
so we narrowed down to two. At the time, we
called the concepts “Happn my clothes” and
“What I wear”. “Happn” would have a high
impact and would be fairly hard to make it
happen, while “What I wear” would have lower
impact and would be easier to develop. We
decided to push both ideas a little further and
present them to the client.
Next, we created an elevator pitch for the
concepts, with a clear value proposition. This
process brought clarity for the group concerning
the ideas, which enabled us to go even further
with the next steps, which were the ten types
of innovation, a tool taught to us by Hyper
Island alumni from SapientNitro, and the
Business Canvas. The ten types of innovation
helped us verify which areas from each idea
were disruptive to the market. Here we also
decided on the engagement strategy, which
was key for this specific client, as pointed out
by our Industry Leader. Finally, the business
canvas strengthened their structures, in terms
of revenue models, key activities, partners and
customer relationship.
After the check in with Very Exclusive, we
were confident to choose our boldest concept,
considering that they were happy with the idea,
despite it being a little “futuristic”. The client
said that they were willing to be pioneers on
their market so we decided to go with “Happn”.
We started to ideate further to make the idea
more concrete. For that, we created story-
boards, that brought us key insights about
how the product could work, and a customer
journey. This was vital to our next process,
which was prototyping.
At this point, we also changed the name of
the App, since “Happn” was already taken.
We started to openly chat about options and
agreed that “Alfred” would be a good option,
since it was a classical butler’s name. Later
though, during a check in with our Industry
Leader, she pointed out that “Alfred” was
already taken by other brands and suggested
we refrained from using it. We decided to call
it “Very Exclusive’s App”, but defined it as a
personal valet, since the character of the butler
was still present on the branding product.
How might we
Ideation

Any idea is only as good as it’s implementation
and we needed to answer two core questions
as a group before we were ready to finalise
our concept: whether this idea had monetary
viability? and How would we market it?
The usage of ten types of innovation helped
us define the level of transformation we were
offering in our pitch to the client. We were not
only suggesting a new consumer interface for
apparel shopping, we were recommending an
opportunity to the brand to lead the way for
future online retail.
Our learnings and research about the most
recent disruptive companies had taught us
that the most optimum method of utilizing
digital is to change the concept of asset owner-
ship to one that is scalable and depends on
consumer connections. We wanted to make
sure that our pitch to the client highlighted the
same. The idea focused on a retail future that
was completely independent of stock ownership:
the new focus was the needs of the consumer
and fulfilment by brands.
We recommended them three new revenue
opportunities, namely selling space on the
App to brands to showcase their products,
commission per sale of item via the App, and
data which would make Very Exclusive the
custodian of a vast quantity of rich consumer
behavioural knowledge that they could offer
to brands for a price.
Finally, we had also to address the other half
of the problem, that is, the marketing of the
App. We planned keeping the target in mind,
namely a buyer of luxury category, one who
has buying capacity and demands an exclusive
treatment. Our App was already taking care
of the target group’s shopping needs, now we
needed to make it desirable. This led us to the
idea of a pre-release for High worth members
of VERY. It would ensure the exclusivity of the
luxury category and also allow Very Exclusive
to test the App on a set of consumers before
opening it to everyone. Additionally, we want-
ed to capitalize on the power of influencers by
targeting and rewarding the ones who had the
most powerful voice online. The influencers
were recommended to be chosen based on
their degree of early adoption and be rewarded
for helping the App grow through Word of
Mouth.
How might we
Business Opportunity

After we chose the personal valet as our final
idea, we started debating about features. We
eventually got to an ethical crossroads. Our
App depended on the user’s input of informa-
tion and, on the original concept, the customer
could point the smartphone at a random person
and take a picture of its clothes. We raised the
point that this might make people feel uncom-
fortable and could act as a violation of privacy.
We even discussed that, in the future, this
feature could be implemented on Google
Glasses (or affiliate technologies) as people’s
personal space would be in check as a default.
However, as this is not our current scenario,
we refrained from endorsing this kind of usage
of the product. Instead, we left it as a tool that
would enable users to upload pictures into
the App: where they got the picture would be
their business.
Furthermore, since we are aiming to be a
marketplace, we hold the responsibility of
protecting our brand partners from issues
of design copyrights and creating a secure
platform for companies to flourish with us.
We recommend that strict scrutiny must be
conducted while selecting said brand partners
and on-boarding them.
Ethics

Prototyping the idea is a fundamental part of
the design thinking process. It is the moment
to translate the concept in a tangible way and
then proceed with testing it in order to get
customers’ feedback. After reflecting on new
insights, it is time to come back to the concept
and reshape it in the best way to fulfill custom-
ers’ needs.
To enable the prototyping of our idea, our
group decided to follow the advice of one
of the lecturers we had during the business
transformation module, Ákos Wetters, as well
as Very Exclusive’s CEO motto “to fail fast, fail
cheap and fail happy”.
With this in mind, we first prototyped our
product in low fidelity. By this we mean a pa-
per prototype, showing how we had imagined
the screens of our app would work step-by-
step.
The first draft of this app had four screens.
(See Appendix 1 for screens) On the first
screen, the bot would ask how can he help,
and then the customer would have a choice of
camera, microphone and message to describe
the clothes that he wants. The conversation
between bot and customer would then take
place on the second screen. Next at the third
one, a few options based on the search are
offered, so the customer can choose the one
he likes the most. Finally the chosen product
with its characteristics and the option to buy
are presented to the client.
Secondly, we divided our group in two pairs
to test our prototype as fast as possible with
online shoppers. In these interactions, the
App features were explained to the person,
followed by an open question: ‘would you use
this product?’ This prompted conversations
about the product, enabling us to get valuable
feedback on it. On this first testing, we made
7 interaction with peers and industry leaders,
and gathered many insights regarding our
App.
“If I see a nice jacket in a magazine can I find
it at the App?”, asked Dag Otto. This question
confirmed that men find inspiration every-
where, which validated what we had found
during our research.
“Shazam for clothes”. That was how Sam,
an Industry Leader for the Digital Experience
Design crew, defined our product. When we
began thinking about the App, we had found
inspiration in Spotify’s weekly recommenda-
tions. However Shazam is an App that hears
a specific song and tells you the name of it.
This insight was important to our group to
understand that our product should not offer
clothes that our customers need, but rather
what they really desire at that specific mo-
ment, like the name of a song on Shazam, but
with clothes.
“The bot needs to help me out” said Davey
van Woert. We discovered a pattern: people
were worried about the technology of our
App. The group realized the need of further
research about existing technologies that
could support our product to work effectively.
We later found data that corroborated with
the framework of our product: “An experi-
mental algorithm out of Facebook’s artificial
intelligence lab can recognise people in pho-
tographs even when it can’t see their faces.
Instead it looks for other unique characteris-
tics like your hairdo, clothing, body shape and
pose” (Rutkin, 2016).
Another tester, Gabriel Negri, asked “How
will the App know how much money I want to
spend?” This made us decide that previous
data from the user would be needed to define
price target, brands and sizes.
These insights provided by our testers
prompted further discussions for the group re-
garding iterations to the product. In addition
to what we had discovered, we also decided

to make our app more comprehensive: many
people don’t really know how to describe an
item. Based on that, we created a feature that
would help the customer more, by asking it
questions about the searched item and allow-
ing refined results to be offered.
After iterating our product, we tested it for a
second time. (See Appendix 2 for screens)
After testing the second prototype, we got
valuable insights of our product. Michael, one
of our testers, said “I really like the picture up-
loading feature, although I would not use the
microphone nether the messenger option.”
This insight helped us understand that users
have different needs in relation to the feature,
thus having three options is a good way to
fulfill men’s needs.
Davis said, “When buying expensive clothes
I feel I need to do more research.” Buying
expensive clothes online is different from buy-
ing cheaper ones. Davis felt that he tends to
browse more. This lead us to our final feature
before the presentation to the client: a wish-
list, where the customer could store apparel
that they liked and make a decision about it
later.
After this second round of testing, our App
was ready to be presented to the client. The
process with our prototype was fundamental
for our group to get valuable insights to iter-
ate our product and concept. Finally, working
based on the idea of failing fast and cheap
was helpful to enable fast and useful thoughts
about our product. Our key takeaway from this
process was that maybe next time we could
take it even further, by testing our prototype
with more diverse people than just our peers.

The client pitch was probably the most impor-
tant part of our process as a team. We divided
our parts and wrote them all down individually.
The synergy occurred on the debate after
having the first draft. We joined forces and
started editing the script, while also drawing
the visual step-by-step.
We then had a conversation with Robbie from
AKQA. We told him our general structure and
he gave us some advice concerning the length
of the presentation. He told us we should be
very direct and leave the client with the feel-
ing of wonder and curiosity. This was vital to
us, as we realized that our pitch, although very
good and complete, was not exactly full of
impact. We decided to explore it even further
and refine the content, as to make it even
clearer and inspiring.
We edited our parts simultaneously and read
it aloud once more. The results were amazing
and we felt very proud of our presentation.
The Pitch

We started this project with very clear and
personal objectives. We were all very open
from the beginning about expectations we
had for the Business Transformation module,
as well as individual issues we might face dur-
ing our journey as team Flip Flop.
After a week of most of us being absent due
to personal problems, our team was finally
united when we went to the streets to inter-
view customers on stores to understand men’s
behaviours. This day was fundamental for us to
immerse ourselves in the world of menswear
shopping and, in this way, following the design
thinking concept of observation.
After that, the ideation part was a success as
the whole team was in sync, working in a fast
and effective way. At that point, what helped
the group to reach two disruptive concepts
was the communication between us, which
supports the thesis that every idea should be
listened and improved.
However, at some point after the ideation,
we had communication problems that were
pulling the team apart. Through team devel-
opment sessions, we could witness the power
of reflection. In this case, the group have man-
aged to find a solution and grow as individuals
and as team Flip Flop.
In our first session as a group, we defined
that our purpose would be learning how to
change. During the process, we really strived
to learn and apply new and innovative tools
that could give us another vision of our process
as a team. Furthermore, with this in mind, we
have used the project to reach, at the end, a
disruptive idea that could shape the future of
how men shop for apparel. This was possible
due to lectures we had at Hyper Island during
the Business Transformation module: they gave
us good insights and made us want to move
forward with our idea.
To conclude, in the feedback we received
from our industry leader, we were told that
our idea was the most disruptive when com-
pared to the other groups. However we could
have been even more bold and had presented
the idea in a more interactive way on the pitch
day. This added to our takeaways as a group.
We are all feeling ready to face our next module.
Conclusion

To briefly describe my couple of key take outs
- the underestimated, over used and hardly
understood term “Honesty”, it sounds like an
obvious one to add to the team canvas and easy
to misinterpret. Strengthening communication
and agreeing to share the discomforting feelings
of being a part of this team helped me open
up myself and start afresh. Another important
learning that I had was on the day of the pitch,
during the feedback session: the power to
lighten up a pitch room is completely in the
hand of the presenter. I had a lot of fun ideas
for making this pitch come to life but I got
drawn into the logic of time constraints and
didn’t fight my ground, a behaviour I don’t
plan to endorse in the future.
–Aksha
I guess this group made me go the extra mile
towards actually listening and understanding
people. I made progress concerning how I
react towards frustration, which is a good this.
I’ll leave team Flip Flop feeling more confident
about myself and my ability to facilitate a group.
I want to keep on studying and practicing it -
maybe event try to learn more about coaching.
To conclude: communication is everything.
Never, Clara, NEVER underestimate the power
of it.
–Clara
My take away from this team is that culture
is important, but also that communication is
vital for a group. It’s important to understand
yourself but also to adapt to others, but this is
something one person can’t do on their own.
It’s also interesting how you can work and
not work at the same time. I find our journey
interesting, as it was often really intense. But
my biggest take away are the importance
of clear communication and that trust is built
during small things, like eating and hanging out
together.
–Emelie
The Business Transformation module made
me really realize how important it is, even
for historic companies, to evolve and adapt
to new habits in order to survive and grow.
When working in an area such as retail, it is
crucial to analyse data to better understand
what are the problems they are facing. That is
why research was an essential part as it gave
us all the necessary insights to move forward.
Our idea might have been bold but it was well
received and I think we should now try to be
even more disruptive and out of the box as we
should able to be being at Hyper Island.
–Yann
Because of the fact that I have a traditional
company owned by my family and I plan to
come back and lead the changes in it, this
module was the one I was expecting the most
within the Hyper Island masters, to learn how
to change. In this matter, the purpose of our
team was fitting in a perfect symphony with my
personal purpose, and sticking to our pur-
pose as a team enabled me to be motivated
through the whole project and really learn
from practice how to transform a business. Fur-
thermore, with the issues with communication
in our team, at some point I felt everything was
lost and that we were not a team anymore.
However, with the team development sessions
I could see how powerful reflections are, and
how they can help to overcome the most
difficult situations in a team. Finally, I believe
that in this module I have learnt more than on
any other project in my masters, and now I
feel truly ready to come back to my company
and enable change.
–Marco
Individual Take-aways

Team experience map
Pitching to
the client
5 whys
& How
might we
Brainstorm Con-
cepts
Meeting
with
client
Prototyping
& Testing
EthicsSecondary Reserach Primary
research
Team
develop-
ment
Prototyping
& Testing
Team
development
Aksha
Clara
Emelie
Marco
Yann

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References

Appendix 1
Home screen Function of finding what you want Buying screen

Appendix 2
Home screen Chat function Picture function
Voice command Buying screens

Men's Luxury category - Business Transformation

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