Pisces - taking a Product to market

Launching a sustainable product and service with Innovate UK

Aims

SafetyNet Technologies (SNTech) has created a fantastic sustainable fishing product called Pisces that helps to reduce bycatch but they had not yet worked out how best to get it into the hands of their users. Innovate UK helped to Fund SNTech to get support to design the service to meet fishermen needs.

I worked with the Snook team to support (SNTech) to design a service, support network, and roadmap for Pisces to ensure it would be used by fishermen. 

approach

At the start we focused on studying how the product would be understood, bought, and used by fishermen. We did this by getting out on the boats and asking them to try the product to best understand their needs.

impact and outcomes:

Created a user-focused service experience

Over a one-week period, we built digital and physical working prototypes of the key service touchpoints, ready to be put in the hands of fishermen.

Using these prototypes, we conducted a live service walkthrough with fishermen which helped us to understand how the Pisces service would function in the real world.

End-to end service and product roadmap

The SNTech team are currently working their way through this development roadmap and using the service blueprint as a working document to support service improvements.  

Throughout research, we uncovered an awareness of the emerging market of light technology, potential routes to market, an understanding of fishermen’s needs from the product, and most importantly — ways to meet those needs. Here are some highlights of what we learnt about fishermen and the fishing industry:

• Fishermen are innovative and are often natural makers. We heard many stories of fishermen trying out different ideas, from putting glow sticks in cuttlefish pots to attaching monitors on deck for the crew to see sonar and radar systems. Due to this, we focused on building a culture of co-design.

• The industry is fiercely competitive. Everyone wants to have an edge over other fishermen. Despite this, there is also a sense of solidarity. Fishermen are often willing to share advice around fishing techniques. We ensured that we included an element of customisation and a way of providing feedback within the service to use these character traits to develop a continually improved product.

• Fishing is an incredibly variable industry. Every fisherman has a slightly different fishing technique, meaning that it is hard to build one fishing product that satisfies the needs of every fisherman. There is a need to build a product that is easily customisable and adaptable.

• Fishing communities are tight-knit; as soon as we let one person know we were coming to visit everyone was expecting us. This worked both for us and against us when out conducting research. This can be harnessed when the product goes to launch by appointing local ‘Pisces pioneers’.

• Fishermen need things done quickly and efficiently. Time is money and on a boat, this couldn’t be more true. Every moment is more fuel burnt at sea, there is no time nor space on board for anyone or anything that doesn’t function efficiently.