Podcast: Proving the value of Design Thinking at Roularta

In the latest episode of Leap Forward’s podcast ​“Hallo Innovatie” we discussed the challenges of digitalisation and releasing new products together with Stefan Seghers, Chief Digital Office at Roularta and our very own Pieter Decabooter, one of the lead designers on several Roularta Projects

One of the main challenges for Roularta is to combine their physical offering – great magazines with a strong identity such as Knack, Flair & Libelle – with the new and exciting possibilities that digital offers. It’s important to be aware of the strengths & weaknesses of both media and find ways to enhance the way they work together. Digital is not a replacement for its physical counter-part. Quite the contrary.

Where digital does excel, however, is in its ability to adapt & iterate fast. It allows us to validate our assumptions and test our hypotheses with the people that matter most: the customers.

Together with Roularta’s digital team we’ve developed & released several experiments to gather real feedback from their customers as quickly as possible. When building these MVP’s we always focus on the deadline, not on the features: we know what we need as an absolute minimum to test our assumptions and we know when we want to release it. Everything else is an extra.

This mindset allowed us to create and launch a new platform in a matter of weeks and gather the feedback & insights we needed to build Roularta’s next big platform: a ​“Spotify for magazines”.

By engaging with the customer through a series of MVP’s and actually listening to their feedback, we succeeded in putting the customer first in Roularta’s digital strategy. Or as Stefan phrases it in the podcast: ​“By implementing design thinking, you brought us closer to our customers.“

And in the end, that’s what it’s all about.

If you want to find out how we achieved this, listen to the podcast ( in dutch ) or contact us and we’ll explain over a coffee.