The time has come to set sails to go and see. Genchi Genbutsu is a Japanese development principle and literally translates to ‘real location‘ or ‘real thing’. It is part of the lean development philosophies first implemented and used by Taiichi Ohno at Toyota Industries. The aim of this principle is to collect as many insights into the usage of a product during the development phase as possible, by actually using the product in a real-life environment as a product designer. In our case, it is the long-term travel backpack and its accessories.
現地現物
From Japanese: ‘Genchi Genbutsu’
‘Go and See’
What does this mean in the case of VISUEÑO?
In our last episode “The Adventure Begins” we talked a lot about our vision, mission, and goals. Since that two months have passed and now we are happy to inform you that we managed to design and even built the first prototype of a long-term travel backpack. Following the principles of Genchi Genbutsu we will put this prototype to its real-life test as we are starting our next long-term traveling adventure to Latin- and South America 🌎 TODAY.
The first prototype construction is based on ideas and experiences we collected during our 6-month journey in 2018 in South East Asia/Oceania and it represents a minimum viable product. This means that the backpack and accessories construction focuses only on basic features without many details being implemented in the initial design. Hence it allows us to remain flexible in the design and test the product right away in the early stages of development.
During our trip through Latin- and South America we will meet with other travelers, backpackers and globetrotters with whom we will hold feedback nights. At these feedback nights, we will present the current state of the product and ask for their input. The insights we gain from this feedback, as well as our own experiences, will be implemented in our built-measure-learn process. The results of the built-measure-learn process will be further prototypes which we will again test during our trip.
The go and see philosophy in combination with the community-driven feedback design approach will lead step by step to a market-ready product that is made by travelers – for travelers. This approach represents one of the core values at VISUEÑO which we will further refer to as:
– TESTED IN THE WORLD –
What’s coming next?
Besides creating the ultimate travel gear for your future adventures, we also want to provide additional travel ideas and stories to inspire you to go and see yourselves, what our beautiful planet has to offer. In the future you can expect some articles from us about travel planning, essential gear as well as trip preparation. Furthermore, we will try to connect also to external bloggers we meet on the way, whom we will ask for some guest articles in order to provide you with a more diversified view on this topic. We are already stoked to meet all the new interesting people to connect with.
A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.
Tim Cahill
Thank you for your interest in our adventure and if you are eager about what is coming next we are happy to delight you with entertaining news about our progress by keeping you updated in our newsletter, or if you just follow us on our Instagram channel.
