Lastminute.com customers co-develop mobile apps

Mobile developers, researchers and user experience experts worked with consumers to gauge which features and concepts were most valuable for customers.

Customers could rate ideas and interact with prototype app designs at a “discovery lab” hosted in London last week. Lastminute will use the feedback to shape the development of mobile apps due to launch next year.

Over the course of a week, Lastminute narrowed down from 60 ideas of potential app concepts and features to a list of 12 that have garnered the most positive feedback from people.

David Slocombe, Lastminute head of mobile, says the co-development initiative has achieved six months worth of data insight over the course of one week.

The business is also planning to replicate the initiative to shape development of apps for its other divisions such as flight booking and entertainment.

London’s Cumberland Hotel was chosen as the location for the lab because Lastminute knows that more than 100 of its top customers check in to the hotel each day

Lastminute targeted the initiative at its platinum members – the top 10 per cent of customers – who account for around 45 per cent of revenue and chose the London hotel location because it knows more than 100 of these people check into the hotel every day.

Slocombe says the initiative is a good way to find more “risky, leftfield” features consumers find valuable and would help serve genuine consumer needs.

He says it is chasing ideas that have the “wow” factor rather than obvious functions that consumers would expect an app to have.

The initiative also helps Lastminute identify opportunities to expand the brand into areas it doesn’t currently operate, such as post-booking services and travel guides, he added.

Lastminute worked with mobile agency ThoughtWorks to host the live initiative.