What was our role?
When project founder Victoria first started looking for support in creating the Let’s Write a Book system, she struck up conversations with businesses in the creative and print industries.
On the Same Page
While the creative agencies wanted to redesign the books and the print agencies were looking at producing a product at a competitive price, no one seemed interested in solving the actual problem – creating the bespoke self-publishing system itself.
In contrast, we understood through our initial conversations that Let’s Write a Book had to integrate a simple system which worked for the end users: young children and their parents.
We loved the idea of children and parents being brought together to create stories
Having spoken to different members of the Vu team, Victoria experienced a consistency in our ethos and language which helped convince her that our values were in line with hers and we would always help as best we could.
A Brand New Adventure
Victoria had the nub of a great idea but little idea about how to turn it into a viable business. As such, there was a fair amount of hand-holding involved in this project.
Prior to our involvement, the system involved using a desktop publishing program to create the book templates. We needed to convert this into an online system and this would require a bespoke system development.
As this was very much an exploratory concept, we created plenty of prototypes and tested these in a live school environment. As well as creating the system itself, we had to ensure that logins and IDs could work with the school IT system.
“Vu was very good at interpreting the brief, high utilisation of creative problem-solving during development, all staff highly professional at all times and always very responsive to client queries and ultimately produced a product that was intuitive, easy to use and has produced a high level of user satisfaction.”
An A* Achievement
Let’s Write a Book was certainly not a conventional brief but we are proud of what we have co-created from scratch. While it is always nice to get a fully formed brief, this project illustrates that even when a business idea is not fully thought through, we can add value, helping entrepreneurs and startups to build their brief as we go along.
It was important for this relationship that the Let’s Write a Book team were willing to engage with what needed to be done rather than what they had initially asked us for. We set clear expectations from the start, telling them that we could take them from point A to point B in one step but that they needed to get to point Z if they wanted to create a business out of it.
The brand we created needed to be free and youthful in its construction
“No matter who I speak to at Vu, I am guaranteed the same standards. They endeavour to listen, ensure they understand and then help.”
We were happy to take each step along the road with them as far as they wanted us to go.
Results for Let’s Write a Book have far exceeded expectations. Considering the limited budget we were working with, it is gratifying to know that the system is now used in several schools and many children have already published their own books with it.
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