Measure Twice , Cut Once: But Where’s All The Material?

Kutloano Sowazi
Jul 10, 2017 · 5 min read

In the midst of trying to immerse myself in all things related to Design Thinking, Product Thinking and the global shift in the way things are designed,developed and used … I stumbled upon Daniel Burka’s (GV Ventures) High-Resolution Podcast , a giant in the field of design, and what was struck me the most was the following comment:

“If you can’t measure the success of something , it is probably not the great use of a sprint ”

Suppose in your organization you are working on an eCommerce platform. The top measure as the Design Lead on your team is to design and develop a feature/product/something that will increase a certain metric such as conversion rate from X to Y (aligned with given a set of business goals and objectives).

Before you even get into the actual iteration of designing the solution, you do the primary and secondary research into how the given design problem was previously solved if applicable, what should we be focusing on building primarily as a team given time constraints and finally how best to build,test & validate it with real users.

In theory this is the perfect Sprint for productivity and profitability ,easy-peasy, but in reality … especially in African startups, there are three things that we should overlook and not measure when designing new solutions for existing problems in our continent given we don’t have access to the luxury of all the material (i.e. data).

(* Note: This is not factual, but from experience from having worked at a startup in an incubation environment*)

1.Perfect Data

Go to Google and look up “Current Customer Lifetime Value+eCommerce+South Africa”, you will see something like this :

Screenshot below:

Other than IBM’s White Paper, the rest of the results are quite vague and not actually going to produce the data you are looking for. We need to understand although digital products and services are a commonplace in the world generally a lot of our data is either privately held or is being processed, collected and verified for public consumption in Sub-Saharan Africa (ask NetFlorist,Take-A-Lot, OLX for their company data, tell me how it goes).

In other words, our digital economy data is still fairly young(and privatized).

“So if the data for a problem your trying to solve does not exist or is readily available , you should set the standard you wish to achieve. Better to create the conditions for the data to be created(i.e. finding out through effective trial and error) then wait for it to be produced.”

— Kutloano Sowazi

2. Don’t Get Swamped — Big Picture Always

A common battle as mentioned by almost everyone I’ve met working in a startup is forgetting to see the forest for the trees. Any design solution exists to solve not only the current problem context at hand but act as part of a building block to achieve the organisation’s larger long-run goals it has set out to achieve.

Back to our eCommerce example, suppose you do some form of basic research and user feedback you decide to implement a a new feature that actually improves the experience for users. Does that mean the design cycle is now complete, should we jump for joy? NO, NO, NO if it were that simple Uber would never upgrade it’s app ever , it works for 90% with it’s current features so why bother ? Simple:

“The problem solved now does not exist in isolation, we need to look at what other pain points we are not looking at to make it even greater. A pain point solved in isolation does not mean the rest of the body is not sore, rarely is a digital product/service ever done.”

— Kutloano Sowazi

Subconsciously or consciously we can make up perfect User Personas,Storyboards and Prototypes and test with real users but still bomb spectacularly when we ship that design solution. Therefore hit or miss we need to never forget the larger goal at hand , it will help as a compass in steering to the right place when coming up with the next design solution.

A startup is always constantly in survival-mode especially in South Africa, so sleeping on the ball because you scored a great goal is a sure-fire way to lose the match. It’s always a marathon, you use sprints to increase the distance between you and the competition.

3. Sometimes Your Customer Data Is A Lie

Suppose you have been an on a good run of effective sprints for the past three features, they show some form of markedly improved (and tangible)results. However they are not adding up substantially in line with what you had set out to achieve.

Too Fast A Rollout of Feature? Nah, you rolled out with warning,notices and even instructions on how to effectively use these features , (including beta testing for good measure).

Customers have inherent biases just like organisations. Whilst traffic,journey flow and website data is unbiased , it can’t root out the pain point . Only your customers can truly tell you.

Sally ,33, said our payment gateway is cumbersome, but does she understand we don’t control it?. Mandla, 29 , said he wants to see more Kids Toys on the site, we don’t sell kids toys. Jacque ,35, said the site needs more of some ‘oompf’ , what the hell is he talking about?.

There are 11 official languages in South Africa, just the thought of asking your customer whether they would like translatable page languages alone will send you into a psychiatric ward in record time.

The point is that you need to take some customer data with a grain of salt. Feedback even if it is from your customer base is not always good-feedback. Surprise them with a calculated guess. If it fails rollback to the previous version you are not a brick-and-mortar store, design a better solution.

Well, Then What?

The lack of ,access to or availability to certain data as well as it’s set of perfectly measurable outcomes should not stop a young African startup from actually testing and validating new design solution assumptions. In it’s absence you may find your solution works and creates the material needed for others to measure twice and cut once.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade