Finding the right blockchain-use case fit
A design thinking and lean start-up approach
Finding a use case for blockchain is challenging.
Firstly, cryptocurrencies and blockchains are often seen as inseparable twins. This makes it hard for potential beneficiary of the blockchain to see past cryptocurrency use cases.
Secondly, the significant hype surrounding blockchain as a saviour for many of the world’s ills — helping over 2 billion non-banks have access to the banking sector[1] — lulling potential adaptors to believe that any problem can solved by simply adopting blockchain.
Thirdly, there is not one type of blockchain but a bewildering choice From Ethereum, Fabric, Sawtooth, Corda and many more, finding the right technology is a complex process.
If blockchain is to be of any value to solving real world problem, is there a way we can cut through all the cryptocurrency, hype and array of bewildering technological choices to establish a good use case?
In this article, I’ll briefly describe a combination of two techniques, Design Thinking and Lean Start-up, to help you find a solid blockchain use case.
The design thinking process
The design thinking process is a five-stage non-linear process (see below) to help you find solutions to problems that are ill defined. The process is “centred around understanding human needs by framing the problem in human-centric ways”[2].
Typically, you start by identifying the users that are part of the problem space that you are trying to formulate a solution for. Then try to walk a mile in their shoes through empathy mapping, plotting their day-to-day activities and mapping it into four main criteria:
- What they are saying?
- What they are doing (not necessarily related to their work activities but also their daily persona chores)?
- What they are thinking?
- What they are feeling?
Next, identify and model the problem space. Typically you start with mapping the activities that human participants undertake in the problem space AS-IS. For example, if the problem space you wish to solve the pain-points of existing retail banking (i.e. people depositing money), start by mapping out the activities you would do to complete that particular banking activity. You will also overlay the findings from the empathy map to the activity map and identify the source of banking customers’ pain.
Having identified the pain-point, this is followed by the process of hypothesising a solution that resolves the pain-points of the current problem space — i.e. ideation. There are number of techniques that have been developed from the experience of design thinking practitioners, beyond the scope of this article to address. Please refer to the materials from a practitioner known as IDEO[2]. A key aspects of the ideation stage is to come up with broad brush solutions not implementation details.
The prototyping and test stage overlaps with lean startup, which we shall discuss next.
Lean startup
The lean startup is a methodical approach to product development. At the core of the approach is the minimum viable product (MVP).
An MVP is that “version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort”[4]. The operative words being version and validated learning:
- a version refers to aspects of a product;
- validated learning refers to feedbacks you gained from that version of a product you use to test drive in the market you hypothesise as likely to be receptive to it.
Note: An MVP is not simply a real product with a subset of features. The minimum aspect of MVP refers to minimum effort you need to show case all of the features you expect your user would want of your product. Minimum effort is very much a relative term, dependent on the combination of tools and skillset available to the creator of the MVP.
The lean process is illustrated below.
You start with hypothesising a version of your product (i.e. MVP), build only the necessary features to enable user(s) to interact with it, and then put it into the hands of users to get feedback. From the feedback decide if you should invest, iterate a newer version or pivot that version to another market.
The methodology, through many examples of its application by practitioners, has a toolkit of validation methods that one can drawn from. Please refer to the 15 ways of testing an MVP[5].
What is blockchain good for?
In order to appreciate a proper use case for blockchain, it is necessary to separate out the blockchain as a technology and type of problem that blockchain is intended to solve.
Blockchain is intended to solve problems when two or more parties must transact with each other in a decentralised and distributed way, whilst ensuring that all parties in the transaction are able to reach consensus on a shared view of all the transactions that has occurred.
Ideally, in a transactional relationship, parties to it would want such transactions to be executed in as frictionless a manner as possible. Blockchain is intended to provide this solution without (or with minimal) intermediaries — in the most ideal form, transactions are curated by small computerised codes typically referred to as smart contracts — thus reducing source of friction.
How do we apply design thinking and lean start-up for find a proper blockchain use case?
In the traditional design thinking approach, we start by identifying the human participants in the particular problem space that we are interested. Otherwise, how do we know who we are trying to empathise with?
Fortunately, the design thinking process is a non-linear process, so the first step is to try to do a rough cut analysis of the problem that we wish to solve.
For example, if we start with the premise that we wish to solve the problem of banking, let’s ask ourselves a few questions: are we trying to solve the problem of a single person simply wanting to draw money out of his/her account, or; are we trying to solve the problem of making it easier one person to make payment via his/her account in one bank in one country to another person in another country?
If the nature of the problem is cross border payment, we can easily discern that we’ll need to empathise with multiple human elements, or personas. A quick analysis of the process of payment from one persona to another will reveal multiple parties involved in the transactions. Once this is established, we can then proceed to produce empathy maps of each and every persona involved in the transaction.
This is then followed by a deeper analysis of the problem space — i.e. mapping out the transactional activities involved in the current system. And identifying the biggest pain-point that needs addressing.
In the ideation phase, because we are dealing with a transactional type problem, we should include blockchain technologies (ideally several types) and non-blockchain technologies as potential solutions for consideration. At this stage, we should be identifying as many solutions as possible and put it into the pool, ideally, include in the pool outlandish solutions — this is a useful exercise to help you discern the practical but still game changing solutions from the outlandish.
From the ideation phase, we transition to the Learn Start-up methodology. From the earlier exercise of the empathy mapping and overlaying the empathy maps to the AS-IS problem space, we analyse the pain-points of all the personas (e.g. payee, payer, bankers, regulators, etc., in our banking problem space) involved in the transactions. Looking at all the factors, we identify the extend of decentralisation and consensus needed to resolve the pain-point.
As we enter into the lean start-up phase, identify at least three MVPs (one non-blockchain based, one public blockchain based and finally one permission blockchain based) and test with a selected pool of potential users to trial the solution and gather feedback.
Note: With other types of technologies, you could potentially build a MVP using power-point slides and as long as users can interact with it as they would a real product, you can easily get feedback.
Blockchain unlike other technologies requires a high degree of deployment certainties — once deployed it can’t be easily rolled backed unlike say traditional databases. It is necessary to build a fully functional system so the user can get a feel for the system and all architectural problems can be easily ironed out early. It is also necessary at this stage not to restrict to one blockchain technology but to examine at least two to avoid going down the wrong path
Finally, get the necessary user feedback and perform architectural analysis to establish the most suitable solution for your use case!
Conclusion
In summary, here are my recommended steps for applying design thinking and learn start-up for a blockchain problem space:
STEP 1 — Identify the nature of your problem space, then identify the personas within.
STEP 2 — Produce an empathy map of all personas identified in STEP 1.
STEP 3 — Model the activities undertaken by the personas and overlay elements of the empathy map to the activity model. Look for major pain-points.
STEP 4 — Ideation phase-If the nature of your problem has transactional characteristics, include blockchain as a solution along with non-blockchain ones.
STEP 5 — Analyse the nature of the pain-points identified in STEP 3. Look for clues that demonstrate the need for a decentralised solution (e.g. a regulator persona might have indicated that transferring data across borders is not permitted, or a stakeholder of current systems is unwilling to open APIs for fear of security leaks, etc). If yes, identify at least three MVPs (one non-blockchain, one public blockchain and one permission blockchain).
STEP 6 — Subject MVPs to the usual prototype/test/feedback cycle then iterate and pivot to a single solution.
I appreciate that combining three big topics — design thinking, lean startup and blockchain, into one blog is quite a tall order. However, I hope this has given you at least a flavour of how you could apply those methodologies to help you cut through all the cryptocurrencies, hype and bewildering technological choices to find your blockchain use-case fit!
NOTE: Keep an eye out for Elemental Concept’s workshop, aimed at educating potential business analysts, product owners and architects on the use of Design Thinking and Lean Start-up to identify blockchain use cases
Reference:
[1] https://cointelegraph.com/news/how-blockchain-is-banking-the-unbanked
[2] https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/5-stages-in-the-design-thinking-process
[3] https://www.ideou.com/pages/brainstorming
[4] Ries, Eric (3 August 2009). “The lean startup”. startuplessonslearned.com. Retrieved 4 June 2015.
[5] https://thenextweb.com/dd/2014/11/12/15-ways-test-minimum-viable-product/
