Levarage on data to build the next killer product
This time round we were privileged to have Nicholas Loki grace us with a wonderful topic on how to leverage data to make your next killer product.
We started off by defining what a data product is and giving examples of data products. What data products do you know of? Gmail, Linkedin, Tableau?? It was clear from the definition that any product that is data driven to make the user experience stellar is a data product. Name any product, does it use data to improve the user experience? It is a data product
He went ahead to categorize the types of Data products that exist
- Data as a service
- Data enhanced products
- Data as Insights
For a deeper explanation please do checkout his slides here
Now you might be asking, how can I develop a data product. Nicholas gave an in depth of a process that can get you there. He insist that this process should be iterated as fast as possible .Doesn’t that remind you of the lean startup methodology?So how do we build data products you ask.
- Identify an opportunity
- Build the product
- Evaluate and iterate
He gave an example with Bonga, a messaging platform with deep integration to mpesa. Built on the notion that before any mpesa transaction is a conversation. They built the product and started with a closed group of 200 users from Safaricom to test out before they went to a bigger group of users . The main aim is to make sure the app works very well before they can release to the public.
The Nairobi Data Science for business has grown and continues to grow. This is a community that aims to bridge the gap between data scientists and business as well a grow more awareness on use of data to drive business. Till next year, cheers!!
