Example Reflection – Visualization

Challenge

I am currently involved in a project to offer ecommerce/online solutions to SMEs in Brazil (not only  for trading online but also solutions that allow online customers to engage with brick and mortar  businesses). Though the Brazilian market presents many ecommerce platforms for those who want  to sell on the internet or build an online presence, most of the ecommerce websites work directly  with trade, while sectors like industry, services and agriculture have a much lower share. With that in  mind, my team (two partners and I) have done a market research to understand which industry  would be eager to adopt ecommerce/online solutions but still didn’t have any products/services  which would be better fitted to their needs. With the research we were able to select an industry  and to collect some data in loco.

Selection

Since I was taking a course on Design Thinking and in order to understand better the businesses  owners’ view of ecommerce I ended up deciding for the visualization tool. The choice was made  mainly due to the lack of experience and because I took in consideration some words from the video  Visualization Tool of week 1 which basically says that to improve visualization skills we must  practice. So we decided to practice.

Application

After defining the industry, we made some contacts and were able to engage in small talk with some  businesses owners initially, visiting the most open-minded later (three owners by team member,  nine in total). We had some data in hand but no crystalized information. To have a better  understanding of the businesses owners’ profiles and based on one example of the book Designing  for Growth: A Design Thinking Tool Kit for Managers and also the example of the MeYouHealth  personas I proposed an exercise which would consist of a matrix 2X2 that measured two things: the  level of knowledge among businesses owners about ecommerce and the importance they believed  ecommerce has or could have in their businesses. We were able to find four personas, since the  Clueless one to the Frustrated as shown in the figure 1 below.

Figure 1 – Businesses owners’ personas

To find the personas we took a list of around 20 attributes and characteristics from the business  owners we were able to observe during our talks and visits. Then we distributed each item of the list  inside each square according the similarity presented with both dimensions (Clueless = less  knowledge X less importance, Skeptical = more knowledge X less importance, Busy = less knowledge  X more importance, Frustrated = more knowledge X more importance). After allocating the items we  were able to define the business owners’ personas.

Insight

The exercise allowed us to understand better some aspects of our potential customers. During it we  were able to set an array of dimensions with which we can explore and run more experiments.  Though it was not already focused on the problems we want to solve we really think our team is  better prepared to present to each one of the business owners we talked until now solutions that will  fit into their expectations and in many cases exceed them. The exercise was only the first step, we  still need to understand what are the real needs and unarticulated desires and how we can develop  and offer products and services that will reach those needs and expectations.

Approach

We really believe the Design Thinking tools will be of great help during the process and I think  specially the learning launch tool. In fact we discovered that setting the platform is not the hard part,  the great problem is to set a platform that really answers business owners’ and customers’  expectations at the same time. With more practice we probably will be able to find much more  insights and develop solutions that really create value for those who are going to use them.

