Page 33 - newDATAmagazine | 03>07>2021

newDATA
MAGAZINE
Building products and services that
people (REALLY
Remember the last app you downloaded on
your smartphone and used only once or twice?
If you are just like me, you probably have a
lot of those and most likely, from the dozens of
apps installed, you just use less than 10 on a
daily basis.
And if you were to build an app for a new
product or service, wouldn't it be great to be on
that top 10 rank?
I'm not saying that the other apps you have
installed are useless, of course not. They serve
their purpose and surely help you solve a
certain need. But perhaps that need isn't
strong enough for an everyday use or was just
something occasional you needed once. Not
something you deeply need and that makes
your life better on a regular basis.
And is for that sweet spot of real needs we
should be aiming at when developing new
solutions.
Even more in these times where digital
transformation is a must, new solutions come
up everyday (lot's of competition) and the
mingle of technology with our lives is
ubiquitous. So if we are to build something new
we have an urge to stand out. To make a
difference. To build something with purpose
that will make people's lives easier.
So how can we increase our chances of
building something that people really
need? How do we decrease the risk of
failure and get more confident that the
investment we are making will have its
return?
) need
It would be great if we could just drive a
Delorean 5 or 10 years into the future and have
a sneak peek, but unfortunately that time
hasn't come (yet J).
One way to go (that I personally love and
that we embrace at Monday when working with
our clients) is to help build something that
brings true innovation by aiming at the core
intersection of this diagram:
Desirability
Innovation
Viability Feasibility
Source: the author
To build something technically feasible
(there is know-how), economically viable
(there is a business plan) and of course
desirable (it solves a real need for the users).
Most commonly we focus on building
something considering only the first two,
because we have a new idea that we feel will
work and that we are pretty sure our users will
love. We have the know-how to get it done and
we have our business plan to support us. So we
go ahead and make it happen, which is
definitely great, but when we launch it we see a
different reality. The user adoption isn't rising
as we believe it would, people don't seem to
relate to features we thought they would love
and the list goes on.
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