Designing Products for Emerging Markets at Scale

Products are always designed and built to get users hooked. But how do you design products for a market with completely new users? Where these users that have not been catered to or designed and created for. How do you design a product that solves the user's itch from the first time they use it? So they can become returning users and not infuriated users. And how do you do all this while aiming to scale and address a new and large market? I used this talk to help us explore possible solutions.

Transcript

1. Designing Products
   for Emerging Markets
   at Scale
   By Osioke Itseuwa
   

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2. Hello, I am Osioke Onoarue Oarue-Itseuwa
   (aka Sprime).
   A part time Experience Designer, full time Community Manager at Devcenter.
   Also a:
   ● Traveler
   ● Street Photographer (see https://instagram.com/ganinigeria)
   ● DIYer
   ● Life Hacker (see https://spracks.com)
   ● Explorer (see https://blog.ganinigeria.com)
   

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3. Pictures of me exploring, having fun, and a few street photographs.
   

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4. When did I become a Designer?
   A timeline of events where I applied design and its processes:
   From small: I always loved breaking down adverts
   In Secondary School / University: How can I be more attractive? *A little test: wearing
   shoes instead of slip ons increases your perceived social importance and maturity, which translates to increased
   attractiveness. This also applies when you wear accessories that match your attire.
   2013: Brand Executive for Cormart Limited
   2014/2015: Devcenter Groupie, Devcenter Product Contributor and Reviewer
   2016 till present: Devcenter Project Manager, Devcenter full time Community
   Manager and part time Experience Designer
   

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5. is a distributed community of software developers, designers
   and PMs across Africa, helping clients build world class
   software.
   

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6. Back to the topic - What I mean by it
   How can we create usable products or services for a region,
   area, or place that hasn’t been catered to with respect to the
   type of service or product we would like to create?
   And do this, while accommodating as many users as
   possible?
   

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7. Story Time!!!
   I like telling stories to illustrate my points. If any story isn’t clear,
   I can explain more if you send me a DM on Twitter at
   https://twitter.com/osioke
   

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8. How have others Designed Products
   for Emerging Markets?
   ● Kenneth’s story on doing research while building a new product
   ○ While building a new product, Kenneth had to move around and ask a
   lot of people questions, to learn about their problems, and how to solve
   them.
   ● Story of a King
   ○ A King sneaks out of the castle every night to mingle with his village
   people, so he better knows what they want.
   In all these stories, the village and the new product users, they where like emerging markets. And to build
   well for them Kenneth and the King had to learn from their users by asking them. The King used a
   different method of asking, he watched them just as we do when we use analytics on a new product. This
   helps them design policies, processes and products for their new users with their users in mind.
   

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9. How have others Designed Products
   for Emerging Markets at Scale?
   ● How Airbnb finally found what worked (losten to this pocast for
   the full story here [mp3])
   ○ They visited their customers’ home, watched them, asked the right
   questions, and in doing so they learnt all they needed to build the right
   product.
   ■ The right questions. Like “What would I do that would make you
   tell everyone about this?”
   ● Andela’s ALC
   ○ I have no inside details, so I can not say much. But Andela did learn
   from the community they gathered.
   

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10. How have I Designed a Product for
    an Emerging Market at Scale?
    ● Learning by living with my People
    ● Testing by Asking; The Jukebox Test
    ○ I used a similar product to test if they would like the idea.
    ● Gigson Chukwu, a Bot
    ● Gigson goes to School; Feeding back their Feedbacks, especially
    the right ones
    ● Gigson gets a Home - http://gigson.co
    ○ By watching, we learnt to arrange the posts to make viewing easier.
    

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11. Tips - How I Learnt
    ● Read a lot; Books, Blogs, Podcasts …
    ○ Podcast - Masters of Scale https://mastersofscale.com/
    ○ Book - Hooked by Nir Eyal
    ○ Blog/Site - hbr.org ...
    ● Study others; Nature, Businesses, People …
    ○ Discovery and National Geographic channel
    ○ http://finimize.com for world financial insights
    ○ Communities
    By learning from birds, Eiji Nakatsu was able to help Japan create a bullet train with less noise. Watch the
    video here https://youtu.be/iMtXqTmfta0
    

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12. Wise Words.
    A few words of wisdom I felt would help explain this topic
    better.
    

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13. “In other to scale, you have to do things that don’t
    scale.”
    - Reid Hoffman Co-founder of LinkedIn & Greylock
    Partner
    

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14. “You have to put yourself in the shoes of your users. If
    you are only doing A/B testing you aren’t designing
    with empathy.”
    - Reid Hoffman Co-founder of LinkedIn & Greylock
    Partner
    

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15. “It is really hard to get 10 people to love something.
    But it is not hard if you spend time with them.”
    - Brian Chesky Co-founder and CEO Airbnb.
    

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16. “It is important to get passionate feedback early,
    while still designing the product, ... like an architect,
    user feedback ensures you won’t build a dozen floors
    on an unstable foundation”
    - Reid Hoffman Co-founder of LinkedIn & Greylock
    Partner
    

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17. Thank you :)
    @osioke
    bit.ly/dcs-slack
    http://sprimed.com
    

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