Musings on Design thinking sprints

Oftentimes we've seen how investing too much in design thinking too early can be counter-productive in a product lifecycle. Users catch up on product use cases that they begin to explore and create new possibilities that the product team never saw coming.

Spending excess time implementing design thinking for a product yet to be launched is like attempting to digest a food not by eating it but by its aroma. I bet people get filled when they perceive the smell of nicely cooked food they'll never get to taste.

Real design thinking should begin when users start emanating certain behaviours on your product. So you leverage data to learn about what your users are doing. You may need to conduct user interviews to learn from their perspectives to understand their thought processes through development iterations.

As I write this article, I'm in a bolt ride en route to Lagos from Ibadan. This thought is journaled based on my recent experience. I'm sure the product team had reservations about how Nigerian bolt drivers would think about any long trips. The bolt driver asked me (the passenger) to cancel the ride, so Bolt doesn't make a profit from the ride, and he (the driver) can have it all. The driver will also negotiate for a higher price than Bolt's pricing. It happens 80 per cent of the time for long trips.

Drivers use bolt ride-app to connect with customers, dump the product and take customers offline. Bolt makes ?0 (zero Nigerian naira) while the driver makes ?20,000. Driver wins. Victory?

What are the learnings?

It's worth noting that users can unlock new use cases for your products, e.g. forks as wristbands. And it's best to journey with users along their line of interest.