Transcript for:
Understanding Market Research and Validation

As-salamu alaykum everyone. Welcome to this session on market research and validation. Today, hopefully, we will go through a topic which is very important, particularly for you at this stage of the program. Particularly, you are now on the process of validating, you know, the problem and your ideas. So, the agendas of today's session... We will talk about understanding ideation and we'll talk about how to identify opportunities generally. But the most or the core of this session is about the different methodologies for ideation. We will go through a number of tools that could help you in this process. So we will touch a bit on details on these tools. to help you and assist you, you know, validating your ideas and to do your research in the market. Okay, and I'll talk about like some technologies that could be helpful to you and then we will have an open floor for any question and answer or if you have any kind of clarifications you need as far to your startup progress, I will be more than happy to answer you. Okay, so as usual, I would love to have a very interactive session. Feel free to ask me anytime. Okay, so you don't need to wait until the end of the session. As we go through the content, if you have any questions, just feel free to ask. Okay, so just a quick recap. Last session, you have gone through ideation and design thinking workshop with Kevin and he's gone. in-depth into the subject and particularly at the ideation phase. I will not repeat that content, but I will just touch base to remind you quickly what is ideation. So as we all know, ideation is the process of generating and developing and communicating new ideas. It is crucial and important for that process for businesses to come up with new innovations, new products, new services. to maintain their competitive edge. Otherwise, businesses would die. So ideation is a crucial process as part of any organization and any business, whether it's a startup or even for those mature organizations, for them to maintain their position in the market. We see that every day with all the multinational companies in all the different fields. Maybe the technology aspect is very visible. Maybe you can mention Apple, where they keep innovating new features on the iPhone, on the iPad, or all of the products. Every time they come up with new versions and they are trying to compete. And the same thing happens with the other brands of smartphones. So where and how you can find ideas. So there is no magic wand, right, which can Simply we swap and we get an idea, a brilliant idea that would work and will make a very successful business. The answer to that, there are so many sources and ways to help you identify problems. So it could start from customer needs. So you realize like there is a gap and the customer needs like a solution and you realize there is a problem maybe. And you could. convert that into opportunity but also it could start from your passion and interest. So you have some certain passion and interest to do something and you want to do it differently and much more efficient, much more effective. You might have experience, pain points, again you might have been doing some process reviews whether like on your job or while analyzing a certain process and you realize that there are challenges and gaps that keep like those processes inefficient or like ineffective there's like audit results kpis um there are some companies have methodologies for creating new product development through research and development but a great source also really for obtaining a lot of ideas some noise on the background uh if you if everyone can mute is himself okay so um data analysis again give you trends give you uh some kind of uh analysis or opportunity to help you identify certain opportunities and behaviors that could end up helping you to come up with new solutions, initiatives, events, by enlightening yourself with knowledge, with understanding what is going on. You start correlating with what's happening and, again, help you come up with creative solutions. I already mentioned research, but also speaking to domain experts, networking with others, and feedback. So these are all... and there are so many so what we catch up is just some okay of uh some of the common ways where people identify problems and challenges and you know they from these problems and challenges they need to come up with uh creative ideas okay so um one thing very crucial uh is to to be always up to date and to follow the market trends That helps you to understand what are the latest technologies. For example, whether it is AI, we're talking today, Metaverse, blockchain, big data, drones, autonomous vehicles. So these all, like we see them today, are probably the top technologies that are making significant noise, right? So by coping with the market, understanding what is the trend, where things are heading. This will help you also to align those technologies with your solutions. So it's not about just simply adding a technology aspect to your solution. Sometimes you don't need technology or you don't need that technology. But sometimes those technologies could create significant difference to what you do. So in terms of market trends, again, it helps you identify. challenges and opportunities on the go. It helps you also understand what is customer's preferences. So if things are going outdated and you start bringing solutions that customers like nowadays is moving towards something newer, then probably your solution won't work, right? Or like you will not have for enough customers. So you need to also understand customer behaviors, customer preferences, what they are thinking of today. what is their preference okay in terms of like maybe technology in terms of platform in terms of uh like way of doing things and rich or location all of these things will help you also position your solution uh effectively understanding the competition what they are doing okay definitely you don't want to be significantly behind your competition you want to be on par or ahead of your competition So you always need to think like, okay, what is like your competitive advantage? What is what they say that unfair, you know, advantage that you have and they don't have? What is the value proposition that you have and they do not have? What are these unique selling points, okay, that keep you more competitive and makes your offering much more attractive than what competition have? So these are all also important aspects for you to maintain. a very competitive solution and hence you know have a very strong startup okay so i'm sure most of you have by now somehow identified a problem you want to solve so problems generally being classified either as simple problem or complex or wicked okay so what's a simple problem so a simple problem it is a very straightforward problem that usually you know what is the solution for it. It's very clear. So you have something, let's say like okay my air conditioning in the car is not working and I understand like there's a problem with the compressor or the gas. So it's very simple to identify what's the issue and solve it usually because there's maybe standards, there's procedures that exist and I can just refer to them. I can find a quick solution to that problem. But sometimes problems are complex. In a complex problem, I appreciate that you will be with yourselves. Our teams were activated in our month of April. It's time for us to take a look at the situation. Okay, so it's muting on. All right, so going back to the topic, as you said, there's complex problems, and in complex problems, The solution is not necessarily clear, but by following a certain process, you still can identify the solution easily. Okay. Compare it to a little bit, maybe more difficult to find a solution, but it's still, you could find a solution by following certain processes. Okay. In a whipped problem, a whipped problem, the problem itself, it is not defined. So that's what makes it a bit different than a complex problem. In a complex. problem you can define clearly the problem statement and but in a wicked problem you you you don't know actually even you don't understand the problem what is the cause of this problem hence you also don't understand what is the solution and and that's why like wicked problems create significant opportunities for startups you know to kind of uh have success i mean great solutions even complex sometimes problems have enough uh i would say like uh a good opportunity for you to identify some good solutions, which probably could be a good fit for a startup business. So complex and wicked usually needs more creativity, and we'll talk about that in the next slides. So in the process, by now you realize by going deep, researching, talking to people, you might have understood that there is, and as part of the problem that you want to solve, there are so many problems probably or like there are multiple causes for that problem. And hence you might need to create multiple solutions. So the question most of you have is which problem to pick. Okay this problem metrics could help you evaluate you know each problem against what value it creates how easy, it can be executed, how scalable it is, and how sustainable it is. Okay. And if I summarize these four pillars, okay, it is simply about impact and feasibility. So when we say value is whether the customer wants this solution, okay, like, would I, if there is other products or alternatives, would I pick your solution over this alternative or what's available? So if the customer is willing to pay for it or not, does our partners like in this ecosystem would want to kind of help us and support us to kind of sell this solution and bring it to the market? Similarly, from an execution point of view, do we have the capabilities to build the product or to produce the solution? Do we have access to the resources or the tools that are required? to make this solution or product running? Do we have also access to enough suppliers, customers, partners, so this could be achievable? On the scalability side, are there enough interested customers and can this be expanded gradually? Can this be scaled to other countries, to other regions, or to other markets? and is this can be this made affordable uh so like everyone or like larger volumes could you know attain my solution so these are questions you probably want to ask yourself about sustainability is first of all is this financially feasible so can i make profit down the line okay um can i be more competitive because sustainability that means that i can compete right again our competitors against the alternative products that are available. So again, all of these things you want really to assess. So you could create a simple assessment matrix. You bring either the problems that you have identified or lastly, the solutions, and you could assess them against their value, executability, scalability, and sustainability. Or you could do just a simple matrix, which is comparing impact and feasibility as a sprint. that we have given to you just to simplify it for you, could also help you do that. If you want to go more in depth, this is also going to be very helpful to you. to land on the problem or the solution that your customers might be willing to use or much more appealing to them. So generally there's two ways to solve problems. One is called the adaptive model and in the adaptive model is simply you are trying to make some incremental change to an existing solution, which as a result would enhance its quality, its efficiency, or its effectiveness, or maybe the experience. On the other side, there is another way or method, which is called the innovative method. And here you are seeking for groundbreaking solutions that could disrupt even the system or the market. So sometimes you might like create a new market for yourself or You are creating, simply replacing a process completely or product completely with something new. And this is like the most effective way particularly startups could do in order to change how things are happening. So we can see, for example, Uber, they disrupted the standard taxes practice, right? Now, even standard taxes nowadays, still you can... call them using like an app for example and the rates are standardized so they disrupted that ecosystem and we can name so many other you know kind of startups which have done the same thing like airbnb for example they disrupted the standard hotel okay and stay an accommodation by bringing like far lots of supply you know to the market by helping you converting your own accommodation you know, into kind of a hotel stay or a short-term stay. Okay. So you need to mind in this process two things, which is one, what's called customer centricity. So whatever solution you are creating has to deliver value to your customers. And your customers generally are people. So we should not forget the human centricity aspect of it. So that's why. Customer centricity and human centricity are very interlinked. For you to achieve customer centricity, you need to achieve human centricity through empathy and design. So you need to have a solution at the end of the day that solves a significant pain people have. And the design of that solution has to be very usable in order to encourage them to use. Similarly, to convert that into a product and a customer who will pay you, he needs to have some value on what you are delivering. And there has to be sort of a good experience with the design. And also, there has to be a continuous lifecycle for that product to sustain itself, to keep improving. So the customer will remain attached and loyal to what you provide as a solution. Okay, so... In simple terms, empathy and design brings human centricity to your solution. And for you to maintain that business aspect, you need to ensure that you continually improve your product and improve the design and experience and continually add value to your customer or maintain that value in your product. So moving now to the various methods of solving problems. I would like to start with the simple model of solving basic problems. So if you have a basic problem, which you have usually, you understand the problem, what is it, where is it coming from, and what is the solution. So usually you start with identifying that the problem is 1, 2, 3. Then you try to determine, okay, what is the root cause of this problem? As we said, for example, the problem of the air conditioning. You start understanding, okay, the solution could be... either on, okay, one of the two is either like something wrong with the compressor, there might be a leak, or the gas, okay, or there might be an electrical issue, or it could be the switch issue. So these are three things. So once you really get deep into it to kind of just verify that, you will land in one solution for the problem. You start implementing that solution, and your problem is solved. Okay? So simply identifying the problem. Determine the root cause, explore the alternatives, select one of the alternatives, stop implementing it, and then afterwards just evaluate the result. and just to ensure like things are continuing to work. Okay, so this is a very simple framework for solving problems. In very complex and wicked problems, simple methodology doesn't work. Hence, you know, design thinking is being brought out in order to help you solve such problems. Why? Because as I said, initially the problem is not... clear enough and also you don't know what to be the solution hence that's why you need to have a process in this process you need to start empathizing empathizing is all about getting close you know to that customer understanding his real pains okay what is like the frustration is coming from and then as you identify you start coming up You start to ideate and create various solutions. And as you create those ideas, various ideas or solutions, you need to keep testing them. Is this really kind of a solution that works? So before you test, you might test the problem initially in order to ensure is this problem is really significant enough? It's real pain. A lot of people have before even you step into creating ideas. So once you really validate that this is, yes, this is a problem, a lot of people... uh agree that if it's a problem you need to solve then you probably need to move towards the ideation step so you start ideating through brainstorming through a lot of tools and we'll talk about the tools later that helps you with that discovery process from empathizing till ideation and then you might create a simple prototype so just prototypes okay you could start with a low fidelity prototype you don't need to have a very like extensive MVP or now, okay, which is a minimum viable product. A prototype could be as simple as an image, a diagram. It could be a process flow. It could be a video. It could be simply a landing page, or it could be some wireframes you could create through like tools, or it could be some, you know, scenes or designs on the screens. of your application that you want to, for example, intend to develop. So these are usually cheap ways for you to demonstrate your idea to your prospective customers. This will help you test your assumptions and get feedback from those end users. Those end users will give you, well, yes, this is working. I think this will work. This will solve a significant problem. I would be happy to use it. I would be happy to pay for it if this product exists. So this gives you a sense of validation of what you are doing is correct and you are solving the right problem and you are approaching it in the right way. Sometimes you will get different feedback. No, this is not going to work. It would be nice if this feature is available. I would do it in two steps rather than five steps. This is complex. I want something simple. So this feedback will help you improve the process. So that's why you see the design thinking here is like a loop. Okay, it's a loop which you keep probably you might get, you want to go back to improve certain things. Sometimes you might need to get back even to empathize more or to come up with different ideas based on the feedback that and the testing that you had. And this is how you keep maturing your solution in multiple rounds until you are fully confident that. the solution will work, people want it, it is feasible, and then you could move forward to simply build your product or to build your minimum viable product that you will stop going with it to the market. And then after that MVP, once you ensure you establish what is called the product market fit and you solve all the issues and the bugs, then you could start working on building your final product. So design thinking methodology is the methodology to solve, as I said, very complex and wicked ideas. So in this journey of design thinking, you might want to use different tools, whether they are to handle simple ways or in a systematic approach or in a creative approach. So what's an example of solving a simple problem? You might use like decision metrics or checklist or SOPs, okay, or best practices. So if you have, let's say, a problem in your car and you have... signal on the dashboard. So what you are going to do, you will go to the car manual. So the car manual, in this case, a process to help you identify a solution for the problem that you have identified. Okay. So that's like, these are simple methodologies for you to solve simple problems with little research, going to the manuals, going to the best practices, checking the checklist, checking the standards, you'll be able to find solutions. Okay. However, in some complex. problems, this might not work, right? Because it's not maybe easy for you to identify the source of the problem. So what do you need to do in order to identify the source of the problem? Maybe you want to use what is called root cause analysis. So it's just by digging down in the process to really identify where is that problem, okay, is coming from. Okay, there's what, again, there's the critical and system thinking scenario and then the scenario planning. Again, this is a scenario planning. For example, this is used even to plan strategies at country's level. A country like Singapore, one of their success factors, like why they've been able today to be at this stage, is by introducing scenario planning. Scenario planning is about thinking in the future, like, okay, how I would reach into a certain point in the future by taking various steps today. And these steps... what are the possibilities that I might encounter various situations that would result, you know, that for me to face challenges for me to be able to kind of navigate smoothly until I reach my target. So, well, a simple example, if I want to drive my car from point A to point B. So, yes, I know that I need to take certain roads, but what if there is an accident? If there's an accident in this road, I might want to divert, and there's a lot of traffic, I might want to divert to point C and from C back to B. So that's scenario planning. It's for you to plan even ahead the situations and the scenarios that could affect the systematic progress of the development of your idea, solution. or whatever it is. Okay? One of the aspects where you need to be very creative to come up with solutions, as I said, when you have very complex solutions and problems, or you have wicked problems. A good example of wicked problems today is what is called climate change. Climate change is very hard to determine what is the cause. Okay? So if we start getting deep into it, Yes, it could be like the rise of, you know, like CO2, which results like in creating the heat. It could be like, again, something impacting the atmosphere. But also if we go down, OK, what is causing that, right? It's all of these emissions, pollutions and even like, you know, probably industries in order for us to live. to generate electricity, probably, to generate food, and to transport, you know, things, maybe. It is so scattered, it's huge, okay? That's why for you to solve a problem like climate change, okay, you need to go back and maybe think deeply, try to kind of assess what are the various problems and causes for this issue. And then... you cannot solve it all. You might want to pick one of these problems simply. So you want to focus maybe on one problem like how we can convert waste maybe into energy. So you want to focus maybe specifically on let's say waste generated from organic waste because waste is a huge again. Okay, so you need to find one problem at a time and you start ideating the best solution around it. And then, you know, testing your solution and assumptions and validate it. Once you validate it, then you start building that solution and taking it to the market. And then it's a cycle of improving your offering until you'll be able to generate traction and you'll be growing. Okay, so in this process, you would probably follow a design thinking methodology. on which also as part of it you would do a lot of brainstorming and it would be a lot of collaborative problem solving okay by collaborating not only in with your internal team but also in engaging parties uh whether they are your customers or people like from the suppliers or to be the decision makers like or uh let's say let's say government it could be buddies as well so whoever you know could have an impact in the process that you want to design to solve you know that specific problem you are you have identified identified there are ways also to use like the six thinking hacks that gives you different perspectives and you know also other tools that are available at camper which will show you next slides as well okay so this is what you are trying to do initially is to discover a problem So your main objective by doing research and using those various tools that are available to you is simply to be able to generate what is called insights. So you're not yet at the solution level. So in order for you to understand the problem deeply, you want to generate as much insight as possible. That insight will help you to think of a creative solution. to land into a creative solution. So this is considered to be the discovery phase. So what are the various tools that could help you on your discovery phase? So one of the tools that is there is secondary research. There is also a direct observation, and there is infographic interviews that just to be done, value chain analysis, journey mapping, 360 empathy. These are good tools to help you in your discovery journey. Hence, we want to spend today some good time speaking about each one of these. So when we say about secondary research, so what we are talking about, we are talking about going deep, okay, having a research methodology. You start maybe searching on the internet about the subject, try to get, you know, find materials, sources, people who have studied this before, maybe talking to experts. Okay, getting some inputs from the internet, from videos, from recordings, from programs. So it could be from so many ways. In the research methodology, there are a lot of tools you could use on the internet or even libraries or books to read about a certain subject and try to understand the deep of the problem. Okay, another way is to have direct observation. So if you are trying to solve a problem for traffic. You can't solve it just sitting, you know, at your home. You might want to go and observe, okay, the traffic at the roads. Okay, what is the flow? Where are the issues? How's the behavior of the drivers? Okay, what's causing maybe that bottleneck at certain locations? So by observing, okay, being there, observing things on reality, you might be able to identify, again, a lot of problems. And from these problems, you want to define, okay, or prioritize. Once you want to solve first. Similarly, if you are dealing with, let's say, a customer service situation. Okay, so you might want to kind of observe things differently. Maybe you want to see like what are the different posts customers are posting in the social media? What are the different posts that comes into the website? You might want to be at the counter, see the customers who comes, what they are saying. So talk to them maybe again. So these are all different. tools helps you do that. But one of the very important tools is what is called ethnographic interviews. It's simply an interview you conduct with end users or with the stakeholders. And you start first with planning. So you know you want to approach a certain problem that it touched this type of people. So for you before going and just jumping straight to the interviews, you want first to define who I'm supposed to talk to, okay, what kind of questions I want to ask. Okay, so before you schedule interviews, try to define who are these people you are targeting, try to find those, classify, okay, try to find where they are, who are they, maybe certain names, who you know you want to meet, and then schedule an interview with them. Your schedule could be a simple casual interview. It could be a call, it could be anything which is, you know, it could be a Zoom call even. in order for you to start asking questions. Keep it easy and light. You don't want to be very formal. So because you want whoever you are interviewing to be super comfortable so they can share insights and be open to share things with you. So you have to be easy. You have to be light in the way you handle the situation. Don't make it super formal and difficult. Okay, then you would have... probably you get simply restricted answers and you will not be able to develop enough insights. So remember like the best questions to ask is to ask open questions because open questions okay will let the other party simply to speak and you want to listen more in order to be to identify you know and pay attention to to those critical areas or points that brings those insights to you. So you want to really listen. You want to, again, reiterate or ask, you know, some follow-up questions to deepen your understanding about, you know, those areas where you realize, okay, this is interesting. And, yeah, I think this is now I'm getting some inputs, okay, that helps me probably in my solutioning process. So you want, again, to ask follow-up questions, reiterate or, you know, kind of. confirm your understanding throughout that process. So your ultimate goal is to gather insights and always make notes. A lot of people just talk verbally and by the time the interview probably is over and until they have the opportunity to start compiling all the insights they gather from everyone, they forget those insights that they have got from the various people they have interviewed. So it's very important that you maintain. It's just bullet points. You don't have to have long statements, just bullet points for you to remember. Like when I met, for example, Ayman, I managed to really understand this process. This is a quick flow of that process. And we realized there is a gap and a big pain in this area. And those pain could be a result of A, B, and C. So this is called insight. It's not yet a solution. It's insight that helps you really build a solution effectively. Okay. Another methodology, which is, again, very important maybe to use, particularly to help you identify what is creating value for your customer, is a tool which is called Jobs to be Done. Okay. This tool is simply help you understand. What is the basic purpose from this exercise or this process? What kind of value your customer, at the end of the day, is looking for? So what you are trying to do is to look at the process, and you want to identify what are the various functions within this process, and then determine within this process, what is the task or function, and what is that? emotional impact it brings to my customer. What is that value? At the end of the day, it helps. So if I am using, for example, an online recruitment platform, okay, to post a job post, so what is the purpose? The ultimate purpose from that is to identify a candidate that possess the skills and expertise. Okay, and probably the behavior to fill the vacant job effectively, right? So this is the final job that I'm looking at. So in order to arrive into this result, there is a process. It starts with maybe creating a job description, identifying the budget for the post, the location. Okay, to which group I want to post it to. And then I know by doing these steps effectively, I will be able to achieve the results. And understanding this end result will help me design a process that delivers that ultimate goal of the customer. And that is the value added to the customer for me to identify the best candidate to fill my vacant job. So you could also define here what are the success metrics. and what are the outcomes you want to avoid and what possibly those actions or functions you want to do in this process. in order to maximize the success and to avoid certain negative outcomes. So this is one tool also that's helpful for you to follow in order to really give you a clear picture of what is that value you are trying to generate at the end of the day for your customer. One of the also good tools specifically is the Like you have kind of a problem where there is kind of a process. And in this process, there are like various steps. And you don't know yet, okay, where the problem is coming from. So it's called journey mapping. As you can see from the picture here, so the journey mapping, you could start like with a high level process. Like this is the awareness process, then the consideration, then the purchase, then the onboarding. and for example, their efficacy. So this is just high level classification. Then you break this process into various steps and these steps, you start assessing on them. Okay, so this is like the various tasks happens within this process and you want to understand like what are the things like might again happen in correlation at these steps. For example, this is like a banner ad. Okay, this is a landing page. There's a search. There's a... There's like various components and interactions. So you want to understand the touch points with those steps and actions. Why? Because sometimes the problem might be in one of these components, right? So if it is in one of these components, you might want to solve or improve these aspects. So you want to assess how is the emotions in each step. So here's a happy face. So, okay, everything goes well. Customer is happy. It's efficient. fast, no complaint. It started to get, well, this step maybe is not as simple as it's supposed to be. People find this difficult or they are unhappy with the result, but the next step, it looks again good and the other step, well, customers are significantly upset with it because there's a lot of problems with this, whether it is like, okay, there is slowness, the system times out. It's probably like asking multiple questions again, whether it's repetition, it could be so many factors. So you want to capture, okay, what are these pinpoints? What are they? So you need to understand. And what could be the possible areas and causes of these areas? So in a journey mapping, what's important is not designing the process. What is more important is to identify the highs and lows, which is these emotions. When the customer is at his best feelings and emotions, and when he's at worst and low points. And what are these causes that is causing those highs and lows? You are more concerned definitely about the lows. That is fine to understand what's causing the highs also, because you want to ensure that you don't change these things. part of the process. However, for the lows, you want to ensure that this is things you want to resolve by solutioning. One also, that's a good aspect for you to understand deeply your targeted customers is by creating personas. So when you create personas, you are trying to kind of mimic reality by creating multiple characters, okay, that reflects the population that you would probably, you know, interact with in the future when you run your actual business. So you want to understand what are like the different demographics aspects. So what's the age of this customer? What is his background? What's his preferences? How they behave? Okay, you could capture like different you know, demographics, that usually has an impact to your business. So you want to understand these, you know, differently. And you put different scenarios of different people. Okay, this is, for example, a local person. He is male, and he's 22 years old. He graduated from school. Okay, he's still a job seeker. He lives like maybe in Sharjah or like in Maspat or down in somewhere, you know, in Salalah, in Oman. And with that, he has certain preferences. He has this major. He prefers like usually doing exercising at this time. He loves this or that. He's a tech savvy. So this gives you a profile of personality, this candidate. So you want to test this personality into your solution. And then you would understand, okay, if I would approach this persona. What kind of process should I follow? Where should I find him? Maybe this person, I will find him online. Then I might want to consider a channel like social media using maybe an Instagram paid ad. All right. So maybe you have, again, a different persona, a female. She is like year 52. She is a mother of five. She is usually, she is a housewife. she does grocery shopping for the family, she raised the kids, she has two kids maybe at school, two still you know not at the age of school and maybe like the other two have graduated, one of them is working as self-dependent. Okay so you want to kind of where she lives, what usually she drives, how she transports, how she moves. Okay so that's again If I have this candidate and I want to put and I want to offer her the solution, what is the best way for me to approach her? So then by understanding a group of different personalities, you don't need to have so many. Try to have three to five. OK, representative. Those, I mean, personas that mostly, OK, it's the type you are trying to attract. And accordingly, by understanding these all various. Personas, you want to find what's a common channel you want to use that fits all maybe, or fits a group of them. So you embed that part of your strategy, part of your solution, part of your engagement, part of your campaign. It's very powerful to imagine that. So by just imagining customers are all the same, just I will follow this, I'll follow advertising in this place. maybe it will not work. So you need to get deeper to understand the personas of your customers, how they behave, what's their interest, where you can find them in order for you to position yourself effectively for them and position even your solution effectively before them. So usually you might identify a lot of insights or you have a lot of problems. For you to start filtering them, you need to start with brainstorming. So I have identified the problem and now I want to generate as much as solutions as possible for me to kind of solve this particular problem. Okay, so I want to, in order to be effective in brainstorming, these are some good tips to follow. So you want to really schedule a time. You don't want to have like an open time for for brainstorming. You need to set a time. You might want to engage people. So by setting a certain time for a meeting, a session for brainstorming between two to four, for example. And in this session, you have a targeted problem and goal to achieve. You want to initially to generate quantity, volumes. Don't for now, I mean, go for quality because your ultimate aim initially to generate as much. as possible in terms of solutions. So don't judge early that this solution isn't good or this solution is bad, okay? And do not criticize anyone's inputs during the process, okay? Because it will create kind of a shutdown. So do not start analyzing the solutions when you brainstorm. So you want to first encourage everyone to come up with ideas openly with no criticism, with no judgments. That gives you a higher number of ideas and usually brainstorming a good practice to use, maybe yellow knots and stick them on the wall and then start to quantify them, to sort them, to organize them, depending on themes that you want maybe to bring. So, well, these ideas are possible like for first stage of the process, maybe during. let's say If it is a sales cycle, this is like during the inquiry stage. But these solutions usually is only during like, let's say, handling the customer. But these solutions is when the customer gives feedback. Okay, so you want to create a theme that is relevant to what you want to do and classify and group these ideas together. Once you group them, you start ideating around those themes. by combining ideas, by changing things, by thinking differently, by reorganizing the order maybe, by prioritizing them. And that's how you start building your idea. And once you start that idea starting to shake, you start maybe make it much more visual. So once you have that, it becomes clear, then you start... probably start having conversations between the team to give enough time to brainstorm and then start discussing it. And this is how you probably would, at the end of the day, land at a very strong idea. So it's kind of methodology. What you want to do is simply, if I just simplify this, set specific time, okay, encourage generation as much as of ideas, don't kill any idea, don't criticize, don't judge. start sorting them, organizing them, and they start ideating, going deep and generate ideas which are like creative and then start like okay discussing the feasibility assessment which ones you want to really focus on and then definitely could move towards testing those ideas with others okay. One good way once you gather a lot of ideas okay is to use for example the six thinking hats. or for you to help you generate as much as ideas. So the six thinking hats is they are like you are as a team. Every time someone wears, you know, a hat with a certain color. So if you wear, if it is your turn to wear the white hat, you want only to touch on the facts related to your ideas. Okay. So anything like a fact, numbers. Okay. If you go about red, you want to talk only about the red hat, then it's everyone's turn to talk about the emotions. So first, I will go first, maybe like as Ayman, I'll talk about, okay, I feel this solution is excellent. I feel happy. It will make people comfortable. It is fast. So it's all about only what you talk about emotions. And then you give that same hat. to the next person and you listen from him and you pass that hat, you know, throughout your team. And every time you talk, everyone expresses emotions about the solution. This is very powerful. It unlocks, okay, perspectives that different people see about different things. So you might talk about, we go to the negative hat, okay, which is talking all about negativity, which is the black hat, and then the yellow hat about the positivity. the green hat about creativity and the blue hat about okay a general overview so you want to end and drop the recap and summarize all of these you know discussions into the blue hat when you wear the blue hat and by the way it's nice to have this real hat when you have a brainstorming session have all of these apps with you just buy different color hats or put a tag on them with a different ribbon with a different color and really it's nice to practice this. It does unlock a lot of insights which you don't usually foresee. May I interrupt you for a minute please? Sure. About the thinking hats, thank you for sharing that. I've never heard of this technique before and it sounds very exciting. I just would like to understand from you if as the leader of the team for example you will be directing the team by passing the hats and how that will go with the spirit of blessing people you know you're not directing them okay yeah so see like brainstorming has to be a comfortable setting for everyone right so what do you do is just explain to them the exercise and tell them the purpose of the exercise tell them like we will follow the six thinking hats methodology in brainstorming because we want to unlock, okay, things and perspectives from everyone. And we would like everyone to express themselves honestly, what they feel, okay? So let's start with the white hat. So explain what is the white hat? The white hat is all about facts. What do you think? Like this probably could give us like this number of customers per day or maybe like this could give us like if it's something technical, if it's a car, I feel okay based on this methodology, this go up to 250. I don't believe this will go 250 kilometer per hour or the charging of this EV battery will maybe last for 500 kilometers. So it's all about facts. So you want to just move that hat between everyone and ask them just to express themselves within saying those facts that they think about or validate assumptions that you guys came with, whether they believe on these numbers or not. Make sense? So anything has to do with facts, you want to challenge it. Yes. Then the same way you do it by moving to a different hat. So then you say, okay, now let's move about the emotion hat. I feel like, well, this is maybe going to be difficult. Why? Because of that and that. And then you pass that hat and someone else expresses emotion. No, I feel this is really going to be good because this and that and that. And it moves to someone else and he gives a different perspective, right? So what you want to do, like, okay, by all of you listening, all of these things, capturing them, you land at the end of the day to that last hat. And this gives you really something very powerful to combine all of this insight and feelings about things, positive things, negative things, creative aspects and not creative aspects, emotions, facts. So summarize, you know, OK, great. With all of this, what we all talked about, I think we should do one, two, three, four in this manner. Then someone else would say, well, no, maybe we do it in this manner. And they also must say, what if we combine this with that and add a third element in order to solve this problem? Okay. So this gives you, again, multiple final kind of, I wouldn't say final, but it gives you a bit more mature, comprehensive look of the situation. And from merging these together, you will start landing at really creative solutions. Make sense? So you want to just challenge the aspects. Think from different perspectives. and this tool will help you to do that. Another tool is Camper. It's similar to the previous Six Hat, but it looks at things from a different perspective. So for example, the S stands for substitute. So well, what if I substitute this component with this component, or this part with that part, or this process with this process? How would things work? So then you start discussing all together, well, yeah, this might work. It's not going to work. Why? Because of this, right? So what if we change the top of the packaging, okay, instead of like plastic, we want to use metal. Why? Because maybe when we start, well, metal will work because plastic is not going to work. It might melt in heat when it is like at 50 degrees out. I'm just giving an example, right? So then you might go to the C. What if we combine this item with another item or this idea with this idea with this function as part of the solution? What if we adapt, modify something to a better alternative thing? What if we modify just by making it enlarging or reducing or changing or shaping or moving order or bringing things first? end or whatever. Or how, if we use, put to another use. Okay, so, well, I have this tool. We were thinking to use it for this purpose. What if we use it for something else? You know, there are so many creative products. Today, we are using them for many purposes. I'm just laughing. This is an example. It's not commercial. But we can see Coca-Cola nowadays is being used as a polish. It's used to flush things and to kind of remove rust. Okay. But that's just, if you think how to use Coca-Cola differently, maybe this is how it is. But in a real scenario, you're still like, okay, you might have built a platform, but then you realize, well, this platform could work well for procurement services, right? And this customer service. tool that we built, we might use it for IT ticketing and IT support. Okay, so these are like different usages. You might want to eliminate and eliminate. I like this E because we tend to complicate solutions and this E, it helps us really to optimize our solution. Well, do we really need this feature? How many people will use it? Okay. Maybe we don't want, why don't we simplify the solution at this stage? And then down the line, we can put it as part of, you know, the value added services. Okay. So as you say, like, pick it up. So you want to really reduce things. As you reduce, I won't say core feature, but sometimes we over, you know, kind of build things. You don't want to overbuild. You want to optimize for that use. It is safer to start simple with focus and with something effective and enough features to really kind of make that momentum. You don't want to have all of these luxury things from day one. Make sense? you might flip or reverse or change the order in order to see how things behave. So it might, okay, you're not sure if you want to do one, two, three, or three, one, two works better. Okay, so you want to test that scenario. So Scamper gives you again a different perspective of how you look at things. And this again would unlock. more insights to you as part of the brainstorming process. So now you generated a lot of insights. You started thinking different solutions. So you want now to start identifying what is the best solution by shortlisting the exact solutions that you want to focus on. And then it's very important for you to start validating that solution. with real users, with real target customers and get feedback, at least with five. If more, it's better. But studies say if you pick five relevant customers that you are targeting and you try to test with them your solution, it gives you as good as 80% accuracy from if you have tested it with a hundred percent population okay so it's it gives you five gives you 80 assurance which is great okay so if you add more six seven and eight it will give you higher then it's not maybe 82 83 so increasing slightly okay so test at least with five people relevant people okay not just any people who has nothing to do with your product so you don't If you are bringing like a logistics solution, do not test it with a fintech guy. Get tested with someone in the logistics in that particular process that your solution is serving. All right. You could do benchmarking with a lot of things like with different ideas, with different products, with different competitors, with different countries, solutions elsewhere. That gives you also, you know, perspectives. And then you want to really refine and pick that best idea and solution that you get the most feedback, positive feedback. It seems feasible, working, everyone is welcoming. Okay. And you want to pick it on that to start working on it. Makes sense? So this is like just a quick process. So for you to really go through what I have. You need a plan. Okay, so create a simple plan. A plan is you want to understand which methodology you'll be using. We talked about various methodologies. You think based on your understanding of your product or solution, I need to go through ethnographic interviews, I need to do just to be done, I need to do journey mapping and personas. maybe. So you list a couple of tools which you think will give you the best value. Okay, you want to decide whether you will go qualitative, I would go also quantitative. So quantitative, maybe you want to do some surveys. Okay, what is that number of surveys that you think you should have in order to give you a certain level of accuracy? You need to define. So you should approach enough people to get feedback from them. Okay, so create a plan. It's important. to define a plan who are the people okay create your stakeholders list Okay, who are those people? What do I want to get from them? Okay, what should I ask them? So you could list, okay, if I'm looking at the logistics sector, I want to talk with the customers who ship things, but I want to also speak to the company who manages the logistics, and I want to speak to the driver who drives the vehicle and delivers the shipment. Okay, and I want to ask them these number of questions in order to really gain from them certain insight. Okay, try to ask, as I said, define open questions where possible. There's no problem having some closed questions, but try to really ask open questions, a lot of open questions for you to gain maximum insight. Okay, so by knowing whom to approach and you having a plan. with which tools you want to use and when and what and how that will give you a roadmap for you to start executing. Then use one of these as I said by defining those tools one of these tools there are many I couldn't I didn't cover there are so many tools guys but you want to pick which which tool works well for the type of use. you know, or for your product and solution. So you don't need to have to do them all. You need to pick three or four tools, enough, okay, as part of this. The ones which you think gives you the best insight and enough insights as well. So your ultimate goal by using all of these tools, as I said, it's not just to land as a solution. the solution will come by ideating the insights generated from all of these tools. Okay, so your ultimate goal is to generate insight, use that insight to brainstorm solutions, and then use different tools to shorten those solutions and pick the best solution that solves the problem or part or the part which is more feasible or more impactful, okay, that you have identified. Okay, in this process nowadays, there are a lot of tools that helps you do brainstorming, organize your thoughts, whether it is like you can use whiteboards, you could use like flowcharts tools. These are a couple of tools in the various processes. If you want to use like some digital platforms for ideation, you want to use maybe Miro. It's quite a nice tool. Ketritilo, idea boards. If you want to do some mind mapping software, there is like MindMeister and X. mind. In the idea management software like Medarik what we have there's also like some foreign tools Ideascale and Brightidea, these are like platforms similar to Medarik which help you know doing ideation and idea management. Okay so before I get into this next topic or slide I want to just if anyone have questions Feel free to ask. I'll probably go for another one. A question about the journey mapping, and you tied it to the emotion of the customer. So do you mean we need to go through the emotions of the customer while they are using other solutions, the solutions that they have now, or while they are using the solution we are proposing? I'm not clear on that. Yeah, actually you are assessing the current situation, right? Because so when you go, you're trying to understand the current situation. What is the frustration in the current situation? And why and at what stage that is happening? Because your solution is not yet there. You are trying to understand the deep of the problem in order to generate insight. So once you generate this insight, then you come up back to go back to them with your solution. and test it with them. Okay. So you want to test like, okay, I realized like in this process that you were not satisfied here, there and there, and there's a problem. And I'm thinking to tackle this solution by doing this and this, and this is a flow chart, how I'm going to solve this. And I want to use technology here and the technology will do this and that. What do you think? Would this something you think is going to work and will fix your problem? They'll say, well, yeah, yeah. Why not? This is good. Seems, yeah, it's working. We say, no, this is not. going to work. This might be a long process. Okay, fine. How much would it cost to introduce this? If you say like, then you start talking about some bulk part numbers, they say, well, this is too expensive. I don't think I'll go for it. So this gives you again, an idea. Okay. So what is that price? You would be willing to pay if this is going to be, you know, given to you as a solution. So it may be, well, maybe $10 a month. I will be happy to use it. Okay. So that gives you this feedback and insight. Then you go start reshaping your solution. you know and then come back to will it work now in this in this scenario say well this is great this is excellent okay makes sense you want to get until this stage by revising you know using this insight and to kind of material solution then test get feedback just get feedback improve improve and then you know you're ready to start building it does make sense i'm just probably need to wrap my head around it Because there are multiple solutions out there. So if we were to map the journey of the customer, it would be like doing an analysis of the potential competitor or later competitor. So there will be as many journeys as there are competitors or there are solutions out there. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. So that's why it's part of the research. You need to understand who are the competitors, what they are offering. have they really solved the problem which you have identified or no you want to come up with something that is you know solves the problem better than what your competitor is offering delivers more value because simply customers go for value right either it's cheaper or it works better it's more efficient it's having better interface um it's available on the cloud you know so what differentiates you these are like your unique selling points crystal clear thank you very much you're welcome right um okay any other questions so uh i see some questions like can we have recording of the interview um i'm not sure i'm not sure which interview you are trying uh you are asking about status collecting data But then my surgeon notes, can we like, okay. You want your customer? Yeah, okay, I see. So your customer, you want him, whoever you are trying to really interview, you want them to be comfortable, right? So if you want to take that permission back from him, but maybe I wouldn't really kind of I wouldn't maybe like, find that to be maybe very comfortable. comfortable you know someone because a lot of people tend to they don't like to be you know recorded so they might be careful talking so you want to have really an easy setting maybe record voice recording is better than you know video recording but you need to take the permission first if you if the person you are interviewing is very comfortable with that then it's fine Otherwise, just be ready, as I said, start making notes as you speak, try to really interact with him, you know, your face gestures, try to as much like, okay, show him that you are following what you are saying, you're trying, yes, you understand, keep like, you want to encourage him to feel as comfortable as possible, to give you as much insight, you know, as possible. And you know that he will not give you just like, well. this is an insight for you. No, you need to capture these between the lines. Okay. So as he talks, as he answers, you start, okay, well, oh, this point is important for me. I need to note it down. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. And so there's another question from Alia in the interview. How can we identify the right questions that can help us develop the idea? Okay, good. So you always start from the end. What do you want to achieve? Okay, so you want to direct your customer to a certain area to start talking about it, right? So you want to design backwards. Okay, I want to come to these, the customer to touch on those areas. So fine, then I want to, okay, how I will design the question. I want to draft the question like this. So he could open up himself in this area. Make sense? So maybe you want to think backwards. Or you think constructive questions like... step by step, you maybe start like with some basic introduction, then move to a bit more deeper and then deeper and deeper. This is like, you know, deep dive into the questions. You want to ensure that you have certain questions captured, but again, don't restrict yourselves to the questions that you have written, because the situation might bring you, you know, you want to ask a follow-up question in order to understand something much more deeply. So feel free. But those questions that you will prepare earlier, these are just general open questions to help you not to forget to ask this question to give you a certain perspective. And usually when you start doing this journey mapping, for example, you understand there are these, there are challenges in certain processes. You want to really focus on such processes, right? So you might want to ensure to ask questions in these areas. So at the end of the day, there are different ways of developing questions. As I said, you might want to do some progressive questions, deep dive, some ice openers, some certain questions that you know you want to get into an answer to. And then just manage the situation as it goes. Okay, so there's a question, how to motivate people to participate in the interview? Okay, so when we say an interview, it doesn't need to be like sitting, like, okay, let's hear like, you know, a formal interview. No, it's casual, just it's nothing then, okay, you're calling someone, well. I would love to meet you to really gain certain. I'm working on something very interesting, and I think you could add a lot of value into what I'm doing. Would you please grant me half an hour of your time at your convenience, maybe 20 minutes of your time at your convenience, to kind of give you a brief what I'm trying to do? Also, gain valuable insights out of your experience. Okay, so this is maybe one way you talk nicely. Make him excited about what you do for him to feel like, yes, I want to be part of what you are doing. You know, I want to be really, give you inputs. Show him like how valuable he is, how his inputs could make a difference. And you're really interested to hear his, and you value his opinion. Thank you for here. Yep, yep, agree. But just a question, is it okay to offer money for an interview? Because I heard about this practice when if you want to conduct an interview, you can share something for your time. I will give you, you know, this amount. Is it okay or do you think it will not lead to good results? These kind of things, maybe you want to pay, yes, to have a lot of time. If you may be reaching really an expert, and this expert is... quite known that this is like you know how usually he engaged because there are out experts there that they don't engage unless you pay them so that's okay it's one way okay but as I said you want those interviews you don't want to always to just interview the experts you want to interview the people who would use your solution and usually these are normal people and usually they are just by stepping down, you know, they're taking permission, gently, you know, try to reach to them on maybe LinkedIn. They usually like to find them to be collaborative. You might use some of your references also. So you know, like, okay, your friend knows someone, you might want to ask your friends, your families. to introduce you to people they know. That's also a good way for doing it. It's easy for you to utilize your network first, and your network will introduce you to people who can give you that value. So if your first level of network doesn't have such people, you want to get to your second level, and this is where you use some of those people, which is called connectors, to connect you. you know, to the relevant people who can help you. clear thank you okay miras i think how do i go about creating a user persona if the end user of my product is a corporate or a business entity rather than an individual user okay so um ultimately like The end user is definitely, could be like it's a solution for corporates, right? The person who is going to decide that they need your product is definitely a person, right? So you want really to create a persona of that person. It's fine sometimes to create also like a profile of what kind of businesses or segments. Okay, in which domain, in which level, in which maturity you want to focus. You want to focus on large consulting firms because your solution is only fit for large consulting firms. So this is your target customers. Okay, but you definitely are approaching whom? Your customers that could be a CEO or like the partner of this consulting company because this is the decision maker, right? he's the one who usually gonna make a decision to buy a solution like yours. Or is it the IT guy in this company? The IT guy is still a person working in a corporate, in this industry, on this vertical, he's located in the capital, or he is, she is a female or is a male. Make sense? Yes, perfect. Thank you so much. Yeah. Okay, so we'll come back to the questions. I wanted to tell you that we are now at sprint two. And sprint two, as you know, as we explained previously, we have a review milestone. So simply by the end of this sprint, which will be by next Tuesday, we would conduct a deep, in Atma Dark, a deep review of your work from sprint zero to sprint two. And our ultimate goal is to ensure that you are having already started the process and you have identified the problem and you started that validation process. Okay, some of you might not end up still having a validated problem, which is fine, okay, for us, because there are complexities. Each problem is different, you know, some problems in order to be validated might need a little bit longer. That's fine. You can catch up in sprint three, four or five. But what we want to ensure that you update the actions that you've been taken so far and you have taken since then. So ensure that you fill the full sprint and ensure that it turns into complete status. Okay. That's important for us. We want to ensure that you have really you are progressing, you understand this, you started reflecting on the content, you started taking some tasks, steps towards taking action in order to identify the problem, to validate it with real customers. So simply, the discovery phase, which we are talking about, for the problem. Now we are still not talking about ideas you already landed onto like the best idea yet. No, it's fine. Well, we want to understand that you have landed into a real problem, validated. It's a pain. And you have some initial thoughts and ideas for how you could solve this. Okay? Make sense? Any question about this review stage? This review stage is very critical because for us, passing this review, okay, is crucial for you to move into the next milestone. So what will happen? If we after post our review, we'll give you feedback. Okay. In case we have highlighted, we will tell you whether you have passed the review or you're not. If you haven't passed the review from the first review, we will give you an extended few number of days, maybe three to five days to kind of fill the gaps that you have. Okay. Once you do that, okay, we definitely, we will. we will give you that passing to the next step in the process. So don't be worried about it. It's just a process that we follow in order to ensure. you are creating value, you are benefiting from the program, you are moving ahead, and you are on track. Any question about the review? Just a quick question, Ayman. We see, I'm looking at the website now, and it shows that the end date is today, but you just said that the end date will be next week. Yeah, sorry. Sprint 2, because over there, the number Sprint 2 comes from... the system so we had actually sprint zero is uh is showing sprint one sprint two is showing as it's gonna show us sprint three okay so don't confuse yourself with it go with the name on the sprint we we clearly mark it i'm gonna show it it's just simply this sprint which is will end by next week all right okay clear thank you yeah it's clear we go by by the title rather than the number. Okay. So simply, this print would be a reflection of the design thinking and idea. So the purpose we want, I wanted to show you these tools to give you this week to go back, maybe if you couldn't validate things using these methodologies and these steps, this is again, you know, another deeper insight for you to reflect again and, you know, go meet a couple of customers, maybe. or follow these steps to document your analysis and brainstorming. At the end of the day, what we want to see is you have been applying the knowledge and you are really validating things with the real customers as part of this process. Make sense? Okay. Anyone have any question? Feel free now to ask any questions you have. It's like whether even we have half an hour, you could use it for mentoring, for any question you have about any sprint, about something coming. Feel free, the floor is yours, yes. Well, let's use time since you are offering it. So how the coaching session of tomorrow will work? What will be the agenda of the coaching session or the monitoring the mentoring session that we will have tomorrow? See all our mentoring sessions is designed around your startup. So each startup has its own progress Okay, so what we do we monitor that progress and we understand in every session What have you done? So we want to get quite kind of a quick update where you are. Okay, what challenges you're facing And we help you with the next step as you go. Okay. So that's why we don't maintain one common theme for everyone for the mentoring. Some of you already have an MVP. We are talking now for them how to take their MVP and test it. Okay. But some of you are still much earlier in the process. They're still not clear with the problem. So we've been helping them as, okay, how to really come and kind of scope their problems. So it depends. It depends. where you are. Thank you. You're welcome. So we always encourage you to book every week because that shows us like where it gives us an update from one aspect and it helps you answer those ambiguities as you go in the process so you don't waste time. okay so who wants to have any questions yes if i am able to to like validate the impact of the solution or the product and the feasibility even if it's i don't know if it looks even to the candidates i'm interviewing it may look like bigger than being possible So would that like, what's the best practices here? Shall I like chunk it into pieces and go for like smaller products? Or shall I try to convince them with the new ideas of preparing for the sales process afterwards? What's the best practices? What's your advice? So I understand from you that. After running your solution with your customers, you realize like there's feedback coming. this is like maybe bigger than right than what they want even ahead of time i'm expecting this because it's like you know okay yeah the feasibility yeah yeah um i think um if you really have this feeling that this is too big to start with you want to really prioritize the features you want to start with my opinion and you want to refocus your solution around those features initially and then you know you could expand it to gradually as the customer starts adopting your solution you want to make it easy to understand and crystal clear that it is really solving that specific pain the customer has so what you don't want to have is like well our solution solves this and this and that and this and that and that so the customer gets okay kind of confused here like oh this is too much like oh look i can i am concerned about is that step so it's for you you need to know and you need to ensure also that that particular problem is the biggest problem everyone is really facing and the rest is like okay it's value-added features but they are not really core uh features currently for the solution make sense so that's you want to test that assumption For the customer segmentation, is it like always, even if I can cover more segments, still I will do it segment by segment, the same concept? It is easier that you initially define a segment and approach that segment because this really is an optimized way. You create a campaign that fits all similar companies because they are in that same segment. You would be able to kind of have... quicker accessibility to larger like numbers faster cheaper and once you really kind of have enough penetrate i mean good number of customers there's no harm for you to go into another segment it's fine so it depends on your solution at the end of the day and whether these segments are really the best way to go because in some certain solutions going even more segments initially it's fine if your solution could fit or usually it is of a higher interest to a specific segment more than others i will suggest you really start with that segment okay so i think there's a couple of questions on the chat um can we edit our sprints like you can edit the sprints anytime earlier You could go back to sprint zero and edit it. It's fine. You could edit, continue editing. But you need to try to catch up always with the deadline because each sprint has a deadline of one week. If you do not complete it within a week, you will see our team is reminding you and they will ask you, giving you some extended timeline for you to submit because we want to ensure that you progress. But try to catch up as soon as possible. fast as possible. Okay, so Keiji Laban, very informative, continues to be insightful and timely, keep up the great work. Thank you for the good positive feedback. Okay, anyone have other questions, feel free to ask. We have 20 minutes to go. Some of you, I haven't met you so far, so Keiji, maybe Laban. if you could maybe if you could give us something some brief about what you are trying to work on would be would be great and it maybe like some of you who couldn't have you know couldn't attend so far our mentoring session so maybe you want to use this time slot to tell us about your startup Yes, Eamon, I'm going to have a mentoring session with you on tomorrow. So that's when I'm hoping to engage you at least at that point. Great. Yes. Wonderful. Okay. Thank you. Yes. Also, I encourage everyone, like, when you please join our session, it's good to mark. or mention your name properly. So just rename your name so we could understand that you have attended the session. So for example, Batul, do you want to give us some idea? Do you want to share what you're working on? I mean, yes, you want to go. Hey, man. How are you doing? A question, just a quick question. You checked my Sprint tool? Yes, I have done so. okay can we uh take the this time as a mentor session because because I want to be a question if you can give me a feedback uh sure yes uh first do you have any specific question um I just I want to listen to your feedback from okay okay so let me open it because i will not be able to attend tomorrow to be honest yeah that's fine no worries so let's take it as a case as a use case i will i'll give you just uh with feedback just let me open uh your sprint first uh so just uh rami you want to maybe meanwhile talk to me what's what is like the updates you have done since we last talked okay so so one second actually i followed the articles they mentioned articles and i followed the dimension strategies to for the empathy map and the matrix impact and the feasibility matters so i feel the the data depends on the these strategies Just one second. So I think like I can see you have identified like 10 problems. It seems to be like the mean well thought of. You move to the prioritization, you follow the metrics to identify the most impact and the most feasible solutions. Okay, so I think privacy, I can sense, is something you're trying to kind of highlight, right? and finding specialized support uh privacy for finding the affordability the affordability and accessibility yes specialization privacy and affordability yeah when i think like what type of solution you are trying to do i think this makes sense to me uh so i think you are you have identified it seems to be the top problems yet as i said um i want to see really like the results when you talk to the people so i'm going maybe down um so what happens when you start talking to people what do you expect when you start talking have you started how have you have you talked i can't see you've built some personas you followed the template very nicely actually actually i followed i followed the the observation strategy so yeah observation asking some people uh struggling with addiction uh from around me uh from family from friends um yeah so i did with i deal with uh people who are struggling with addiction in adult content on smoking um couples uh struggling with smoking addiction and the third time I can recall. So yeah, it's through observation asking the people around me. Excellent. See, like I just said, like the most important part here is really to test what this thoughts and ask people who you are targeting. Okay. So you ask people around you. Yes. That's fine. That's okay. Then you might want to really to ask people who have gone under treatment also. Okay, so... and you might want to talk to some therapists as well. So yeah because it's marketplace yeah. Yeah so I highly really advise you so what you have done is good, good impact, okay good inputs here, nice personas okay and I can see like that different personas with different backgrounds and demographics, different age groups as well. Yes. So that gives you, you probably started realizing And maybe you want to also reflect now and show others, like when you completed this exercise, what are your takeaways? So you felt like you started to understand how probably different people think, right? And how they are different and how you should bring a solution that kind of aligns with a larger group of people, right? Yes. Okay, so that's something. And also you started prioritizing, okay, where's the main pain points based on the questions and observations that you had? And you answered, I think you came up with three already, which makes the most problematic areas, like for biggest pain points for such customers or target audience. Then you move towards like the brainstorming and generated as much as ideas. Okay. And I can see like you followed mind map, methodology. So I think it's in terms of process. you're following the process what at the end of the day is important is how you take this insight now okay and you shape it into a solution that is competitive that solves the pain that brings value and it's not necessarily similar to what is all out there yes exactly okay So I want you to really, if you ask, so I would ask you based on this, do you think, have you landed at that moment, which gives you enough insight to tell you like, okay, now I see the big picture. I see also where I can solve, you know, this clearly and differently as well, because you don't want to repeat what others have done. Yes. So did you arrive at that moment? I can see, I want to ask you whether really you got that feeling yet or not. Yes, yes I did. Okay, which is excellent. And that's what we are trying to aim to is really to guide you towards coming to that moment because that moment will help you create that unique solution. Okay, this sprint ends at this level. okay and it's it comes with like maybe a couple of solutions at the end of the day from promising ideas and i can see that you have listed five okay i listed the yes five yeah okay so um i can't now tell you which one works better okay it's now you know the step unit to start ideating maybe testing some of these thoughts the next sprint you need to come up with a high fidelity maybe concept and you need to take that concept and take it to a couple of end users and test it and just see what they're saying yes will this something they it will work for them make sense yes i think you might want to talk to a therapist and then ask the therapist maybe to ask his patients uh this is uh yeah this is the idea that i'm uh i wanted to tell you about the marketplace actually because it's uh you're dealing with the therapist and you're dealing with uh with the patients so we can yeah for validation maybe sometimes it's difficult to know the patients unless you have patient within which you know from your family or from because patients usually in this domain you know they have privacy right so so in this case you want really maybe to use others maybe kind of have some generic surveys or ask some therapist yes by asking for a solution ask them to test it with there and get that get you that feedback or maybe you want to kind of go and take permission to have some access to talk with some patients as well so these are all different ways and you could just highlight the privacy and the purpose for doing this and maybe they will allow you to do it So it's crucial for you to test this with relevant audience as I said, those solutions and for you just bringing a solution like this is difficult really to kind of see and understand. So you want to now think how would you transform one of the or two or merge you know some of these solutions into an offering and that offering how would you go about it now to show it you know to others. So what is that prototype you will create? So do you want to if this is an app or is this a website? In the website would you create a landing page, a couple of landing pages just in HTML or you want to create them in Figma just designs. or it could be wireframes as simple as wireframes, you know, like this is what I have a platform, which has this feature, that feature, this feature, this works like this. It goes through these steps and this is how you gain that value. Make sense? Makes sense. Thank you so much. Something simple. Okay. So anyone have other questions? Hello, yeah, Aiman, I have maybe a question. Who's with me? I can see iPad 4 speaking. My name is Fares Al-Basahidi. I have a question about the interviewing process. So you were talking about finding specialized people. How would we find, like, for your example with logistics, if I was running a logistics company, I wanted to find some... tips to improve my business, how would I find the specific people? Do I just go on LinkedIn and find people that work in companies and ask them to give tips and feedback on my business or what? Okay. So it is just to clarify, it's not necessarily you are talking to specialized people. What you need to do is to talk to targeted customers. So you know, like the problem you're trying to solving will help these type of people. So you want to get answers for your questions from relevant people. Make sense? So they don't need to be like necessarily experts. Okay, it's fine to talk still with an expert. That's fine. But you want to talk also with people who are on this thing on day-to-day basis, and this solution will serve them. Make sense? So how you can find them? Well, you can first, you know, like you could start, okay, it depends on your solution. I'm not sure what is it. So I can tell you probably where you should go, but you need to understand, okay, fine. Who are these users by identifying them? They are the potential users eventually who will pay for this product. Then you need to go, okay, where can I find them? You could check like on directories. Maybe you can identify us. your friends do you know or family do you know someone works in this field um and and then let them do that introduction tell them i want to talk to them maybe or just have a quick interview with them you could also walk to some of these companies or to some of these service providers or customers so if you are trying to solve a problem to logistics and you might think like okay you someone maybe like on 3 p.m. would help you. Okay, when I say 3 p.m., maybe you want to focus on warehousing or in maybe like door-to-door delivery. So you go to these companies, speak to them, try to identify people, and just gently try to see if they can help you with a few minutes of their time to ask them a couple of questions or have a dialogue. So it could be someone, it could be even a driver. It's fine. It could be someone working at a warehouse. It could be someone managing, like, planning for shipping for his corporate. You could find them everywhere. Logistics is huge. So it depends what is the solution and the problem you're trying to solve. Try to find those relevant, which this problem concerns them. They are the ones who will help you getting the answers. Okay, thank you. yeah okay okay so the zainab i think much uh yes so every tuesday is the deadline of each sprint so um try to close your sprint so bye next Tuesday, try to be up to date. with Sprint 2. So it should be Sprint 0, Sprint 1, and Sprint 2 up to date. That will go into the review process. Okay. So any other question? We have seven minutes to go. Anyone wants to kind of share with us what they are working on? we have like dekera um serena like i heard from you i think uh zaynab maybe you wanna if you wanna talk or tacy anyone of you wanna share their salt nabila okay so no one have any question um or then hopefully like you benefited from this session things are clear for you you know what's next so i'm looking forward hopefully to see you all during the mentoring session if you haven't booked a slot yet ensure to book you know your slot and looking forward to catch up with all of you and to see your next session Thank you all. Take care all. Assalamu alaikum. Thank you. Thank you. Assalamu alaikum.