We accompanied the IFP in the design of a digital tool for leaders and local governments that want to promote participatory processes with good practices and connect organizations that share the same needs.
CONTEXT:
Fundación Ideas para la Paz (FIP) is a center for independent thought and action created in 1999 by Colombian entrepreneurs. It generates knowledge and develops innovative initiatives that seek to contribute to the debate and public policies, as well as to strengthen institutional and citizen capacities. It also accompanies the public sector, the business sector, civil society and the international community in actively contributing to peace, security and sustainable development, as interconnected agendas.
As part of the partnership between the Civic Fund developed by Civic House and Luminate, Kubadili accompanied FIP in a Product Discovery process, jointly devising with the organization's team a digital tool that connects leaders and governments with needs, promoting participatory processes through these new links.
El equipo de la FIP y Hernan Dos Santos, facilitador de Kubadili, en plena sesión de trabajo. Foto: Hernán Dos Santos/Kubadili
CHALLENGES:
FIP came to us with a challenge: they wanted to create a "Waze of Participation", a digital application that would drive participatory processes oriented towards peacebuilding. Although they had a general idea of the product and its purpose, they needed a methodology that would allow them to ground the idea, identify the needs to which it would respond and build a roadmap to develop it.
METHODOLOGICAL DESIGN:
Once the challenge was detected, the FIP and Kubadili teams - led on this occasion by Hernan Dos Santos - began to work on the development of this idea through the concept of Product Discovery: a methodology that aims to get closer to the users or recipients in order to identify risks and opportunities during the development of a product or service. It is an ideal method for generating innovative ideas, whether for the creation of a product or service or for the resolution or improvement of existing problems or challenges, and what differentiates it from other similar methodologies is that it focuses on the real needs of users and involves them in the search for innovation.
WORKING PROCESS:
The first stage in the Product Discovery process that both teams went through was the discovery stage: as the FIP team had a clear idea of the product they wanted to generate, they started by defining the scope of the product or service, surveying the hypotheses of the identified problem and agreeing on the main features/functionalities of the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) with the key stakeholders involved.
During this stage, the teams also used dynamics such as brainstorming or the NFB (Need, Functionality and Benefit) methodology to identify the different problems that could arise in the product development process, prioritize them according to their impact and severity, and find solutions to counteract them. This finally allowed them to formulate the first product hypothesis.
"I would say that Kubadili's methodology and way of working [...] has been very pleasant and dynamic; always listening and proposing useful and relevant exercises. It has been very pleasant, and it was a very fraternal relationship exercise, and that also seemed very important to me at this initial moment when we are trying to give shape to an idea, and to understand the place of the technological solution within that idea" Paulo Tovar, Director of Fundación Ideas para la Paz (FIP)
The second stage consisted of defining who the potential users would be and what would be their relationship with the product or service to be developed. The teams worked on the Persona Design (they modeled a hypothetical user taking into account different parameters, habits and customs) and on the user's path map, making a graphic presentation of the stages of the user's relationship with the application.
RESULTS:
After completing the discovery and development stages, both teams immersed themselves in the development and validation of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP), i.e. that product that can be developed with the least possible effort and that contains some functionality for the end user. To do this, they called on a group of volunteers whose profile matched the Persona Design previously done to test the MVP and give their opinions on it. This allowed the teams to test their idea with low risk, and to verify if it could be of interest to the target user group.
The feedback was encouraging: although there were some technical aspects that could be improved, the vast majority of the users who took part in this pilot test were satisfied with the product, and highlighted how innovative and powerful it could be to promote participatory processes for peace and bring together knowledge, experiences and practices of these processes to enrich the approaches to address the processes and connect leaders and local governments that wish to promote them.
RESULTS IN THE VOICE OF THE PROTAGONISTS:
"Kubadili's support has been very important for us because while we had a general idea of what we wanted to do based on the experience we had, we needed a specific methodology to land that idea, to concretely identify the proposal we wanted to. promote, as well as the needs it responded to and how we could build a roadmap to develop that solution.
It has helped us to consolidate several questions about our idea that do not refer to the idea itself but to the way in which we give it a visible face, we turn it into a prototype that we can discuss with potential users, which helps us to ask ourselves how far we want to go, what the stages of implementation can be and the different modules or themes that this idea can acquire. So I think that in that sense it has helped a lot to turn the idea into a more concrete project", Paulo Tovar, Director of Fundación Ideas para la Paz (FIP).
RESULTS IN NUMBERS:
The accompaniment lasted 21 hours, 6 of which were dedicated to design and 15 to product development.
12 members of the FIP team participated.
1 Kubadili specialist participated.
1 MVP was delineated.