Tag Archives: understanding

Not Disaggregating the Informal Economy Properly Hinders Development Efforts

By Niti Bhan | Published: April 12, 2017

Michael Kimani (@pesa_africa) brought this prize winning essay on the importance of understanding the informal economy to my attention, together with a snippet of text from our last inception report highlighting a major oversight that we believe is of critical importance. Mike took issue on Twitter with the author’s very first sentence introducing his work […]

Posted in Africa, Assumption filter, Biashara Economics, Informal & Flexible, Literature review, Perspective, Prepaid Economy & Informal Sector, Research, Sub Saharan Africa | Also tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Design research as a method for discovering & understanding the world around us

By Niti Bhan | Published: December 1, 2015

Variously known as User Centered Design (UCD) or Human Centered Design (HCD), the fundamental philosophy underlying the designer’s approach to problem solving is that of discovery – “figuring out how to make something that will work in this context”. Innovation, invention and novelty rarely have pre-scripted processes due to the as yet unknown, and often, […]

Posted in Africa, Assumption filter, Design, Ecosystem, Emerging Markets, Frameworks, Innovation Planning, Perspective, Process, Research, Sub Saharan Africa, UCSD, User research | Also tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Designing with Understanding

By Niti Bhan | Published: September 1, 2013

Wroblewski 2007, Designing with Vision The last 6 years have been nothing more than constant proving of this philosophy and approach, as embodied in the design pyramid as captured by LukeW back in the day. As an ardent proponent of exploratory user research (Chipchase and Jung, 2007) this conceptual image just burst into a million […]

Posted in African Consumer Market, Design, Frameworks, Perspective, Process, UCSD, User research | Also tagged | Leave a comment

Understanding at the bottom of the design pyramid

By Niti Bhan | Published: September 5, 2012

source Before we can give form – and it does not have to be a tangible product but could even be a service, a business model or a strategy – to what we wish to do, its not enough to step back to just the function level, one must step even further back to envision […]

Posted in Assumption filter, Base of the Pyramid, Design, Frameworks, Innovation Planning, Perspective, Process, Systems, UCSD, User research | Also tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The difference between what and why

By Niti Bhan | Published: January 17, 2012

Today’s meeting threw up an interesting observation that made me think about problem areas, how they’re identified and how they may be deconstructed. In simpler terms, the difference between the “what” and the “why”. Take two regions in a country, one far more fertile and having a better overall economy than the other. Yet both […]

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Caution: The emerging African market PDF stampede

By Niti Bhan | Published: September 13, 2011

This  PDF report on the emerging consumer market opportunity in Sub Saharan Africa comes to us from Accenture, the most recent in the long line of consulting firm offerings that started with McKinsey’s in June 2010.  In order to differentiate themselves from the migrating herd, they offer us a single customer segmentation model for the […]

Posted in Analysis, Base of the Pyramid, Business, Ecosystem, Emerging Markets, Innovation Planning, Marketing, Prepaid Economy & Informal Sector, Process, Research, rural, Strategy, urban | Also tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment