Prior to the Beginning - Background Context
IFA! IFA!! IFA!!! That was my exclamation as we rounded up the first week training as a product manager with the 2021 Jan Cycle IFA Fellowship. It was a mixture of exasperation, excitement, releasing tension and eagerness to start the next week. It's difficult to express with words, but fellow Fellows would understand exactly what i mean. Rather than watch videos and read a few articles, then submit assignments, IFA is implementing a compressed version of what it feels like to undergo a design thinking n sprint with an end product in the form of an hackathon with deliverables peppered at specific checkpoints.
The Beginning - The problem statement
Right from the get go, the undercurrent theme seems to be "Work hard and catch fun while doing so". Brave fellows shared their 60 seconds pitch from which everyone had to vote and decide which idea to work on. By choice, I'm working with my fellows @Akin, @John and @uche on tackling the issue of funding and providing access to basic education for out of school kids and at the same time incentivizing them. A lot of kids are out roaming the streets without hope or much interest in Education. We each brainstormed on how best phrase the problem statement. After deliberation and voting, we came up with "Providing and funding basic access to quality basic education for out of school kids."
First Pit Stop - Empathize
In the first design thinking meet, the first curve ball was in assuming our primary persona are the kids themselves. While they are the basic beneficiaries of the possible solution, they are not the ones with purchasing power/decision makers. This was quickly pointed out to us by our facilitator and we made necessary adjustments.
Pit Stop Check 1 : Interview
The interviews were continuous and simultaneous with the other Empathizing techniques. With several iterations of interview and interview reviews, we decided to reach out to three sets of customers to get multiple views of the issue
(a) the out of school kids
(b) the parents
(c) the teachers/school owners/ ex-corp members that taught in remote rural areas.
The interview questions were drafted with one major goal in mind - get the interviewee to share their stories, share their hopes and share possible barriers they envision to them getting educated.
Pit Stop Check 2: How Might We
In the next design meeting, we practiced the "How Might We" technique. This helped us rephrase the question in a different light. At the end of the session, we had rephrased the problem statement as "Many children in Nigeria are missing out on quality education due to reasons such as poverty and wrong parent/guardian orientation - how might we enable kids that are not receiving basic education in Nigeria access to it?"
Pit Stop Check 3: Story Share and Capture
In the next design thinking meet, it was focused on sharing stories of the interviews. While the interviews revealed a lot we did not in our wildest imagination think about (more on that in a bit), I also learnt new ways of viewing a situation. Listening to each other and giving feedback, we fed off each others stories and generated new insights, weighty insights, we otherwise might have missed. A few included insights such as include
The impact of Culture on the Pursuit of Education in Northern Nigeria. The outcome include early marriage and the low value attached to western education compared to Arabic education, and how little will power is put into implementing/enforcing access to basic education in such communities
Expectations and models for boys and girls. For children living in low income/crime riddles areas, education is low on the priority list. Gender based violence affects the girl child and boys are expected to grow up to become street ruffians and gangsters. That is the model they have to look up to.
The undefinable but tangible insight of "Street Credibility". The communities where solutions are implemented have to see the solution as their own. Not some government project. Often times, when solutions are not owned by the community, the solution falls into disrepair and slowly but surely dies out.
This insights made enabled us revisit the problem statement with new understanding
Pit Stop Check 4: Point of View
In the several learning resources shared, the thread that weaves through all at the Empathize stage, was "You Don't Really Know, until you let the customer talk". Let the customers talk about their problems (not the features they want) while you listen and probe (without offering solutions). Just learn about the customer and his/her pain points. And boy did we learn. New points of view emerged as we interviewed personas from the 3 stated categories.
Functional Views
How useful is education to the kid giving his/her economic circumstance? In going back to school, he/she becomes an economic burden on the parents again. When he/she is through with that stage of schooling, what next awaits him/her? He/ She is not fully employable. Hence, the parents and child themselves prefer to stay away from school and continuing earning - no matter how little the earnings might be. How many of the kids themselves see themselves as the "book type"?
View Point: Must Education equate to the Biology and Chemistry of the 4 walls of a classroom. Can we redefine education as becoming literate and possessing the skillset needed to further improve yourself in any chosen field of endeavor (entrepreneurial, apprenticeship, academic, white collar)?
Social Views
How does becoming educated affect their social status? How does going back to school affect the child's social standing amongst his/her peers? Does he/she rise higher or lower? Or willingly leaves that social ladder for another?
View Point: Must becoming educated (as explained in the first view point above) equate to the child not being able to apprenticeship and earn?
Emotional Views
The kids interviewed (early teens and above) are keenly aware of not wanting to be a burden to their parents anymore. How does the child feel about becoming 100% dependent on the same parents that could not initially cater for them as they go back to school?
View Point: How about providing literacy with a heavy dose of entrepreneurial/ business skillset?
This is still and ongoing process but I can tell you what design thinking (and by extension, product management) feels like. For me its best illustrated by this picture
See those whorls, those are adjustments and iterations. You sometimes have to take 2-3 steps backwards and reconsider in order to move 4-5 steps forward as new insights become available to the team.
See you at the next phase!