The Brief

Customer: African Sentinel from Kenya 🇰🇪

Project: How to identify their unique value proposition?

Services: UX Research and ideation

Mission duration: 3 weeks

The African Sentinel is a Kenyan media platform that celebrates African voices. They tested the media concept through social media for one year. Based on this result, they decided to develop their digital platform.

The team was struggling to prioritize what to do next, focusing on the technical side of the platform.

As a Product designer, I assisted them in focusing their energy on their tangible next step to better understand their customer’s problems.

The Problem

The concept was tested on Facebook groups with paid ads.

“…The test had produced results in terms of the “following”, but was sluggish on the interactive metrics…”

African Sentinel co-founder

It wasn’t easy to understand why people would or not interact with the concept.

Solution

As a product designer, I needed to listen to and understand the project’s core value. So we did three interviews to answer those questions:

1. Why this project? To understand and set the unique value proposition.
2. How to validate your assumption? First, identify two types of targeted customers close to African sentinel’s values and easy to talk to.

After those interviews, they were able to:

1. Refocus their energy and resources on re-testing the project concept to be more interview-focused and be closer to customers’ feedback;
2. Restructure the initial approach to the launch of the web application to a smaller scale and manageable series of content delivery channels.

The result

Avoided the costly implementation of a technical platform by creating a different strategy using free digital channels, interviews, and online surveys.

“…This has relieved a lot of the start-up clutter and noise that was bogging down the actualization of the project.”

”We are confident that this is all achievable, and we are looking forward to reaching our objectives in the forthcoming months.”

African Sentinel co-founder

Do you need to take a step back on your project and focus your resources on what’s makes your project stand out?

Don’t hesitate to book a free session here!

Contact the African Sentinel Co-founder