A key challenge in this project was finding the right balance between the CEO’s sales-driven focus and my commitment to user-centric design. While the CEO prioritised marketability, I emphasised the importance of understanding the problem and user needs to ensure we weren’t creating something no one wants. I believe a human-centred approach guides us toward marketability.

To align our efforts, I guided the team through the persona exercise to ensure we were broadly aligned and understood who we were designing for. It was helpful that our personas roughly embodied DVF—desirability (end users); viability (customers); and feasibility (implementation partners and IT departments). I then directed the team to focus on what the product delivers to the end user and how they might like to experience it.

During this exercise, I introduced a method of documenting our assumptions, with the agreement to validate them later rather than getting bogged down in minor details early on. This method kept us focused and helped prevent us from spreading ourselves too thin.

We were then able to break off to validate our assumptions individually—me on design, our CTO and AI architect on feasibility, and our CEO and product manager on viability, collaborating along the way. Ultimately, it enabled us to overcome the initial hurdle of spinning our wheels while trying to solve everything all at once.