Must read Product, Startup and Design threads
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Charities need better digital technology for communicating with their service users
The Catalyst article ‘The top ten digital challenges facing the charity sector‘ showed how a number of charities were struggling with identifying and using the right platforms for communicating and providing digital services with their service users (number 2). Charities are facing this struggle because the products on the market are not designed to meet their needs. They need a different kind of digital communication technology, one that is built with privacy and security in mind that allows people from within the organisation to talk to people outside.
Charities delivering their services online need different types digital products and platforms to do so. They might need to implement an email service to send information to people, or social media tools to facilitate a shift in how they advocate for change, or as many charities are doing during times of social distancing, using communication technologies to support their service-users. Often the choice of technology is informed by what they currently have available and the cost, but it’s important to understand the different types products and what impacts the choices might have.
When we talk about digital communication technologies we mean synchronous methods such as video, audio and chat, and not asynchronous like email. There are three well established ‘product spaces’ for communication technologies.
- Products managed by an organisation used by its staff within an organisation.
- Products managed by organisations to communicate (one way) with people outside the organisation.
- Products managed by the third-party owners and used by people socially.
We could understand how they compare to each other by placing them in a grid which shows that products can be grouped by the type of users, whether they are consumer users or business users, and by usage, that is whether they are used within an organisation or out in public internet.
So, for example, digital communication technologies like Whatsapp are designed to be used by consumers on the public internet. Companies often add ‘business’ features to their products in an attempt to increase their market share but the product is usually still fundamentally designed as a consumer product for use on the public internet.
We’re seeing a need for products in a fourth space; that of communication products that allow people within an organisation to communicate with those outside the organisation in secure and private ways, but lets understand the other three a bit better first.
Products managed by a charity and used by its staff for communication within the organisation.
These kinds of products, such as Microsoft Teams, are typically manged by internal IT teams or third party agencies. They are designed from the point of view that security is established by the (digital) walls of the organisation and that it will only be used by people who work for the charity, who will all have managed user accounts.
Why charities might use this type of product
Products like MS Teams are built for collaborative working and are great for communicating between colleagues. They can be suitable for communicating with service-users in some cases, but it’s important to understand that they are built on the assumption that everyone using the product belongs to the same organisation and so should know who each other is. Because of this, these products are not built with the privacy of users in mind, which can cause problems if how they are used to communicate with service-users is not thought through clearly and carefully. MS Teams can allow external users to join video and audio calls without having access to the other features in Teams, which could be used for supporting individual service-users. And it allows guest users to be added, giving them access to more features and might be used to allow volunteers to work collaboratively with employees.
Of course, the other scenario where products like MS Teams would be used to do video calls with service-users is where there is no alternative product. In the real world, where a charity doesn’t have sufficient funds to procure an alternative tool, it is better to do something rather than nothing, and it is better to use a product that has a high degree of security than one that doesn’t.
When not to use this type of product
Products like MS Teams aren’t suitable for working with groups of service-users where privacy and safeguarding are concerns. This is because MS Teams reveals the identity of users by default, so any situation where groups of service-users interact in a digital space provided by the charity, they all become known to each other and, depending on the product settings, can contact each other without anyone from the charity knowing. Revealing personally identifiable information about a service-user to other people is a data breach, and putting vulnerable people in situations where they can be contacted by someone they don’t know could create safeguarding concerns.
Users can be made pseudo-anonymous by creating false accounts but this creates a potential information security risk for the organisation as they are then considered part of organisation (from the system point-of-view) and so could have access to documents that contain sensitive and private information, and further adds to the potential safeguarding concern as even though no individual knows the name of any other individual they can still have un-monitored contact with them.
A charity set on using MS Teams could go a step further by creating a separate instance of Teams for service-users and implementing monitoring tools and processes, but it isn’t a quick or easy solution and requires considerable expertise and investment.
Products managed by a charity to communication one-way with people outside the organisation.
A charity’s website is a good example of this type of product. It offers one way communication from the charity to it’s website visitors. There are still security concerns with websites, but as this type of product isn’t used for digital service delivery via video calls we don’t need to discuss it any further.
Products managed by the third-party owners and used by people socially.
This type of digital communication products are available on the public internet and are used by people for social means. Products like Whatsapp and Zoom typically prioiritise adoption and ease-of-use over security and privacy, which might be fine if you’re using it to chat with your mates (still questionable) but raises concerns for charities using the products to work with service-users.
Why charities might use this type of product
Charities might choose to use products like these if the people they work with are already using these apps, and importantly, they have judged that not using them to support people would be more detrimental to those people than the security and privacy risk that the tools present. This balancing of risks of one type against risks of another type is difficult so its important to have sufficient knowledge of both to inform making the decision.
When not to use this type of product
If these products don’t meet the needs of the service-users, then charities should think very carefully about using them because they are convenient for the charity. For people with limited access to the internet (perhaps because they use a pay-as-you-go mobile) video calls will use a lot of their available internet, so perhaps a phone call (which is far more secure) might be more appropriate. For people suffering domestic violence, being able to delete the record of the video call in the app might be really important for their safety. These things aren’t considerations for the companies like Zoom and Whatsapp, but they need to be very carefully considered by charities in choosing not to adopt a particular product.
Products managed by the organisation and used to communicate with those outside the organisation
Aside from dealing with the current needs in the best way possible, charities needing to deliver services using video has revealed a need for a different type of product, one that allows for the boundaries between the organisation and it’s service-users to be more permeable. It needs to consider privacy and security in design, understand different types of users and the ways they might interact, and that they have different needs in account management and privacy. It needs to be accessible, simple, easy to use. It needs to work in a browser, including mobile browsers, not require the users to download an app. It needs to meet so many use cases that the current tools that are available are just not designed to meet.
But until that product is built…
What alternatives are there to a technology that doesn’t exist yet?
Digital isn’t always the best solution. Using the telephone (which is more secure than video and audio calls over the internet), and sending letters/care packages to people can be simple cost-effective ways of staying touch, and talking to service-users.
Whether charities are using internal products (like MS Teams) or consumer products (such as Zoom) to deliver their services, the technology needs careful consideration. Understanding the security and privacy risks, the barriers to use, and how the technology changes the service being received (it’s never the same service, just delivered digitally), are all important considerations. Aside from the system side, people need to be trained in safe and effective use and how to respond if issues arise.
Its easy to see why choosing a digital communication technology is such a challenge for many charities.
Weeknotes #201
This week I did:
Another whirlwind week
I worked quickly to take high level business requirements for online mentoring into detailed implementation requirements and onto a defined scope for the MVP. One of the things I found interesting about defining the MVP was to stick to what we are certain about. If we had any questions or doubts about a feature it was taken out of scope. It’s a good principle for being able to meet the launch date. Next week we’ll be working through configuration and testing so we can launch the week after. It feels great to be working at pace and focused on delivering something useful so quickly.
And I studied:
Disrupted by digitisation
This week’s lecture was about Digital Marketing.
“Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably. Digital marketing is the process of achieving marketing objectives through applying digital technologies.”
Chartered Institute of Marketing
We broadly discussed tools & techniques, benefits, models and growth. Mostly obvious stuff, but interesting to think about how marketing has been at the forefront of the digitisation of business.
And thought about:
Waking up in beautiful places
I have a few essays that I’ve been thinking about for a while, some of which I’ve started, and none of which I’ve finished. I want them to be more interesting than just reading what I think and so they’ll include videos, links, quotes, etc. to create a fuller and richer picture of the topic than if it was purely written. The one I’ve been working on this week is about designing an intentional life, art, stoicism, minimalism, being a bit of a hermit and living in a car.
Service design for non-service-designers
In addition to essays, I’ve also been thinking about ‘collections’ as a different way to group content about a particular thing, kind of following on from my Compendium Of Ideas project that never went anywhere. The first collection is about Service Design, because it’s something I’m interested in and have been doing a bit of research on. My collections will be single pages of multimedia (is that still a term?) content around a particular topic, so that could include tweets, videos, podcasts, a list of links, quotes, books, etc. The hypothesis is that people who don’t know about a topic need somewhere to start, and I need a means of putting my research together in a considered and reflective way.
Approaches to validation
I was looking around on Product Hunt, a website where product creators list products they are working on to get feedback from visitors. It’s always interesting to see the wide diversity of how different people approach the same problems (again and again, there are only a certain number of problems to solve) and the product process they go through. Three of the products I looked at seemed to be at different stages of validating their hypothesis. Better Wiki – The ultimate people operations wiki on the internet – are using Notion as a public site, perhaps to validate their product/market fit without having to develop a site (wiki’s a tough thing to get right in my opinion). Mental Models by Edvo – Tools to navigate life better – is an iPhone app only, so the website just directs visitors to download the app, and Tools for better thinking – Collection of thinking tools and frameworks to help you solve problems, make decisions and understand systems – have the most most polished website. There are all working on similar problems; how to present information in ways the drive behaviour change through thinking change,
Product management in a non-product organisation
I feel like most of the information and rhetoric around being a product manager is underpinned by the assumption that all product managers work at product-orientated organisations. There is a big difference in how to approach product management when the product is core to the business and when the product is a tool used by a small section of the business to achieve a particular outcome. The idea that product managers should be ‘leaders’ (whatever that means) only works if the entire organisation values product enough to consider that leadership as key to success for the organisation. I guess design, innovation, etc. all suffer from the same problem. More traditional functions like marketing and finance have earned their place in the leadership circle, but the newer functions are yet to establish their value. I feel like the ‘what kind of organisation are we?’ question is a big part of this. If the core business model is service orientated, then trying to product-ised the thinking and discussions can unintentionally disrupt the business and cause negative consequences. If the goal of a product manager is to deliver value for the organisation then sometimes the strategic thing to do would be to let Product take a back seat in the organisation.
And people tweeted about:
Tuning out ‘Digital’
John Cutler tweeted about tuning out the word ‘digital’, which spurred me on to write my ‘In defence of digital’ post about why we can’t dismiss digital in our lives, organisations and society.
The Charity Digital Code of Practice
The COVID-19 digital checklist for charity trustees and leaders from the Charity Digital Code looks really interesting. It was developed from research done by The Catalyst. It’s also great to see more charities contributing to The Catalyst Service Recipes. I wonder if anyone is using any of these resources?
Top 100 Nonprofit Blogs
I tweeted a link to the Top 100 Nonprofit Blogs. The most noticeable thing is the lack of charities on the list. Obviously, many of the organisations on the list are using their blog as part of their content marketing for lead generation so it makes sense that they post more often. Compared to the amount of open working and transparency in government digital teams expressed through blogs, the charity sector seems very quiet.
Weeknotes #200
I did some stuff this week:
Deliverables and requirements: which leads to which?
Should requirements be identified first and then used to define deliverables, or should the deliverables be agreed first and then the requirements defined to meet them? In the case of the things I’ve been working on this week, the deliverables came from the needs of the organisation to be able to work digitally with young people and the requirements came out of the technical capabilities of the products we have available to meet those needs. With neither of those two things negotiable the exploring of options in between has become even more important.
Solutionising
I’ve been getting into the details of solution architecting Microsoft products to understand how we can use them to enable volunteers to work digitally with young people. As Microsoft products are designed for use behind the walls of an organisation, are all interconnected in some non-obvious ways and don’t handle external users very well, it’s been an interesting exploration. One of the things I figured out is how to use Outlook to schedule Teams meetings for external users that meet our safeguarding, security and privacy needs, which I’m actually quite proud of (small things). When I’ve been writing requirements I’ve always given anything to do with safeguarding, security and privacy the highest priority and said that if we can’t meet these requirements there is no point even going on to functional requirements.
Feedback loops
As we prepare to roll out products to enable young people to get more and better support, we’re always working on training for those products, and whilst on a call with some colleagues I heard the phrase ‘feedback loops’. A big grin sprung across my face. I was so happy to hear someone else talking about modern ideas for how to build things. There was recognition that we have to make use of feedback loops from pilot users and early adopters to tell us what to include in the training to other users. Asking the people who are going to be trained doesn’t work because they don’t know what they don’t know or will need to know. Asking the product experts doesn’t work because they don’t know how the products will be used, only what they can do. But getting a small group of people to experiment with using the products and feeding back their learnings for others, that works.
And I studied some stuff:
How much is it?
This week’s lecture was about pricing strategies. We discussed lots of different ways a business can approach pricing the products and services they are selling (freemium, versioning, two-tier, etc.) but interesting nothing about how to choose the right pricing strategy. Since pricing is really just a proxy for the value exchange mechanisms between an organisation and a customer, thinking about how that exchange happens is really important and probably not thought about enough. If your business has something someone wants and they value what that gives them (do they really want a spade) more than they value the money it costs, then market factors such as availability, competition, etc., aside, both parties make the simple exchange.
For charities the value exchange mechanisms are far more complex. A charity offers something that certain people in certain situations value. Often, because of the situation they are in that causes them to value what the charity is offering they aren’t able to purchase that help, either directly from the charity or to find another solution, so the charity provides help at no cost to the person benefiting from it. But that service still has a cost. It has to be paid for somehow, and so the charity raises funds from donors, funding bodies, corporate partnerships, etc. Those that fund the charity don’t receive any direct benefit but they do get some secondary value from feeling good about their contribution. So here is a three way value exchange with more layers of value than a simple commercial transaction. Thinking of it in both those ways, the number of players in the value exchange and the levels of value those players receive would make an interesting mapping exercise.
And I thought about some things:
The Digital Charity
I started working on a long-form essay about what being a digital charity means and why it’s important. It covers how the internet and digital technologies have changed the way society thinks and are being weaponised to increase the inequalities in the world, so if charities are going to be capable of tackling these issues they will need to drastically change their approach to digital from thinking of it as a channel for marketing and being able to work from home to utilising concepts about how networks produce exponential change at a global scale, how people can no longer be thought of a simple biological individuals but are now complex socio-technical assemblages, and how unpredictable and often weird things arise out of the complex interactions in this new world.
Not enough whitelabeling
I see the current product landscape as falling into three main camps. They are enterprise products, for use within the walls of an organisation and generally don’t cross the boundary into the customer’s space, e.g. Microsoft. There are consumer products, such as Spotify, which are paid for and used by individuals. And then there are those products which are B2B products but are used by individual consumers, things like Magento and WordPress which are used to build websites that essentially become an interface between the organisation and their customers but are built by a third-party business. If an organisation wants to develop a product for their customers they pretty much have to build it. They might buy in services like identity management and payments but the functionality of the product will be developed, even though their product probably does the same thing as lots of other products. So, why it’s there more white label products available to businesses that they buy rather than build?
The no-code products like Bubble are edging this way but they are still more website-focused and aren’t at the enterprise-ready level yet. So, I predict a growing trend towards drag-and-drop product builders over the next few years that will enable businesses of all sizes to quickly buy in a product that enables them to build the product that meets their customers needs and is branded for them.
Looking at levels
I’m a big believer in loosely-coupled ecosystems of products that together meet the needs of the organisation to deliver support for young people, and give the organisation greater flexibility and adaptability because one part of the ecosystem can be replaced without disrupting the whole. But I’ve also been thinking about taking this approach to the capabilities level. So, for example we need a means of matching young people to mentors. On the product level we can buy in a mentoring platform that will meet that need. But on a capabilities level what we really need is a means of ‘matching’ different things. We want to match young people to mentors, young people to programmes, delivery partners to courses, etc., etc. I’ve thought a bit before about the logic behind how we match but the idea here of building a capability rather than buying a product (which clearly is different on two levels) is that it can serve a deeper need. With things the way they are at the moment, buying in products to meet specific needs is definitely the right approach, but I wonder where the threshold is for deciding the right problem to solve and right approach to solve it.
Updating my OKR’s
I’ve been updating my OKR’s to align with the shift in my life. So, out goes being a mental health carer and things that rely on me being in the same place regularly and in comes things about a more minimalist, digital, nomadic, hermit lifestyle. The three objectives of leading an intentional life, having an effective education, and having an impactful career in the charity sector persist but how I intend to achieve those objectives will change, which is kind of the point of OKRs.
And some people I follow tweeted:
Building a business on someone else’s land
Two of the people I follow, David Perell and Daniel Vassallo tweeted about building their business on Twitter. It’s interesting to me because it brings up the question of how much a business should control its supply chain. Paraphrasing Teece, the more of its supply chain a business controls the less risk it carries and generally the greater margins it can achieve. But in the modern internet world, is being on someone else’s land just part of the new business ecosystem, with the aim of getting email addresses so you can be in touch with your customers directly. In my weeknotes from last week I mentioned a renewed interest in email newsletters and some trends for email.
Prove it
Steve MacLaughlin tweeted, “The enemy of innovation is the mandate to ‘prove it.’ You cannot prove a new idea in advance by inductive or deductive reasoning.” A quote from Roger L. Martin. I can’t help but think that innovation’s association with failure hasn’t done it any favours. An entire business can be started speculatively without the need to prove future success, but as soon as it’s called an innovation its viewed with this ‘prove it’ mindset.