Validating our New(s) Product: from South Korea to Prototype
In October, our founder Tiyana J was invited to attend the Better Together Challenge Conference in South Korea as a guest of honour. Better Together Challenge is a 3-day global gathering that brings together social innovators, changemakers and idealists in action from around the world for an inspiring exchange of ideas and celebration of being #BetterTogether.
Representing the Humanitarian Changemakers Network, our founder Tiyana J connected with like-minded changemakers from around the world, participating in workshops and roundtables, and teaching others our theory of change framework. It was here at Better Together 2019, that Tiyana first pitched her idea for a solutions-focused, community newspaper to fill some of the gaps she was noticing in the Australian media landscape, to a group of experienced global changemakers.
As a start up founder, Tiyana asserts that it’s important it is to have your ideas validated. Without validation, how can you be sure that your product or service is truly solving a problem for your target market? “As an impact-driven social enterprise, it’s important to us to build a strong validation process into our business model,” she says. “By taking the time to validate ideas with our potential audience, we can gain invaluable insights into what they really want and need, to maximise our impact.”
After receiving feedback on her idea, she returned home with the confidence and tools she needed to launch a prototype of our Changing Times newspaper just 8 weeks later.
How will I carry forward what I have learned and experienced when I get home? I will continue to connect with other changemakers, work collaboratively, and explore new ways for everyone to access the tools they need to be ‘better together.’ What is alive in me? My desire to equip and empower other young people to change the world, by developing this solutions-media and education platform!
Tiyana J
As someone who gets very passionate about new ideas, Tiyana spent the entire duration of her flight back to Australia coming up with a plan for the newspaper, messaging people in her network during her time waiting at the airport between flights. A little over a month later, and we have our first prototype of the Changing Times News.
“This prototype wouldn’t have been possible without the contributions from incredible changemakers, including Hayley, Kirra, Chelsea, Jess, Olivia, Evie, Jeanette, Georgia, and Lucy,” Tiyana highlights, “but the prototype is just one small step on a huge journey we have ahead of us, if we want to make an accessible, grassroots, solutions-focused news platform to promote positive social change. The next stage is to continue iterating and getting feedback from our audience, while also trying to come up with a business model, knowing that the traditional business models of news businesses is failing, both in terms of profit, and the quality of news.”
The Changing Times News will be a core project of the Humanitarian Changemakers Network, and will use a human-centred design approach as the project moves forward. Human-centered design is a process that begins with the needs of people and organizations. It involves understanding their problems and opportunities, brainstorming solutions, and testing them before creating a final product. The focus is on solving real-world problems in a user-friendly way. The aim is to design products, services, or experiences that are both useful and usable. This approach has been used to develop everything from medical devices to web applications. When done well, human-centered design can lead to products that are not only more effective but also more efficient and satisfying to use..