Challenge accepted
The Katsuna project was created with the sole focus to empower seniors to use smartphones. We lived and breathed on offering such an experience.
As a team we scored pretty well on value creation both on UX design, Software development and delivery despite huge obstacles:
Big scope: to offer a full smartphone experience it was necessary to touch all major UI elements of modern smartphones, from system UI to all major apps
Accessibility first & system thinking: Laser focus on a persona with different physical and mental capabilities
Integration to every major Android release: Porting-integration with the source code changing big time and almost no documentation
Value created but not distributed or captured
But although we delivered a full solution that was fit-to-purpose, we could not distribute and capture the value. Reasons and lessons:
OEMs = SA Asia. Initially we wanted to offer the custom ROM for integration with a license fee, later we even did a business case to ship a phone with our own label and we did not. Business relations require close contact and it was impossible for a small team to reach out to decision makers from the major device manufacturers
Funding. To ship our own device required a lot of funds. Without proving customer traction we could not get the funds. On top Hardware is Hard. Although we got close a couple of times we did not eventually succeed
Missing skillset. Business development and operations were key and completely missing from the team
OEM market. Margins went very slim and lots of companies stopped offering custom and differentiated devices
Thanks for the ride
Special thanks to all contributors and especially:
Dimitris Mantzouranis