Understanding the “Education ecosystem” in developing countries as a way to envision new technology-based products for teachers, students and parents.

Background
A major technology company has detected the educational market in developing countries as a key segment in which to build future demand. However, education in developing countries (LatAm, Africa, Middle East, India, China) can be quite complex to understand and design for. A number of product initiatives are currently being developed to target this growing market but our client needs constant input for exploring new product opportunities, evaluating emerging ideas and refining early concepts based on constant user insights.

Objectives
The objective of this three-year retainer project is to provide a constant flow of insights and ideas for technology-based products and services focused on the educational market throughout LatAm.

Approach
We have an assigned team of five consultants (marketing, design and social scientists) spread between Mexico and Brazil, conducting a series of short projects with rapid turnarounds. In/situm teams work fully integrated with client teams, conducting research, analysis and innovation work with different labs worldwide. We work simultaneously on different phases of the innovation process from doing exploratory ethnographic research, co-creation sessions with users, ideation sessions with clients, rapid prototyping, and even usability studies around specific product concepts.

Results
From the beginning of this engagement we have substantially increased our clients’ understanding of the educational market, developed more than 20 new product/service concepts, and have informed the development of one new product currently being launched on a global scale (´08 sales > 2 million products)