Production Mentality

Multidisciplinary Style

Whenever someone is first introduced to Baianat model, they feel really puzzled with all these services, especially if they are not technicals. And although clients might have just found the one-stop-shop for all their needs, they still have doubts and questions going through their minds:

• Isn’t having all these services loading the production line? 
  
• Wouldn’t it be better if they specialize in one service? 
  
• What is joining all these careers?
  
• What does this company do exactly?
  

The answer is simply in one word: Foundation.

This concept is what guides the operations inside Baianat. However, it wasn’t created overnight. It’s the result of many experiences and trials.

Before adopting a multidisciplinary style, we used to outsource some of our services. However, they didn’t carry our soul within. It lacked our vision and the flavour of authenticity, and we realized that high quality solutions should be made in-house so we can monitor and influence every part of the cycle.

Also, all of our solutions need the same related services, which makes integrating those services internally not only cost saving, but also contributing to stability and gives us better control over quality.

With foundated solutions, that are full on every aspect starting from

strategy, branding, development and up to monitoring, we ensure having impactful solutions that influence the community on bigger scale.

In other words, we create brands, and this process requires the existence of many services to support it.

Time spent on research is not wasted

Research is the flashlight in the way of discovering new solutions, It provides us with the information needed in the decision making process. Without solid and inclusive research, it will all turn into guesses and assumptions.

Research inspires new ideas and helps with testing our intuition. When doing research, the purpose sets the north star of the entire process and methodology selection. For instance, when doing brand research, we collect data related to attributes like: (Brand colors, logomark and typography, pictograms, positioning, look and feel .. etc).

However, when working on research for the business side, we will be looking more into information related to the market forces, what is the industry type and trends, and the entire macroeconomics system.

Using both qualitative and quantitative techniques for research and data collection is mandatory for better and accurate results. We rely on observation, interviews and other methods that enable us to gain empathy and understanding of our customers.

When using search engines as a method for collecting data, copying the first answer in search results is not the way research works. We need to delve deeper and check alternative result pages (at least the first two) and alternate the search keywords by adding words like pdf or using “ ” for precise results.

Finding the needed information supporting our decision is not where the process ends, once we find our aim, we look for validation. Is the information gathered correct? And to what extent?

We look for different ways of validation and usually rely on authorized resources like industry thought leaders, authorized agencies and governmental resources. One of the most important aspects, is the information publishing date. Outdated information are more dangerous than mistaken ones and are misleading for the decision maker.

As the ultimate goal of research is to provide better understanding, so there is no enough amount of data. You keep searching until you have sufficient information for taking decisions. But even those researches are done with no use, and are filtered and drafted in our research and development documents center for future needs.

It’s not about collecting data, it’s about this data relevancy. And how the statistics support the business, branding and other departments decisions.

And for any research to have the same quality, a  process has been set in place:

• Identifying the goals
  
• Research strategy
  
• Data collection methods
  
• Types of data collected
  
• Documentation
  

Research is not exclusive to projects, it's part of our culture. As we believe that each person can have their own unique way of gathering information which adds a lot to us. So instead of asking about the information we look it up. This methods saves time wasted in person to person meetings and gives us a wider scale of knowledge.

Design driven companies are succeeding quickly by guessing less.

Guessing is expensive - if you are wrong you could be out of business. Guesses make messes.

Lack of research could lead to solution features that are not even needed or requested. And as said, If you are going to solve a problem, you will need sufficient information to solve it. Research is part of doing design well.

Fail Fast

When developing a new solution we often run in circles around the question of whether it’s functional enough or not. Will people find that part hard to relate to and use and how will they deal with that interface?

We flood ourselves and the stakeholders with questions because if you have a software and want to know people’s reactions to it, simply you need to launch it and observe how they are dealing with it. Where are the parts they find hard and what are the backdraws in the business model behind this solution.

Early launch is the best way to test ideas, through early prototypes you can learn on what people value the most and what needs to be fixed in the upcoming versions.

While working on both our ventures and projects, we experienced many early launches and it helped us a lot in modifying our business direction, because after targeting one segment of engineers for a mobile app project we have been working on, we turned the entire model to be home services application operating in two different territories.

This decision lead to a drastic shift in the whole customer segment and brand identity, and without an early launch, we couldn’t have known the deficiencies of the earlier model.

Fail fast is the mantra of software industry.

So instead of spending all the this time arguing whether this feature is needed or this button is on the right place just ship it and prove a point.

In the beginning, make building a solid core product your priority instead of worrying about scalability and other unnecessary problems.

Authentic

The world is full of copies, innovative ideas are getting rare and people tend to cope with the trend more than going out of the stream to think of something authentic.

But in today’s world, average doesn’t last for forever. And doing the same thing as your competitors for less is not the key to business success. The key to entering any market is illustrated clearly in the innovation diffusion curve by Geoffrey A. Moore.

In his book "Crossing the chasm", Moore explained clearly that there are five types of consumers to technology adoption, with the inclusion of ‎Everett Rogers researchers, the graph divided humans into Innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards.

The law stated that, in order to sell a product digitally, it has to pass by the first 15% of the the segment you’re targeting, and these are the innovators and early adopters. And you should be focusing on one segment at a time using it as a bridge to the next segment.

The most difficult step is making the transition between visionaries (early adopters) and pragmatists (early majority). This is the chasm that he refers to, if a successful firm can create a bandwagon effect in which enough momentum builds, then the product becomes a de facto standard.

So in order to meet the expectations of those innovators and early adopters, you can’t just duplicate a product, you need to add “ You” to it.  That’s the thing we call “ authenticity”. We understand that there are always standards for providing any service or product, but there is also a space for presenting extra value and serving more people.

Strategic

In business world, it’s all about making decisions. You take one decision that costs you millions and another that makes you global. If these decisions are made out of desire or guts, they won’t stand for long that’s why we start by strategizing every project before working on it. It’s the first and most critical step for the kickoff of the production line.

No design, code or visual brand asset can be made without a comprehensive strategy that explains clearly why we are going to choose a funny brand with a yellow giraffe instead of blue corporate style.

A strategy should leave nothing for coincidence and should outline the market attributes and conditions related to the service or product launch.

Branding first

In a world competing furiously, creating brands is the only way to better engage, acquire and retain customers loyalty. And in Baianat we are proud of creating brands not creating products that could be forgotten within a blink.

We consider branding as our symphony soul key. Everything we do should communicate with the brand identity system made for the project or it will be scattered efforts, and it’s not about the visuals, it’s about creating a brand that communicates the same look and feelings through visuals, sounds, texture.. Etc.

Creating videos, web design or doing motion graphics without following the brand guidelines will lead to orphan campaigns that doesn’t resonate with the audience or position the brand in their minds as planned.

Foundation

In Baianat we work according to the concept of “full production” or foundation, we strategize, design, code, think, execute and monitor.

People are usually surprised by the amount of things we do and think of it as a waste of effort while we should be focusing on one field and get ourselves to master it. But we believe that in order to master something, you need to master it all.

This was one of the reasons we established our production line to be that broad, so we can learn about everything that communicates with what we do; for example, it’s beneficial for the branding team to know a little about those who made the strategy, and those who are doing the user experience for the mobile apps will definitely need to communicate with the interface designers and app programmers.

Having an environment that enforces full production will not only bring all these people together for better results, but also will make them more understandable of the how they better collaborate and make each other's work run in a smoother process.

We also believe that having our own kitchen will give us full control over quality and absolute freedom to innovate without concerns. After all it’s always better to know every in and out in your industry.

Rapid experiments

Great projects start from a prototype. Prototypes help us think and innovate better, they don't have to be complicated and containing all the launch features, you just need to have the the least required features for kicking off your beta version.

When we think of app design or any type of prototypes we go for simplicity, this concept is called MVP ( Minimum viable product), In Baianat we know that great projects take time to be ready, but it’s risky to wait until you have a final version then find that your idea is not that effective or need based as you thought.

So we start with a rapid prototyping technique to give ourselves the space to innovate and think outside the box, this is applied to every aspect of our production line; for instance, when doing a strategy we can bring different revenue models to the table and prototype each business idea independently and as fast as possible.

In visual design, we try different design routes and art styles first and come up with different versions of the brand identity, we don’t do all the logo, t-shirts and final guidelines, we do the minimum amount that shows the essence of the brand.

This technique is especially necessary when working with our partners, because generally, people can’t judge a design or app without seeing it functioning. It doesn’t matter how hard you try to explain your app features or design functionality, users can't imagine, they need to feel and try the actions themselves.

Prototyping helps us showcase our ideas better and also have a 360 degree look on what we made. Prototyping cuts the hassle of debates  because it helps answer many of the urging questions like: Will it be easy for the user to navigate inside the app? Are the main features accessible enough?

We know we won’t finish with a perfectly detailed project and ready to ship idea but we will know for sure if we are headed in the right direction.

Design in browser

We believe that design is about functionality, and as long as you have a beautiful unfunctional design, you added nothing to humanity. You just subtracted from it the time and effort needed to do this unbeneficial design.

Following the guides of design is not always sufficient to ensure that your design is suitable and functional, so we work with a different methodology. We consider all the AI files as a prototype for the real design in browser, because this is where we can see our design better and optimize it for the end user best experience.

Iteration

It’s only version1. We don’t fall in love with our first product, we understand that refining is an essential part of developing great things. Iteration is like the secret back door to success. Don’t expect to get it right from the first time, there is no need to ship perfection.

Get your ideas out there and see if they will fly. Allow your users to tell you what they think when there is still time to adjust, because you alone with all your inputs can’t be smarter than all the real users inputs.

Only v1

When working we know that there's always better, and as today is a version of tomorrow, we think different with each new idea we grasp. It takes only one fact to change our entire path. As we get more mature, we look at what we have done so far and say to ourselves, it was a wonderful journey, but know we’re seeking perfection.

We know we won't reach it from the first shot, so we aim high and call it version one. We even apply this principle to ourselves, we consider that we are just the first version of our future selves.

Great things don't happen with a click and there is no such thing as overnight success, great things take time and if you waited to launch a complete project, your project will never see the light.

The more you delay, the more you questions you'll have to answer all by yourself. So why not ship and cut the hassle with end user answers, after all this is the best validation for you can get.

Agile process

While we think in a lean manner, we keep our processes held the agile way, this thinking methodology helps us better keep our production line well organized and clear. Agile is the perfect strategy when faced with too many things that needs to be done, and suits our thinking methodology as well.

The production starts with a deep analysis of the functions needed in the app or the website. Then, we prioritize the tasks that needs to be fulfilled first in a sequence and list everything down.

The work kicks off and we start the manufacturing process by order. We iterate, customize and collect customers feedback on each stage. As more issues appear to the surface we adjust the plans to be more suitable and provide us with the desired end result.

Agile process supports our iterative production, it enables us to go back and edit even the marked done points. So we basically start with something very simple and add to it along the way. Everyone in the project team gets involved with all the details, you can find testers, and programmers discussing the interface modifications. It's not like everyone should have a specific role and can't do anything else, but more like if you have an idea about that, then your opinion definitely matters.

Magical Prototyping

Prototyping is an essential stage in any solution design process, the reason is linked back to the prototyping magical ability of reducing risks and getting ideas into the hands of the customer.

The beauty of prototyping as a technique is that it works with us in every aspect, whether it’s a design, a strategy, or a book content, prototypes are necessary for sound judgment and early discovery of errors.

Prototypes help us boost the solution in process and hit targets faster, that’s why the concept of having a perfect prototype is far from the reality of prototypes. The idea behind prototypes is having a functional solution instead of some talks, some solid PSDs and complicated code to show to clients, when designing them, we take into consideration that “enough” is the secret word.

Too rough prototypes will not evoke the wanted feeling of trust, and too perfect prototypes will take long to be accomplished. After all, prototypes are just visual aid for us to see how things are, and later on for disposal.

Spending too much time on a prototype will get you attached to it, which makes the next step of disposal harder and locks you in the cycle of light enhancement rather than answering questions and earning fast.

People want a working prototype not something that they can’t interact with and form an experience, each prototype we build has a different process, which makes perfect sense as prototypes are small samples of solutions so the process has to differ depending on each solution characteristics and type.

The audience are/or waiting for the perfect prototype, they are looking for something that is built upon a story and need regardless of its look and feel.

In the process of creating this book, we first had a prototype of X pages, with a lot of misplaced words and idioms, but the main goal was to test the concepts included with the solution teams inside and make sure that every aspect was covered perfectly. If we waited until the whole book was done, we would then be taking months instead of days to launch each book of our culture series. Prototyping encourages wild ideas, and visualizes solutions.

Rapid testing of ideas helps better identify the problems we are trying to solve. Ignore the details and just make sure it works, later on, you can adjust and perfect them but for now, just get the stuff on the page, and while you use what you’re building, details will reveal themselves and this is when you need to pay attention to details, not sooner.

It’s okay to do less, skip details and take shortcuts in your process if it will lead to running software faster. Stories, wireframes, HTML mockups are just approximations. Real things lead to real reactions, and that’s how you learn the truth. Taking too much time to plann is funny, useless and adds to the unnecessary costs of the project.

If you want to explain something, prototype it.

Conversational Solutions

Interfaces are the way you talk to solutions, it’s the shared language between humans and machines, which makes a minimum conversation level necessary. If the user can’t figure out what to do or which button directs to what, they will abandon the solution. The same goes with brand identity.

We get inspired by the way people talk and interact with the surrounding environment, we look at the mechanisms and principles that make human conversation possible and extend those into interaction design and whole brand system.

It’s a much more comfortable way to talk to people than computers, we are still designing in a very solution centric way.

Customer centric Solutions

When you know little about the customer you serve, you know little about how to make a successful solution, rather than making assumptions about customers, we can start to learn from them. As any company interested in solution design should be equally serious about listening to customers.

People go to systems with certain interests and that system diverts them with irrelevant information or not giving you the basic information you need to have a successful interaction. When you’re designing an interaction or brand that is going to interact with people you’re actually demanding their attention, their time and part of their life.

The typical solution development process is broken in many ways. You come up with an idea, you engineer it and then launch it based on your assumption of how people will react without any customer research.

Many companies dive straight into the solution without spending time learning about customers and their needs, they base their design on guesses that make the odds of success longer.

People suffer from complexity in their everyday activities, human centred design is an approach that puts human needs, capabilities and behavior first, then designs to accommodate those needs and ways of behaving. This means starting with a good understanding of people and the needs that the design is intended to meet.

We are designing for people so we need to understand both technology and people. Design for who they are, not what you think or want them to be, and always remember that you are not the target audience to have a saying.

Using pencil and paper

Sketching is an essential part of any solution design process, it can be used in the ideation phase for the business models, logo creation or code.

Sketching is an extremely powerful tool because it is incredibly fluid and limited in functions, so it lets you think freely and focus on the solution itself and your idea not the software style. Sketching is like a conversation with yourself in which you answer all your questions and get to validate your idea or discover another new one.

We believe that one of the most magical connections is the one happening between our minds and hands as it creates a space for critical thinking, we use sketching as a thought process and to show the work progress made both internally and externally.

Also, it adds to the authenticity of the work and shows its evolution. When a sketch is presented to clients, it’s clear that the creative process is still wide open for their participation.

Starting the creative process. If we started our creative exploration with perfection, there is danger that we are putting limitations on our ideas as we will tend to select well rendered ones neglecting the idea itself.

Sketches are quick, dirty and cheap that's exactly how you want to start out. This step is all about experimentation, there are no wrong answers.

Sticking with essentials

When working on a new solution, it's easy to get drafted with all the possible features out there; however, sometimes the biggest favor you can do to users is by reducing the number of features and getting niche about what you select.

So we start with a clean smart version that can work as the cake base, then for the topping we go through all the options and ask ourselves “does this feature really matter? Would users die without it? How much time would it take to develop it? Are there any shortcuts? “ We keep questioning each feature until it can prove itself to be essential.

Everytime we say yes to a feature we're simply adding another collar to our responsibilities neck, and unfortunately, features are lent for forever and can’t be taken back from end users unless we're ready for an anger storm of criticism.

It's also important to consider the features that are most important from your end users perspective not the designer or developer’s side. For instance, live chat is definitely important in task management softwares but having colorful stickers is not that necessary for version one.

Guilt free solutions

People form different conceptual models about each part of the solution. And when something doesn’t work the same way as they expected, they usually tend to blame themselves instead of the solution.

Although the solution is the thing that broke while fulfilling their needs, but as technology is making everything seem so complicated they think that “ Maybe I don’t understand how it’s used” and this is where they start feeling guilty or stupid.

They blame themselves for not being able to use this “ Complex” solution, while the one to blame is the product developer, and since we are customer centric, we think it’s our duty to produce solutions that are guilt free and functional to every user in any age or situation; for instance, when designing our websites we integrated a section for people who have color blindness, this wasn’t an extra feature but a way of making it easier for our users.

We leave everything at its nature and how users used to deal with it. Changing what people are used to should be only for the sake of making the experience easier not adding a pretty look. After all, having guilty users is the last thing we want for ourselves and for our clients because they either try to hide the error by not telling us about it which means a lack of feedback or simply blame themselves and stop using the solution.

Solution Storytelling

Whenever we come across new project, every solution should have a story that gathers the team on a common ground, a story is a great explanation of why we built the product, these stories are not fictional, they are developed through the research process. It’s also an excellent communication tool with our end users as they tend to look for the causes of the events to form their perception.

You also need the story for people to understand how the product is related to them and how it can solve their problems. Having documents describing the solution’s functionality is not the best way of communicating your ideas to humans who have a nature of visual thinking. They are not concerned with the solution design or technicality, it only displays how this solution can be usable.

Once a consumer has bought someone else’s story and believed it, persuading the consumer to switch is the same as persuading him he was wrong, and people hate feeling that they were wrong, so instead of adopting the sleazy language, you better come up with a better story than your competition, a different and more important than the story they currently believe.

Valuable Solutions

When design is about creating some sort of artifact even if it’s a diagram, it’s easy to evaluate the polish of the artifact or the appeal of the sketch rather than thinking, is this a good idea? Does the idea have value? That’s where you have to start.

Not only must businesses make the solutions and services they offer more meaningful to new markets, but they must understand what is important to individuals in those markets.

People don’t want to buy quarter inch drill, they want quarter inch hole.

Although we keep stressing on functionality, we deeply understand the importance of look for any solution to succeed, but taking it to that level opposed to “I made something beautiful” and didn’t pay attention to how I was using time, language or end user is just an act of prioritizing the wrong aspect of the experience.

Selecting technology

While working on any project we need to get our set of tools ready before immersing into work. We select the technology and programs used based on the project requirements not the latest or the client request.

Technology can make the project take longer than it should, so we are always precise about the project specifications, what we want it to do exactly.

Technology is supposed to be a tool aiding us to produce better project qualities not hindering our performance, don’t go adding the latest obscure technology just to gain some notice. 

Everything matters

Love is expressed in the small details of the solution. The packaging, the attached message or the excitement of these are all tiny details with great impact on the customer experience.

When designing, we pay attention to the copy and language used in the design and don’t just think about the visuals, the overall experience is important as it defines how people will remember us.

For instance, the blank state is your app's first impression, and the customer decides when the app is useful in the first interaction, and this happens in the blank version. So when you fail to design an empty page, people don’t know what they’re missing because everything is missing.

Develop solutions for when things go wrong.

Exclusive features

When developing a new solution, we usually get a lot of requests from each department with the suggestions list of features that needs to be added, and if we embed all of these features into our solution we would be turning customers away than dragging them in.

Extra features add more complexity to the solution and makes the development and design time needed double or triple, so when working on a new solution, we rarely listen to people's comments on adding extra features, we prefer those who tell us how we can remove more feature and launch faster.

We believe that shipping less but quality and necessary features is better than having those so-so ones developed on a hurry.

How much we learned

We sometimes pick projects through which we can learn something new. Challenge ourselves. This thing could be a way of working together, maybe a new industry technique or business skill that we needed to acquire. It doesn't matter how much effort we put into shifting or adapting with the new way of work.

Ignoring the competition

When starting with a new solution, it makes sense to look at the similar ones available in the market to get familiar with the industry, however, copying the competition is the first step in making your next big failure.

In classic theories, copying worked perfectly but in the digital era we think the best way to know your solution is by looking at all the competitors and outlining what you shouldn't be.

For instance, you don't have to copy the privacy issue in their model or that stunning feature that you can't serve with a higher quality, your solution should come out of your own values, so if your competitor is not that interested with things like integrity, honesty or user experience, you just sentenced yourself to death.

So how do we do it? We ignore the competition after the first analysis, we don't copy, follow or think of what they do, we think as users and start creating something beautiful that people need in their daily life regardless of what our competitors are doing.

Launching code

Trying a new live solution is always a moment of excitement and pride for us, yet when launching our new baby, we prefer not to rush in or slow back. We set the right tempo for a perfect launch knowing that once a project is delayed a day it can be delayed for months or years, so we try not to huggle about our launching dates and budgets.

Once we set everything, we try our best not to exceed the limits. We define the prototype that we want to go out to the world with and work according to it. We know that big aims could leave us with something mediocre and full of holes, so smaller perfect scopes are always better.

Defining the vision

When getting started with your solution, you always get that tip telling you to focus on creating a story of why you started, especially if it's tailored around how you can help turn people's lives into heaven, however, it's rare to find that story coming out of vision, and most of the time it's considered a part of a propaganda instead of an essential part of the solution.

It's true that people get attracted to why you do things but they are still looking for an approach or a vision, and if they didn't like what you have to offer, there are plenty of visions in the world.

For us, a vision is what guides our decisions. It's the brief description that gets the idea across different teams easily without having debates, every solution we think of breaks out from our master vision of  “Changing cultures“ and supports it in its unique way.

Benefiting humanity

In the past, we used to dream of a future where cars can fly and people have homes on Mars. It was crystal clear that with the development of technology people would work more on this; however, the reality came different, and now we rarely find people taking this direction of innovation.

Companies working in the field of technology have been drifted towards entertainment and dreaming of a better social network or another food delivery service and not something with a true impact on humanity and people's lifestyle.

However, we are still like this in the era of business evolution and big inventions, and when thinking of any solution we always start from a necessity and a life changing perspective, we try to revamp the way things are done and make the world a better a place.

Not money centered

When starting with any venture, we never think of how we can make money of it, sometimes we even have initiatives that are released for free to support certain communities. Having these cash cow products all the time will lead to meaningless projects.

Of Course each project idea should be tested against sustainability and profitability, but making an entire project for the sake of money is just a nonsense act to us.

After all, we are not making those solutions for the sake of impressing investors or trading, we seek enriching and boosting humanity in every possible way.

Finale

While most of the companies measure their success by the ending of the balance sheet of each quarter, or the number of big accounts they had during the year, or even how many investors they attracted.

We do have a different calculation, this goes for both Baianaters and Baianat, and speaks sometimes to our partners. Our MoSs were formed over time into three core principles.