Human-centred Design for MSME Development Program

Abstraksi

With a large number of MSME based livelihood programs already running in Indonesia, many produce a limited return on investment. Issues related to selling products and ‘marketing’ are often cited as some of the reasons for the low level of achievement of businesses. Are there any alternative tools in project design sphere that can better align project goals and grassroots reality? How to find a solution that answers the real needs? Human-centred-design (HCD) and design thinking were first invented and popularised by an international design and consulting firm, IDEO. Moving on from traditional design, design thinking expands the concept from solely focus on developing consumer products to designing consumer experience (Brown and Katz,2011). It is a mix of rational, intuition and aspiration. This paper will examine the practicality of design thinking with its nonlinear process of inspiration, ideation, and implementation (IDEO,2015) on an economic development project funded by the Australian DFAT through KOMPAK Market Linkages program in 2017. Tulodo was appointed to prototype a pilot to improve market linkages for community-based micro and small enterprises in Pacitan, East Java and North Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara. Market Linkages project tries to fill this gap and view economic development using market-driven perspective and test the prototype in MSMEs in Pacitan and North Lombok. Inspiration The first stage, inspiration believes that empathy, aspiration, and emotion play an equally powerful role as rational. This process is sometimes forgotten by enterprise development programmer while designing a project. Conventional research can be useful in pointing toward incremental improvements, but those structures do not usually lead to the type of breakthrough that we often need (Brown and Wyatt,2010). Using the Business Model Canvas, we interviewed MSMEs in both locations. This process might be time-consuming and require large resources, but it is worth the result. From the process, we found that there are two types of MSMEs in the area, the necessity and opportunity -driven or Donald Mead and Lieldholm (1998) named them the survivalist and growth-oriented. Instead of classifying using a quantitative value such as a number of employees, amount of revenue, and a number of assets. We carefully examined their qualitative quality such as entrepreneurial traits, motivation, leadership skills, willingness to take risks and opportunity-driven. For the context of market linkages which aims to link businesses with markets, growth-oriented filters were used to eliminate the survivalists. The generalisation of entrepreneurial typology by enterprise development program will only lead to vague impact. Using growth-oriented KPIs to survivalist entrepreneurs will only push the program to pointless results making poverty alleviation and job creation goals difficult to reach. From this inspiration process, we decided to go with early-stage growth-oriented entrepreneurs, one of them is the mocaf (modified cassava flour) in Pacitan. Ideation The process of ideation helps to multiply options to create choices and different insights about human behaviours. For this step,MSMEs are gathered in one full-day workshop to understand specific needs for their business. With survivalist entrepreneurs being eliminated, the discussion became more goal-oriented and lively. Growth-oriented entrepreneurs tend to use the same language that reflects their entrepreneurial traits. The workshop resulted in the importance of promotion and marketing efforts. With most EDP programs focus on entrepreneurship as job creation strategies, it often neglects the importance of what is next after the business is set up. Especially if it targets the survivalist entrepreneurs using growth-oriented KPIs, growth and expansion are not their ultimate goals unless there are incentives to do so. The discussion resulted in the needs of marketing and promotion activities ranging from promotional events, improving packagings, developing marketing materials, and equipping them with various different market-oriented trainings. After a thorough analysis considering the business’s capacity and availability of skills and resources, a micromarketing approach was chosen as the foundation for the prototyping activities. Implementation The third space of the design thinking process is implementation in which the best ideas generated during the ideation process are turned into a reality. Through prototyping, we are able to test and uncover possible challenges and consequences in order to have more reliable long-term success (Brown and Wyatt,2010). In this case, we narrowed to micromarketing. Micromarketing is a process of understanding markets at the local level, and also the personalisation of messages to individual consumers in the context of direct marketing (Whitehead,1990). There is also an emphasis on hands-on activities in which entrepreneurs conducted their own event and promotional tactics as a learning experience. Some of the prototyping activities are for example their first open table event in public, utilising tools such as food samplings and community event, Car-Free-Day. The response was positive, gradually, they took the initiative to sell their products at the local convenience stores in Pacitan and expanded to supermarkets in the neighbouring cities. The business concludes that the gluten-free flour is not popular in Pacitan. People in the area do not acknowledge the healthy lifestyle as much as people in the cities. Customers who live in urban see gluten-free products as highly valued. Not to miss out on this opportunity, the business diversified its products to a gluten-free bakery, cater to the needs of local market Pacitan. In Pacitan, the bakery is increasingly more popular than the flour. Mocaf Bogati now becomes the role model of rising MSME in Pacitan, showing how understanding market and listening to customers’ feedback work like wonder than using a mere assumption. Before implementing an HCD based project must acknowledge its nature that requires the flexibility of timeline and budget. With the possibility that experimentation can fail and must take a decision to iterate, there should be a mutual understanding between implementer and donor on the nature of the process. However, if the method can be ideally executed, a targeted decision and goals will be achieved as well as minimising failure and avoiding generalisation. Design thinking is proven as one of the best tools to develop an enterprise development program, it can lead to hundreds of ideas and ultimately, real-world solutions that create better outcomes for organisations and the people they serve.