Kambrica brought us significant value by helping us put ourselves in our customers’ shoes and incorporate UX logic into the transformation of how we deliver our services.

Value Proposition Manager

Multinational insurance and financial services company

* This project is presented in anonymized form under corporate confidentiality agreements.

When a project enters a meeting and exits as a budget-burning machine

When a corporate organization starts a digital initiative, the problem enters a meeting and exits transformed into a large structure of resources, platforms, and months of development. Not because it is necessary, but because industry incentives are aligned that way.

Software factories are rewarded for project growth: more teams, more hours, more complexity. Never less.

In this case, the organization entered discussions with a predefined conclusion: “we need an App”. Users were calling to check information about financial products and were not using the existing website, which was perceived as “outdated”.

Agency sales teams responded as expected: “Of course you need an App!” iPhone, Android, tablets. Modern backend, QA, DevOps, multiple squads, and several months of execution. Within minutes, an idea became a 12–14 person team.

We did something different: we reduced the problem before scaling the structure. Because executing quickly on the first interpretation of a problem is not agility: it is waste at high speed. Avoiding it took just one hour.

One meeting is enough to untangle the project

Using our XDM (Experience Decision Making) methodology, we separated three layers that are usually mixed from the start: facts, interpretations, and proposed solutions.

That analysis revealed a critical data point nobody had considered: user consultation frequency ranged between six months and two years. This alone invalidated the “App” hypothesis. The data showed that users would typically be prompted to delete unused apps long before they needed ours again.

The project therefore required an initial phase of strategic UX research to understand why users rejected the website and preferred calling. Without that, any initiative would have been guesswork.

The client believed the site was “old” and “ugly”. That may have been true. But the real answers were in front of the screens.

While the UI lives inside the screens, UX is what happens in front of them.

This focus led to a two-week research phase that uncovered the core issue: the website exposed less than half of the information users needed to make decisions. That is why they called.

The interface was not failing for technological or aesthetic reasons. It was failing because it did not answer the questions users actually had.

Something no agency had attempted to address, perpetuating the typical RFP trap. After 4–6 months, the client would have received exactly what was requested—but not what was actually needed.

Reducing complexity and uncertainty before execution starts

Our methodology is based on a simple fact: large projects do not fail due to technical limitations. They fail because complexity is only surfaced once the system is already in motion.

That is why we reduce UX, institutional, and technical complexity from the very beginning.

Because true agility is not executing quickly on the first plan that seems reasonable. It is having the flexibility to change direction when new evidence emerges.

1. UX complexity: the gap between business and people

We map real decision-making processes, identifying what information users need, how they interpret it, and what alternative channels they use to complete their goals.

This allows us to redefine information architecture, visualization rules, and product priorities before UI and development decisions harden.

2. Institutional complexity: politics and alignment

In corporate environments, most friction appears late in the process when branding, marketing, compliance, and stakeholder reviews start rejecting already-built solutions.

We address this from day one by mapping all affected stakeholders and involving them early in parallel tracks, removing risks such as internal inconsistencies before they impact delivery.

The result: no political rework cycles and no endless approval loops.

3. Technical complexity: feasibility

In Banking, Finance, and Insurance, legacy systems introduce a critical layer of constraints that must be addressed early. In this case, the volume of financial data created latency patterns incompatible with the required user experience.

We built an intelligent, backend-agnostic frontend layer capable of reusing previously fetched data, minimizing roundtrips, and enabling progressive loading without blocking navigation.

This allowed us to solve performance without degrading experience or adding unnecessary architectural complexity.

Results

While agencies proposed large and expensive structures to “fulfill the request”, Kambrica exceeded the objectives with a smaller team, strategic focus, and clear direction.

Because our incentives are not aligned with staffing or billable hours, but with solving the right problem.

In this case, the project did not require an App or a cutting-edge platform. It required understanding what was broken between the organization and its customers.

Without diagnosis and direction, speed only scales misunderstanding.

Most organizations do not need more velocity.
They need better diagnosis before scaling structure, budget, and complexity. That is what we do.

If you are responsible for the success of products or projects and suspect the problem is being misinterpreted, let’s talk.

We can help you see it before cost, complexity, and political risk continue to grow.

The entry Banking, Finance & Insurance was first published on Kambrica.

This same mentality is reflected in some managers who try to hire cheap agencies to execute design and development decisions they’ve already made, refusing to incorporate processes that could improve the quality of those decisions and avoid the most common outcome in software: failure.

Right now, somewhere in the world, there’s a purchasing manager pressuring an agency to design and develop “the App” almost at cost. Ignoring that, out of the more than 3 million apps published, the average user only has about 80 installed.

“The App” will join the 80% of apps that don’t reach 10,000 downloads and will be deleted by users the next time their phone storage is full: in other words, by the end of the month at the latest.

That’s not saving: it’s “investing” time, effort, and money to, in return, get a negative return.

The Value of a Good Investment in UX & IT Direction

Companies that seek cheap and quick solutions to execute ideas without expert direction or validation end up losing more than they gain.

Hiring agencies that can do UX and development at the lowest cost, selected by purchasing departments that negotiate aggressively, results in poorly conceived projects and products that don’t meet the real needs of users and will ultimately be ignored or, at best, resisted.

This “savings” strategy is actually a form of waste. Instead of building solutions that truly work, add value, and can aspire to market adoption, time and money are wasted on creating pretty and cheap screens that decision-makers like, but whose inevitable fate will be, sooner or later, to be discarded in favor of another project. Because in a competitive market, things are done right or they are done again.

Vision vs. Illusions

Many managers consider their ideas as a “vision” and designers and developers as mere laborers who need to be told what to do. But if that product vision expecting success is not informed by evidence, it will be nothing more than an illusion.

The problem is that having ideas (that we validate ourselves) is not the same as having offers (that customers validate). For a successful product, a “good” idea is not enough. It must be matured into a good offer. That is the function of Design as a strategic discipline: architecture instead of decoration.

An expert consultancy that applies mature processes of creativity and evidence-based decision-making is an excellent way to achieve that maturation. But often, decision-makers consider these services “expensive,” without knowing the risks they avoid or understanding the value they bring.

Because their opinions and decisions are based on the culturally ingrained idea that “saving” is buying cheap, rather than investing rationally.

Lean Philosophy and Goal-Oriented Design

There are various “schools” of design thinking.

Another, which understands Design as a project-based and strategic discipline following the definitions of Don Norman, ISO 9241 standards, and the Lean philosophy that helped rebuild the Japanese industry, is the one that truly delivers results — because that is precisely its focus.

This is our school of design thinking that drives UX Direction as a discipline to achieve functioning software, accepted and adopted by real users, and meeting business objectives.

For UX Direction, the question “How critical is good UX design for increasing usage and conversions?” is answered by definition: if UX design does not increase usage and conversions, it is not good.

The UX Direction school considers not only aesthetic factors but also recognizes critical success factors such as functionality, efficiency, and end-user satisfaction. It is a solid investment that, although it may seem more costly initially, results in successful, robust products that stand the test of time: investments that lead to true savings rather than sunk costs and technical debt.

Conclusion

Buying cheap things that are neither necessary nor will be used is not saving: it is wasting. The same applies to companies that hire cheap UX teams to execute projects that will not result in products accepted by end-users.

To truly save and achieve results, it is essential to invest in well-led and skilled UX teams and provide them with the resources and authority needed to do their job.

Only then can products be created that meet market needs and generate a positive return on investment.

The entry Buying cheap things you don’t need isn’t saving. Are you doing the same with your UX & IT procurement? was first published on Kambrica.

This presentation consolidates previously presented content:

• Application case of KLM-GOMS for operational improvements in management systems (first presented in 2008 at the Microsoft RAF event),
• Heuristics understood from principles of cognitive psychology (presented since 2015 in the UX Workshop).

In the User Centered Design process, it is crucial for all those involved in Design, Development, and Business decisions and execution to observe users operating with the product.

While user testing allows us to observe what needs improvement, it doesn’t provide concrete information on what we should modify in interfaces and interactions so that users can achieve their goals with greater effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction.

This presentation exposes Principles and Heuristics of perception, selection, and operation, as well as models for quantifying interaction costs (Hick’s Law, Fitts’s Law, KLM-GOMS) necessary to achieve better results.

In the User Centered Design process, it is crucial for all those involved in Design, Development, and Business decisions and execution to observe users operating with the product.

The application of these principles and tools allows for significant operational improvements in systems that are used recurrently. Reducing just 10 seconds of operation in a functionality used more than 100 times a day results in more than 15 minutes gained per day of operation, and more than 8 hours gained per month.

This increased operational efficiency leads to measurable improvements in productivity, quality of care, and user satisfaction with internal systems.

The entry Methodology and Tools for Designing High-Performance Systems was first published on Kambrica.

Increase is one of the startups that, under the Wayra accelerator program, participated in our consulting and mentoring program focused on UX techniques for the development of their product.

The Increase platform enables businesses to understand, manage, and administer all operations they carry out with credit and debit cards.

• Before our work with Increase, most of their clients interacted with the application through Excel.
• After improving the interface’s usability, users began to interact with the application more frequently than with Excel.

Areas of Work:

• As a starting point, we conducted a round of usability tests on the platform as it stood in October 2014. During this phase, we evaluated the value proposition and the system’s usability.
• We used these insights to organize a second research session. This time, we conducted contextual interviews with users of the tool to uncover the issues they encountered during regular use.
• The Increase team took all the information gathered from both phases and redesigned the site’s homepage, enhancing the communication of the value proposition, platform registration, and overall usage. They prioritized and structured the information displayed to allow for better management. The entire redesign process was carried out by the entrepreneurial team with weekly follow-up from Kambrica.
• We facilitated knowledge transfer regarding the Lean process so that the team could continue applying the methodology after the program ended. This provided the startup with the tools to keep refining and improving its product.
• Through the Lean UX program, we helped Increase identify key areas for product improvement, including features, usability, and interaction design.
• We also assisted in enhancing the value proposition through user interviews.
• We trained the team in UX practices.

They taught us to think and understand how to create a product based on what the customer needs, rather than what the founders want. How to design a product by listening, analyzing, and, above all, observing our users. Kambrica helped us build a solid product that still maintains the same structure today.

Matías Doublier, COO Increase

The entry Increase Card was first published on Kambrica.

In 2010, Santander Río bank needed to migrate the request for its products from the physical to the online channel. Up until that point, very few customers were willing to apply for credit cards online.

The reasons: low trust in the online channel and forms that required information users didn’t understand or weren’t willing to complete.

Areas of work:

We redesigned all the application forms, following best practices in usability and accessibility.

• Conducted UX Research to evaluate existing processes, user motivations and interests, opportunities, and areas for improvement.
• Redesigned the process for applying for credit cards and banking packages, following best practices in persuasion, usability, accessibility, and responsive design.
• Redesigned internal Knowledge Management systems.
• Conducted interviews with the Call Center to learn about best sales practices, which were then applied to upselling processes.

The entry Santander Río was first published on Kambrica.

Since 2012, we have partnered with the Digital Product teams of the Telefónica Group, designing and improving the web and mobile user experiences with which millions of people interact.

We’ve improved the usability of fixed-line, mobile, and internet purchase processes to increase sales, reduce call center volume, and optimize processes.

Our work included the development of promotional landing pages, improving customer service processes, and enhancing product and offer communications to improve understanding and capture of the value proposition.

• We reduced support costs and decreased user frustration.
• We contributed to the maturity of the digital product teams in UX, impacting other areas of the company.

How We Helped

• We redesigned the homepage for fixed-line and mobile services.
• We improved the site navigation flows.
• We redesigned the purchase flow for mobile phone plans.
• We redesigned the purchase flow for internet plans.
• We redesigned the purchase flow for fiber and TV plans.
• We designed and enhanced the impact of promotional landings: portability, Hotsale, Multiply, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, etc.
• We improved the discovery, acquisition, and upselling processes for phone lines, internet, and mobile lines.
• We improved the self-management processes for large clients.
• We enhanced the quality of information in the Customer Service section.
• We conducted usability analysis and communication needs assessment for the launch of the redesigned Movistar app.
• We conducted usability analysis and provided actionable improvement proposals for critical business processes.
• We performed qualitative and quantitative analysis of page performance and specific flows.
• We created the first usability manual for the company, aligning all departments.
• We developed tools to reduce costs and time in decision-making, design, and development processes.
• We facilitated workshops with stakeholders to define product vision and ease decision-making for product and design.
• We provided training on Lean UX methodology, user-centered design, and Design Thinking.

The entry Movistar was first published on Kambrica.

When we consider integrating User Experience (UX) and Agile Methodologies, our framing conditions us to think that once we identify the intersection point, we’ll have all the answers we need.

This would be correct and sufficient, if we had not had disagreements before the advent of agile methodologies. It would apply if we had been working smoothly until the Agile Manifesto was published in 2001; however, the reality is more complex.

Agile methodologies are often proposed or imposed by engineering, and here we see that the “agile methodologies” universe consists of two dimensions: Engineering and Management. The relationship between Design and Engineering has been problematic not just since 2001, but for ages: architects and engineers have been criticizing each other for centuries.

The first step towards healthy collaboration is resolving the relationship between Design and Engineering. For that, I really like this definition that I knew from Bret Victor: “Technology satisfies human needs by amplifying human capabilities”.

This definition is revealing in several ways. First: Without people, there is no technology. Second, it clarifies that Engineering focuses on functional aspects that address the problem… while Design ensures that the solution fits the user by understanding their needs and capabilities. Technology is not limited to the mechanical; it’s not something engineers invent and designers merely color. Without Design, there is no technology—only technical curiosities.

To incorporate Design into the process, I find three critical questions useful: What problem are we solving? For whom(s)? And how will we know we’ve succeeded? These questions allow us to integrate the three areas of the problem in a single conversation: Engineering, Design, and Management

When discussing Management, it’s essential to understand what a Methodology is: a framework for organizing a process that involves people. The key takeaway from this definition is that it reveals what a Methodology does not encompass.

A methodology does not replace people (involved in the process), conversations (tool to share vision of the future and coordinate actions), nor to decision making. Choosing a methodology is, in itself, a decision.

A methodology cannot prescribe decisions, just as traffic rules (e.g., “drive on the right”) cannot dictate where to go; they can only provide the organization needed to reach the destination while minimizing the risk of accidents.

Decision-making is a fundamental part of Design and the most significant value it brings to the process. It’s common for those who hire us to view Design solely in terms of execution, making “pretty” the design decisions previously made by Engineering and Business (often without understanding what a design decision entails).

As designers, it’s our responsibility to make the right distinctions, ensuring that we help Engineering and Business make better decisions.

As designers, we must make the right distinctions, proposing and delivering on the promise of helping Engineering and Business make better decisions, to the point where design decisions inform the business decisions they should be based on.

When Design is viewed merely as execution, a project may seem more or less complex based on the “number of screens” to be produced—or any other quantifiable deliverable.

At Kambrica, we’ve found that the complexity of Design can be more appropriately understood as a product of the complexity of the execution due to the complexity of the decisions. This model allows us to clearly demonstrate the necessary role of UX in facilitating stakeholders’ decision-making processes and providing information to make them evidence-based.

Another important distinction is the common misuse of the term Agile. Particularly in Business, there is interest in adopting agile methodologies due to the idea of speed.

The reality is that speed is not part of the agile manifesto’s principles: what they propose is responsiveness to change rather than clinging to a plan. In other words, agile is the skier who dodges obstacles and reaches the finish line; rushed is the one who ends up in the hospital.

The rushed skier throws themselves toward the goal in an act of faith, driven by anxiety. The agile skier considers the terrain’s evidence in a constant decision-making process: a cycle of observation, orientation, decision, and action.

In a project, UX research provides the evidence-based information necessary for decision making. However, it’s often dismissed with the excuse that “it’s slow,” which is another way of saying, “there’s no time.” But time isn’t something that can be stored in a drawer.

Time is something to be allocated. What does “no time” really mean? Suppose someone goes to a ski resort, asks for skis, and when the attendant asks their size, the customer says, “I don’t have time to put on boots; I just want the skis.” What he means is that he does not understand boots as a necessary condition for using skis.

UX professionals need to learn to hear “no time” not as an inflexible rejection, but as an invitation to point out the necessary condition between our proposal and what our client needs.

In our client’s decision making process, there is a balance with two trays: one with what they don’t want, present or future problems, their fears; and the other with what they want, the future they want to be part of, their desire.

Addressing concerns is critical to getting attention: anything we propose before satisfying that point will be ignored or misunderstood, to the point that instead of being seen as part of the solution, it may be viewed as additional problems weighing down the fear tray.

This approach helps address the common request for quantitative techniques, even when we find they contribute little or nothing to understanding and solving the problem. The reason for this request is that the clients who make it, need something to present to their superiors: they are being measured. These interlocutors’ main concern is not aligned with design quality; it’s focused on their survival within the organization.

In these cases, quantitative research should be presented as a necessary condition for achieving a quantification that our clients will find positive. This means recognizing metrics that can show increasing measures throughout the project. I distinguish three levels in quantitative research:

• Validation (checking what “we know we know”) is the simplest qualitative process, the least risky, and the one most feasible to establish quantitative metrics for.
• Investigation (searching for what “we know we don’t know”) involves greater uncertainty and is only viable once our client has understood the value of UX in reducing risks, typically after validating assumptions that were initially presented as truths.
• Exploration (searching for what we don’t know we don’t know) is the qualitative process furthest from the client’s concern for their organizational survival; it’s only viable when our client has resources, political capital, experience, and commitment.

Only with solid tools for conversations and decision-making can we focus on designing a methodology.

The most important goal of any methodology is to achieve a healthy client-provider relationship on the project scale. Without any methodology, as more people join from both sides, cross-conversations, confusion, and problems arise, leading to the formation of two camps: “those jerks” and “that bunch of useless people”.

That’s why every methodology proposes a single interlocutor on each side, with authority, technical competence, business understanding and management skills.

A critical foundation for agile methodologies is the Lean philosophy’s Value vs. Waste distinction. Value is what the Client values; waste is everything else… even things we consider necessary conditions for achieving Value.

Identifying waste forces us to question all the activities we undertake. In the case of building a house, the walls –providing protection from the elements and preserving privacy– are clearly a Value. However, scaffolding, though considered necessary for building those walls, are actually construction waste: the inhabitants won’t live with the scaffolding once the building is inaugurated. If the scaffolding were made of gold, the budget would increase by several million dollars, without the end clients finding any Value in it. That’s why scaffolding are modular, reusable, and in many cases, rented.

Other types of waste can be more straightforward to identify. If materials are unloaded 10 blocks away from where they are needed instead of at the right spot, additional time and effort will be required to move them where they should have been unloaded initially.

Identifying waste in software is much more difficult. Lean Software Development is a valuable tool for identifying, reducing, and eliminating waste in our projects:

Product Waste:
These are the most obvious… but also the latest to be identified. They become evident once the project is in production… and therefore, when there are no longer resources to resolve them. UX research aims to identify these wastes economically, in a controlled environment, when there is still time and resources to mitigate them:

• Defects: bugs, things that don’t work according to the end user’s expectations, usability issues.
• Unused Functionality: typically, the result of a lack of understanding of users’ real needs and capabilities.

Process Waste:
These can be identified and addressed during the process itself. Addressing them reduces the likelihood of product waste manifestation. They require management skills, team responsibility, and Client expectation management:

• Hand-offs: When a task is passed from one person to another, there is either a necessary conversation between those people, or information is lost in the process.
• Multitasking: Humans can consciously perform only one task at a time; “multitasking” is actually interleaving fragments of two or more tasks. Switching from task A to task B requires an effort greater than zero to understand the context of the second task; this penalty applies again when returning to task A.
• Relearning: Returning to a task or practice after a long time requires effort to regain context and operational capability, which can be avoided by maintaining continuity.
• Waiting: This occurs when someone cannot proceed with their assigned tasks due to a lack of decisions or inputs they depend on. One way to avoid these situations is by managing a “sprint” schedule that imposes cadence on the project and must involve the Client.
• Incomplete work: All unfinished decisions and executions increase technical debt to the point where the cost of settling it in the future may become unfeasible. It is often the result of project haste and pressure, lack of planning, and vision.
• Unused talent: One common scenario is when the Client considers Design to be mere execution, overlooking the team’s ability to help the Business make better decisions. It requires management, authority, expectation management, and commitments. This impacts the project in ways that cannot be quantified (no one can measure against what “could have been”) and affects the team in terms of motivation breaks.

At Kambrica, we developed, iterated, and proposed a model that first recognizes the value of Facilitation and Research processes in reducing the complexity of decision making. It reveals that design execution, far from “solving” (as is often the client’s perception), actually always opens up new questions that require appropriate processes for their resolution.

Our minimum sprint model considers weekly cycles, with a Management track running one week ahead of the execution track. During the Planning phase, the two tracks overlap, also including a mid-week follow-up instance with the Business to reduce risks and deviations.

By applying this model, we successfully coordinate all projects, regardless of their complexity.

In summary, integrating User Experience and agile methodologies requires working across several dimensions, from general to specific: from the understanding of Design, Engineering, and Management, to the design and application of a particular methodology to guide projects by identifying and reducing waste, and establishing and fulfilling commitments responsibly.

The Measure of Design 2018: Slow Methods in agile times – IxDA Viña del Mar

The event featured Mauricio Azócar (Agile Coach at Tinet), Estefanía Cotrini (Project Manager at Ilógica), and Santiago Bustelo (Founder and UX Director at Kambrica).

The digital service design industry increasingly relies on agile methodologies, which have brought new ways of working, with different rhythms and goals that have proven to contribute to efficiency and transparency in design and development processes. However, many agile methodologies like Scrum, Agile, or Lean were created from development, and therefore do not initially consider the relevance of the role of design in the experience, its teams, or its methods.

In this context, IxDA Viña del Mar raised the following questions: What is the role of “slow methods” inherent to UCD and research in the agile times we are in? How does each type of methodology address the user experience? What external, human, or other factors favor or hinder the development of processes under each methodology?

Many thanks to Nicolás Espinoza, Katherine Exss, and the entire team and volunteers at IxDA Viña del Mar for the invitation, the excellent reception, and the effort to make everything possible!

Presentation Credits

• Framing hammer – Luigi Zanasi (CC BY-SA 2.0 ca)
• Iceberg in the Arctic with its underside exposed – AWeith (CC BY-SA 4.0)

All other images and videos under CC0 License (Free for any use without attribution required), public domain, or self-produced.

The entry Agile Methodologies as a Design Challenge was first published on Kambrica.

Wayra, the tech project accelerator from the Telefónica group, operates in 12 countries across Latin America and Europe. Each year, it selects a small group of startups to provide with funding, workspace, and access to a global network of mentors, experts, and investors.

As part of its acceleration program, we offer consulting, mentoring, and training to startups in Lean UX methodologies, UX design, user-centered design, usability testing, qualitative interviews, A/B testing, task prioritization, identifying business opportunities, and evaluating solution scalability, among others.

Areas o work:

• We have provided consulting to over 35 startups participating in our UX and agile methodology training program for digital product development.
• We collaborate with startups from various sectors, including fintech, medtech, agritech, entertainment, marketplaces, apps, e-commerce, IoT, and smart cities.
• Through the “Lean UX” program, we help startups identify and refine their value proposition, understand their users to align the product with their needs, improve product usability to attract more customers, achieve consistent growth, and reduce costs.
• We developed an iterative work process that allows each startup to refine its product with each iteration, adding more value to the business, its end users, and investors.

The Lean UX program helped entrepreneurs test their products in real environments, creating high quality services with shorter time to market.

Lorena Suárez, Wayra Business Development Manager

The entry Wayra Argentina was first published on Kambrica.