01
Understanding what is really causing the problem.
Looking beyond the visible symptom to the journey, process, information, technical conditions, accessibility and wider service around it.
Thinking
Better decisions begin with understanding the problem properly.
Kirmela explores the questions behind important product and experience decisions: what the evidence really tells you, what may be causing difficulty and what needs to be understood before significant change begins.
Kirmela perspective
A symptom is not a diagnosis.
Drop-off, complaints, support demand, errors and low completion can all signal that something is wrong.
But they do not tell you, on their own, what caused the problem or what should change.
The quality of the next decision depends on how well the problem has been understood.
Latest thinking / 001
Your completion rate tells you what happened. It doesn’t tell you why.
A completion rate is useful evidence. It can show that behaviour has changed, that an experience is underperforming or that something deserves closer attention.
What it cannot do is explain the cause. The difficulty may sit in the interface, the journey, the information being requested, accessibility, technical conditions, confidence, timing, the wider process or somewhere outside the product entirely.
That distinction matters because a plausible explanation is not necessarily the right one, and the wrong explanation can lead directly to the wrong investment.
Read the insightWhat Kirmela examines
The decisions that shape important experiences.
02
Using evidence to make better decisions.
Separating what is known from what is assumed, identifying what remains uncertain and working out which unanswered questions could materially change the decision.
03
Knowing what should change before delivery begins.
Examining redesign, replacement, accessibility, shared product patterns and the strategic choices that determine what teams eventually build.
A point of view
Better work starts before the solution.
Interrogate the explanation
The first explanation for poor performance is often the most visible one. Kirmela looks for the evidence that supports it, contradicts it or points somewhere else.
Understand before committing
Redesign, replacement and transformation can all be the right decisions. They are stronger decisions when the organisation understands what needs to change and why.
Connect human difficulty to organisational consequence
When an experience is difficult, the effects can show up in customer outcomes, service demand, operational effort, risk, delivery priorities and investment decisions. The experience and the organisation are not separate.
Put the thinking to work
Ideas should be useful beyond the article.
Some Kirmela thinking becomes a practical tool, a workshop or a way of approaching a live organisational problem.
Working on something important?
Understand what needs to change before deciding how to change it.
If you are trying to understand an underperforming experience or make a significant product decision, Kirmela can help you establish what is really happening and where to focus.
Talk to Kirmela