Build for the field, not for the demo
Why a product that works in a demo collapses under intermittent connectivity — and what we do at Solis to resist it.
A successful demo is a polite lie. It runs on a stable network, with a single user, on a clean dataset. The field is unstable, plural and dirty. That is why most products that shine in a presentation collapse on first real use.
Connectivity is not a detail
In the DRC as in much of sub-Saharan Africa, connectivity is not guaranteed. A product that assumes an always-on network is a product that doesn't work. At Solis, we systematically design for degraded mode: local storage, deferred sync, automatic recovery.
A system that loses a user's data because the network dropped is not a system. It is an incident waiting to happen.
Design for the real user, not the buyer
The person who approves the purchase is not the person who uses the tool every day. The field agent, the teacher, the nurse — their constraints matter more than the steering committee's preferences. We spend time with end users before writing the first interface.
That discipline is what separates a field product from a mockup. And it is what keeps a Solis product in service three years after delivery.