Bertus Kock
Product Researcher & Strategist
I have been practising in the fields of People and Product for the past 17+ years with the intent to discover value through cultivating an understanding mindset.
I believe the secret to customer success lies within the analogy of gaming. Just as your character levels-up to gain more abilities, people want to level-up in real life to unlock more opportunities.
It is core requirement for building a successful utility application which facilitates growth experiences and unlocks true value for their customers.
My skills
Experience
Head of Product Research
Remote, South Africa
Supporting Business, Product & Design in making informed decisions from the collecting, analysis and merging of quantitative and qualitative data.
Responsibilities:
- User Journeys
- Competitive Analysis
- Heuristic Evaluation
- Qualitative Research
Experience:
- Exploring the investment world
- Identifying user problem statements
- Explore JTBD
UX Consultant
Remote, South Africa
Supported the founders in UX design, users journeys and content management, during their engagement with the remote development team for their Social Betting app.
Responsibilities:
- UX
- Design Reviews
- Founders support
- User Journeys
Experience:
- Managing UX tasks for remote dev team
- Create social betting experiences
- Facilitate various sport betting types
UX Manager
Cape Town, South Africa
Managed the monthly onsite and offsite usability testing sessions for a "money between friends" application and conducted heuristic evaluation, information architecture, user journeys and created the first draft for a dynamic persona.
Responsibilities:
- UX
- Usability Testing
- Heuristic Evaluation
- Competitive Analysis
Experience:
- Developed draft for dynamic persona
- Discover the value of structure over function
- Confirmation on the true purpose of UI, which is communication
Portfolio
Education & Industry Experience
2023Certificate of Problem Space Research
Indi Young's Adv Training for Problem Space Research, which covers Listening Deeply, Emergent Data Synthesis 1 & 2, Thinking Styles of a Purpose, Framing your study and Using Opportunity Maps, Thinking Styles and Gap Analysis.2022Brokstock
BROKSTOCK is an all-in-one investment solution, helping South Africans gain access to the local and global stock market.2020Introduction to Human-Centered Designr
A hands-on course provided by Acumen Academy and IDEO.org which introduced human-centered research methods, concept generation, and rapid prototyping of a solution to a poverty-related design challenge.2018TATIS
Designed & restructured Tatis's eTax solution for the UAE, in order to facilitate a smaller learning curve in order for Private Citizens, Tax Agents and Agencies to comply to the region's new VAT requirements.2017Konga
What is wonderful at Konga.com, is that you get to work on a variety of systems; this include eCommerce for web & mobile, marketplace seller web & applications, warehouse applications, conceptual recommendation engine and banking portal, to name a few.2014Kalahari
Supporting the UX team in their quest to provide an improved online shopping user experience in the areas of search, shopping basket, shipping and product display, for the web and mobile channels.2013Adobe
Were asked to provide an expert review for Adobe Africa's english portal.
Public Appearances
Indi Young's Community Share
Did a presentation for Indi Young's community where I presented the view that businesses will struggle with identifying value, while the agile process doesn't recognise that value is unlocked by structuring features in a specific order towards a specific human's purpose and isn't just a collection of parts that got a Pavlovian response.
2021 UX South Africa Conference
If Covid has taught us anything, it would be that life is precious and that our choices can’t just be a series of experiences. Our choices have to matter practically, emotionally and socially. Take the opportunity to explore your product’s value-add for users, before “agiling” into a solution.
Selective Writing
The Cost of Simplicity
The "cost of understanding" is the total cost of the "knowledge" transfer moving from one person or app to another person. What you have to figure out is, who is “paying” for it. Simplicity is the science and sometimes art of shifting the balance of that effort towards the communicator, business or app.
Going from persona to person
Let's use an example of a Money Management app. For this app, three personas (Young Entrepreneur, House Sharing Student, Homemaker) were identified. For example: If your customers started to use the app and were classified as a "House Sharing Student" persona, how would the app identify that this customer has entered a new life stage, and is now both a student and a “Homemaker”?
People change and if your app doesn't recognise it, they will go somewhere else.
Don't build an online grocery solution until you have read this
Before the Covid-19 pandemic we've had major South African retailers like Pick ‘n Pay and Woolworths offering online groceries, but they weren’t doing well. They struggled with customer sign up and retention. There are few reasons for that, but they mostly relate to one misconception being made by ecommerce vendors. They all assume that grocery ecommerce is the same as regular tech, game, book and sport ecommerce.
Why did Checkers get it right?