Use the channel your people already have

At Sumadots we hear the same story in very different organizations. A team spends months on a platform, launches it with enthusiasm and, a few weeks later, finds that almost nobody uses it. Not because the tool is bad, but because there were too many steps between the person and the tool.

In one program with teachers, most of them got stuck on the login screen and never reached the questionnaire. In another, a simple form ended up working better than the platform the team itself had built. These aren't rare cases: we saw them in eight different organizations.

Where people get lost

They almost never get lost in the content. They get lost before that: creating an account, remembering a password, downloading an app that takes up space on a phone that's already full. Each of those steps seems small. Added up, they're a wall.

And then there's the real world. We've seen activities in places with no internet signal, schools where phones are banned in the classroom and teams in rural areas that still count by hand because there's no other way. A tool designed for an office with a good connection doesn't survive those conditions.

How to reach people where they already are

None of these decisions requires expensive technology. They require looking at how your people work on any given Tuesday, not how we'd like them to work.

An example: taking part from your own phone

Brainstorming sessions are a good example. Often the team gets together, hands out sticky notes, and at the end someone takes a photo of the wall that nobody looks at again. The usual people do the talking, and the ideas of those who don't dare raise their hand get lost.

When each person joins with a QR code from their own phone, with no account or app, everyone can contribute at the same time, anonymously too. And when it's over, the ideas are already organized and ready to decide on.

We teach this same thing as a method: start from how people already work and choose the smallest solution that works. That's how we work in SumaLab.

Before you launch your next tool

Try a simple test: ask three people from your community to use it in front of you, without help. Count how many steps they take before reaching what matters and note where they stop. If anyone gets stuck before they even start, that's your first fix.

And ask the obvious: where will this person be when they use it? Will they have a signal? Will they have their phone in hand? Someone next to them to help? The answers will tell you which channel to choose better than any tool comparison.