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Jafakash

Decision systems

The right product starts with the person

Most products begin with what a company wants to sell. The better ones begin with what a person is trying to decide, and build backwards from there.

Muhammad Jafakash Nawaz8 September 20262 min read
The right product starts with the person
Dubai, where all three businesses are being built.

Every business I am building sits on the same observation: people rarely lack options. They lack a clear way to understand which option is right for them.

A buyer looking at Dubai off-plan property can see hundreds of projects. Someone with a maintenance problem can call a dozen companies. Anyone with a skin concern can find a thousand products. The market is not short of supply. It is short of understanding.

Start with the decision, not the catalogue

When a product starts from the catalogue, every screen becomes a way to present inventory. When it starts from the decision, the first job is different: find out what the person actually needs to know, in their own words, before showing them anything.

This sounds obvious. In practice it changes the whole shape of the product. The first step becomes a conversation rather than a list. Filters become questions. Recommendations become fewer and more defensible.

A recommendation is only as good as the understanding behind it. Everything else is presentation.

Understanding is a feature

I treat understanding as a feature to be designed, not a by-product of good marketing. It has inputs (what the person tells us and what we can verify), a process (structuring, comparing, filtering) and an output (a clear, explainable recommendation).

If any of those three is weak, the recommendation is a guess dressed up as advice.

A maintenance visit being recorded on site. The record is what the customer keeps.
A maintenance visit being recorded on site. The record is what the customer keeps.

Fewer, better-matched options

The measure of a decision product is not how much it shows. It is how confidently a person can act afterwards. Three options with clear reasoning beat thirty with none.

The narrowing step

That is why each of the businesses ends with a narrowing step. Understand first. Compare honestly. Then recommend. Then be willing to say "you do not need this."

What this rules out

It rules out dark patterns, artificial urgency and recommendations shaped by margin rather than fit. Those tactics can close a sale. They cannot build the kind of trust a business needs to be recommended to a friend.

The person comes first. The product follows.

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Sources & references

  1. 01The Paradox of ChoiceBarry Schwartz · 2004
  2. 02Nielsen Norman Group on decision supportNN/g · 2023

Written by

Muhammad Jafakash Nawaz

Muhammad Jafakash Nawaz

Muhammad Jafakash Nawaz is a Pakistani founder and product builder based in Dubai. He is building OffplanMarket, Quick Fix Force and Intact Beauty. Across all three, he focuses on helping customers understand their options before they choose. His work combines business operations with digital products, AI, data and automation.

Founder of OffplanMarket · Intact Beauty · Quick Fix Force

About Muhammad Jafakash Nawaz
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