What is a Wealize Digital Product?

During one recent team-building meeting at Wealize, we talked about how to explain better what we do in our company. We said that we create digital products, but what does it really mean for us and our clients? 

If you write in Google ‘digital product meaning’, you will find: ‘A Digital Product is a software enabled product or service that offers some form of utility to a human being. In other words, all digital products, from mobile apps to website experiences, attempt to solve a problem for a group of people trying to accomplish something’. 

Initially, we found this definition valid for us because it combines two ideas: first, utility, the benefit for the people, and second, the digital nature, as the product is enabled by a computer application. We completely agree that any digital product or service should be aimed at solving a problem to achieve a specific goal. That is effectively what we do.

Recently, we wrote about the differences between a digital studio and a software factory. We recall here this topic, as we believe it is important to understand why at Wealize we say that we créate digital products, instead of introducing ourselves as a firm that develops or manufactures software. 

The key to answer this question is that we craft solutions to face challenges that companies, communities, or even the society as a whole, need to address. At Wealize, our priority is the utility, the benefit, the value. The value is always placed at the center of what we do. 

The digital nature of Wealize solutions is owed to three reasons. Firstly, we live in an increasingly digitalized world. The second reason is the deep knowledge and vast experience that we have of technology as a team. For us, it is the best way to contribute to solving problems. Finally, we strongly believe that technology is fundamental to improve the world we are living in. Because of that, we proudly say that we ‘craft digital products with real world impact’ and summarize our vision encouraging to ‘unlock today's world’. 

Solving complex problems, at the center of Wealize digital products

We have stressed the idea that everything we do is about utility, about adding value. And we bring value in solving complex problems. Because of that, at Wealize the teams that create a digital product are made not only of developers or software engineers. We work in interdisciplinary teams including software engineers, product manager, UX/UI designers and DevOps groups. It is our method to assure that, in addition to good coding, diverse perspectives are taken into account when creating a software. 

And because the commitment of solving complex problems is at the heart of our solutions, at Wealize we take seriously topics such as design, product discovery, UX, high fidelity prototype, user testing or design thinking. We talk about this in detail in other articles: The Stages of Sprint Zero and Stages of Product Development. 

And what is meant by ‘unlock today's world’? How do we want to impact the real-world by crafting digital products?

These questions can sound a bit ‘philosophical’. So let us put on the table tangible results with a brief insight about projects based on Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence and aimed at solving specific issues.

In the field of AI, Cognitive Services and Conversational Agents, we have created Coloqio. This product was the basis to help fact-checkers to debunk fake news and combat misinformation and disinformation. You can read about it at Digital products for a Journalism of Verification and Accuracy, where we explain the work we have done for Maldita and Chequeado. Coloqio was also key to drive the growth of Yotengo.bot, a platform that delivers a constellation of more than a thousand legal chatbots, with a centralized set of conversational design in IBM Watson. 

Our experience creating AI based digital products has led us to work for Pacific Disaster Center (PDC) in Hawaii. This center owns the DisasterAWARE platform, the most powerful and accurate platform for early-warning notifications and monitoring of natural disasters. At Wealize, we created for PDC an application that updates every 30 seconds the hazards lineup on a configurable sheet including warning colors and multiple filters. 

Blockchain technology is very important for us too, as it makes the difference in Digital Identity and Smart City projects. Here, we highlight our participation in POLDER, a solution aimed at smart cities for the exchange, re-utilization and monetization of data.

Regarding Self-Sovereign Identity initiatives, we have taken part in a pilot project of a vaccination card for the Spanish Andalusian Health Service, you can read more about it at Self-Sovereign Identity and Blockchain in the Healthcare Industry.

Other relevant ventures are Inside ID, focused on digital identity for victims of human trafficking, or RedODOS, a blockchain-based platform that provides identity verification for women and children migrants and manages sensitive data. 

 

Perhaps you had in mind hiring a software factory and here you have discovered that the services provided by a digital studio fit better with your idea of solving problems to improve your business results. 

At Wealize, we craft tailor made digital products to help our clients solve those problems, to help them eliminate those obstacles that impede them from moving forward and growing. And we do it as a team, applying the Agile methodology and using the technology that better meets our client needs.