Case 02 · pawaTech · operating model · Under NDA
Speed, without guessing
Whoever has an idea builds it as a working prototype on the real design system, and tests it with real customers — before anyone commits to building it.
- Role
- Head of Product Design & UX · operating model
- When
- Apr 2025 — present
- Where
- betPawa · design, product & engineering
Challenge
Ideas moved at the speed of documents, and the first honest signal arrived after engineering had already paid for it.
Approach
Give the people with the ideas a way to build a real prototype in hours, and put every prototype in front of customers before engineering starts.
Result
Ideas are built, tested and released to a small live audience before they reach everyone. The answer comes from customers rather than from the room.
The problem
What was actually wrong
Most of the time between an idea and a release is not spent building. It is spent deciding what to build, and then finding out late that it was the wrong thing.
Here that happened in documents, and customers only saw the idea once engineering had committed to it — which makes every finding expensive and every disagreement political.
Before
After
My role
Who did what
Mine
- Decided where AI belonged: two points, not everywhere.
- Made the design system the base for prototyping, so what people build behaves like the product.
- Set up the loop — test with customers, iterate, then release to a small live audience.
- Kept judgement human. AI shortens the distance; it does not decide.
The team’s
- Product managers build their own prototypes and own the ideas they take to customers.
- Research defined what a valid test looks like, so speed did not quietly become sloppiness.
- Engineering owns the release mechanics that make a small live rollout safe and reversible.
Process
How it went
- 01
Prototype on the real system
Product people assemble something from the real components, so it behaves like the product instead of describing it — in hours, not in a sprint. Being wrong costs nothing at that price.
- 02
Ask customers, not the room
Usability testing with real customers. That is the whole reason the prototype has to be built on the real system.
- 03
Iterate while it is still cheap
Another round costs hours. The second and third versions are the ones customers actually asked for.
- 04
Release to a slice first
A prototype tells you whether people understand something. Only production tells you whether they do it.
Before
After
Decisions
What was chosen, and what it cost
Two points, not everywhere
- Over
- Rolling AI out across the whole process at once
- Because
- Speed is governed by how fast an idea becomes testable and how fast the answer comes back. The rest can wait.
- It cost
- Saying no to a long list of reasonable-sounding requests.
Prototypes built by whoever had the idea
- Over
- Prototypes built by designers on request
- Because
- A prototype you made yourself is one you will happily throw away. A queue turns the author into a reviewer of their own thinking.
- It cost
- The design system has to be genuinely good, because it is now used by people who cannot work around its gaps.
A live slice before the full audience
- Over
- Deciding on the strength of the usability test alone
- Because
- Only real money in a real market shows what people actually do, rather than what they understand.
- It cost
- Release mechanics, monitoring, and a real willingness to pull something back.
Outcome
What came of it
The loop closes inside the product instead of in a meeting: build, test with customers, iterate, release to a slice.
Product stopped queuing for design time to explore an idea, and design stopped making artefacts for ideas that were never going to survive a customer.
Direction and accountability stayed human. AI made the distance shorter, not the decisions.
Lesson
What it cost me to learn
The failure mode is looping instead of learning, and it feels productive the whole time it is happening. A loop only pays when something outside the team answers at the end of it.