“This should be easy. It’s just a reminder.”
That was exactly what I thought when I became the project manager for a WhatsApp Reminder feature at Solve Education! Our platform, Edbot, uses gamified learning to help learners build practical, work-ready skills. The WhatsApp Reminder feature was supposed to be a small addition to keep them engaged.
It wasn’t small at all.
A few months earlier, the idea had started during an internal hackathon. My team was cross-functional: Nadia from the program team, Dheni from graphic design, and me from product design. We spent more time laughing and exploring random ideas than we did building slides. Ironically, that was exactly when the best idea emerged.
Looking back, I learned that good ideas do not always come from working harder. Sometimes they come when a team feels safe enough to think freely, without pressure to have the right answer.
Every Feature Is Connected to a Larger System
After the hackathon, the project became real. I volunteered to be project manager, thinking I would mostly focus on the design side of things. Instead, I found myself managing timelines, budget considerations, third-party vendors, technical implementation, and stakeholder discussions.
What surprised me most was how much effort existed behind something users would barely notice. From a learner’s perspective, receiving a WhatsApp message takes only a few seconds. Behind the scenes, there were weeks of planning, coordination, and decision-making.
That experience taught me something I now carry into every project: when we think about how hard something will be, we tend to focus on what users see. But the real work happens behind the screen.
Users Care About Outcomes, Not Features
As the project evolved, something else became clear: we were not building a reminder feature. We were building a communication channel.
Initially, the goal was simple encourage learners to return to Edbot and continue learning. But we realised the same system could do far more: reconnect inactive learners, share livelihood opportunities, celebrate milestones. At Solve Education!, every touchpoint is a chance to help a learner get closer to a better future. Seeing it that way changed how we approached the whole feature.
The feature itself stayed largely the same. Our understanding of its value grew considerably.
This changed how I think about building products. Users rarely care about features themselves. They care about what those features help them achieve. It is easy for teams to get excited about new tools or dashboards. But users evaluate products with a much simpler question: “How does this help me?”
Getting Attention Is Easy. Creating Relevance Is Hard.
The most unexpected challenge for me was not technical. It was copywriting.
When I received feedback that one of our reminder messages felt like spam, it made me stop and rethink. When I read the message again, I saw the problem: it was written from our point of view, not the learner’s. It told them what to do, but not why they should want to.
This gap matters a lot in SE!’s world. Our learners are often young people balancing jobs, family responsibilities, and limited time. A message that does not immediately connect to their personal goals improving English, building work-ready skills, advancing their career is a message they will ignore.
Getting someone’s attention is easy. Giving them a reason to care is much harder. That lesson goes far beyond notifications. Whether you’re designing a product, running a program, or writing a message it’s not enough to be seen. You have to be relevant.
Motivation Is the Real Mechanism
Looking back, the most valuable lesson from this project was not about WhatsApp or project management. It was about what actually drives behaviour.
Learners do not return simply because a message appears on their phone. They return because the message reminds them of something they still care about a goal they set for themselves. This is at the core of how Solve Education! thinks about sustained learning: habits last when they are tied to something that matters to the person. The reminder is just a nudge. The personal goal is what actually brings them back.
Understanding that changed how I think about communication. It is not about saying what we want to say. It is about saying what the other person actually needs to hear.
A Lesson I’ll Bring to Every Future Project
Before joining Solve Education!, I expected my work to focus on design outputs things like wireframes, prototypes, and screens. What surprised me most was how often I am encouraged to contribute ideas, challenge assumptions, and think beyond design itself.
If my younger self looked at this project, she would probably see a simple reminder feature. Now I see the systems, people, and decisions behind it.
The complexity came from three places: the system behind the feature, the communication around it, and the human reasons behind why people do what they do. All three matter and all three connect back to something bigger than the feature itself.
Building products is rarely about the feature. It’s about understanding people and helping them move one step closer to their goals.
The reminder itself was simple. Everything around it wasn’t.