[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":173},["ShallowReactive",2],{"blog-post-/blogs/school-fair-stall":3},{"id":4,"title":5,"body":6,"description":157,"extension":158,"meta":159,"navigation":168,"ogImage":161,"path":169,"seo":170,"stem":171,"__hash__":172},"en/blogs/en/33.school-fair-stall.md","My Daughter Ran a Stall at Open House Fall Fair. I Learned More Than She Did",{"type":7,"value":8,"toc":148},"minimal",[9,13,16,19,22,29,34,37,40,43,46,49,52,58,62,65,68,71,74,77,83,87,90,93,96,100,103,109,112,115,119,122,125,128,131,134],[10,11,12],"p",{},"Yesterday, my daughter and a few classmates got a spot at their school's Open House Fall Fair. They sold slime, stamps, bracelets, and other little things. Each girl had made or brought her own share, and they put it all together on one table. As parents, we weren't entirely convinced. The setup felt a little improvised, and the products seemed almost too childish. Would anyone actually pay for them?",[10,14,15],{},"The stall ended up being much busier than we expected. Kids came in with their parents and went straight for the table, especially the slime. I didn't count sales or compare every stall, so I can't tell you where they ranked. I can say that theirs was a very popular stop.",[10,17,18],{},"I was happy for them, but I also had to laugh at my own reaction. I had been asking, “What is this stuff good for?” The kids were asking, “Do I like it? Can I have it?” For a child, liking it was reason enough.",[10,20,21],{},"That small moment brought several questions from my work in product development back to mind. Who do we think the customer is? Who benefits from the flow we're designing? How ready does something have to be before we let people use it? Watching the girls behind the table raised one more: once we make something, who connects it with the people who might need it?",[10,23,24],{},[25,26],"img",{"alt":27,"src":28},"Illustration based on the fair photos: four classmates stand behind their red-covered stall under the blue canopy, with their handmade goods on the table.","/blogs-img/2026-09-27-fall-fair-01.webp",[30,31,33],"h2",{"id":32},"the-customer-wasnt-me","The customer wasn't me",[10,35,36],{},"Our doubts weren't irrational. If I were wandering around a market on my own, I probably wouldn't stop to buy slime. But I wasn't the customer. The fair was full of children, and their response to the colors, textures, and small treasures told us more than my guesses from home ever could.",[10,38,39],{},"It reminded me of a familiar mistake at work. The farther we are from the people using a product, the easier it is to mistake our own taste for theirs. Experience helps, but it can also make us dismiss a need we don't personally understand. My daughter and her friends probably didn't do any market research. They were simply closer to the children who would buy these things, and they had a better feel for what their peers liked.",[10,41,42],{},"I've seen a similar moment in product discussions. Someone proposes a feature, and people around the table ask whether it has value and why a user would want it. Those are fair questions. The trouble starts when we answer them from our own routines. Something we find boring, trivial, or useless may be the very thing a customer wishes they could get done every day.",[10,44,45],{},"The person closest to the customer isn't necessarily the most senior or technically skilled person in the room. Sometimes it's a support colleague hearing the same complaint every morning. Sometimes it's the person helping a customer complete the task. At Open House Fall Fair, it was a group of children who knew what might make other children stop at a table. Proximity doesn't guarantee good judgment, but it gives them signals that should enter the conversation earlier than our guesses.",[10,47,48],{},"One school stall doesn't establish a rule for every business. It did remind me to pause before calling an idea too simple or too silly, and watch how actual customers respond.",[10,50,51],{},"I've sometimes confused “I wouldn't buy that” with “Nobody would buy that.” Yesterday's table reminded me to separate the two.",[10,53,54],{},[25,55],{"alt":56,"src":57},"Illustration of a child focusing on the slime at a stall while an adult looks on.","/blogs-img/2026-09-27-fall-fair-02.webp",[30,59,61],{"id":60},"we-nearly-made-the-stall-too-complicated","We nearly made the stall too complicated",[10,63,64],{},"While planning, some of us parents discussed a more elaborate idea: set up a space where visitors could sit down, make their own bracelets, and pay for what they made. It sounded engaging. But the space was small. Choosing materials, sitting down, making something, and paying would each take room and time. We didn't end up doing it.",[10,66,67],{},"In hindsight, it sounds like the kind of thing I might design at work. Build out the whole flow. Offer more options. Make the experience feel complete. But at this stall, a young customer might only have wanted to pick something she liked, pay for it, and take it home. Doing that well was enough.",[10,69,70],{},"Software can fall into the same trap. Imagine a user who only wants to press a button and know whether a task is done. We ask them to set rules, choose a mode, watch progress, and read an explanation of the result. All that completeness can become friction. The hard part isn't adding features. It's accepting that the path the user wants may be much shorter than the one we designed.",[10,72,73],{},"I'm not saying a hands-on bracelet station could never work. With limited space, people, and time, though, the extra steps need to answer a practical question: would they make the customer happier? Or did they mostly make the plan feel more impressive to us adults?",[10,75,76],{},"If customers really want to make something themselves and the space and staff can support it, that's a different situation. The point is to ask what each extra step does for the customer before admiring how complete the plan looks.",[10,78,79],{},[25,80],{"alt":81,"src":82},"Illustration of a hand choosing a finished bracelet from a simple display.","/blogs-img/2026-09-27-fall-fair-03.webp",[30,84,86],{"id":85},"a-little-improvised-was-enough-to-begin","A little improvised was enough to begin",[10,88,89],{},"The girls' preparation would look rough around the edges in a work setting: everyone made a piece, then they assembled it all at the end. I understand why parents worried. Planning matters, and things like safety and handling money deserve care. But a perfectly coordinated setup wasn't a prerequisite for starting. They put their work on the table and saw the customers' response for themselves.",[10,91,92],{},"I have the same urge to make a product a little more complete before showing it to anyone: smooth one more screen, handle another edge case, make the flow more consistent. Often that work is necessary, especially when money, privacy, or essential business tasks are involved. At other times, “let's prepare a bit more” delays a more direct question: will users care when they see this? An internal discussion can only take us so far toward that answer.",[10,94,95],{},"A school stall isn't the same as a production product. The risk is lower, and the fair brings its own foot traffic. The useful connection is narrower: once the necessary safeguards are in place, let real people encounter what you've made. Their response can then inform the next decision instead of leaving us with only our assumptions.",[30,97,99],{"id":98},"four-contributions-became-one-working-table","Four contributions became one working table",[10,101,102],{},"When I thought about the red table again, I saw more than the slime attracting customers. Each girl had prepared something different, but they shared one stall and met the same visitors. Where should everything go? Who would talk to a customer? How would they handle a purchase without the space becoming chaotic? Even without a polished plan, a real table eventually makes these questions concrete.",[10,104,105],{},[25,106],{"alt":107,"src":108},"Interpretive illustration of several hands bringing slime, stamps, and bracelets to one red table; it does not document the girls' exact task assignments.","/blogs-img/2026-09-27-fall-fair-04.webp",[10,110,111],{},"I didn't record exactly how the girls divided every task, and I don't want to turn one school fair into a test of their management skills. Still, moving from separate contributions to a shared stall took some coordination. Meeting children and parents at the table meant paying attention to what happened in front of them. My daughter got to take part in the whole arc: prepare something, put it out, and see whether anyone stopped. I couldn't have given her quite the same experience by explaining it from the sidelines.",[10,113,114],{},"That is also how I'm beginning to think about adapting on the spot. It doesn't require a dramatic crisis. Sometimes it means noticing what a visitor is drawn to and responding. Sometimes it means changing a small part of the setup when the first idea doesn't fit. I saw a busy table, not a scripted operating procedure. The uncertainty was part of what made it a useful experience for the girls.",[30,116,118],{"id":117},"when-code-comes-faster-who-connects-the-work","When code comes faster, who connects the work?",[10,120,121],{},"I've been asking myself a similar question at work. I know excellent programmers, including many who are more technically skilled than I am. With agents, I can get an initial version of some code much faster than I used to. That makes me ask what happens next. Whose problem does it solve? Who brings it into a real workflow, hears the first response, and decides what to change?",[10,123,124],{},"Strong engineering still matters. A product people depend on needs someone who understands how to make it safe and reliable. But clean code and a useful outcome are separated by decisions about customers, delivery, support, and trust. As AI shortens part of the building work, that connecting work becomes harder for me to overlook.",[10,126,127],{},"When I used to say I wanted to build a platform, I often pictured software architecture first. Now I also think of a person who connects a need, someone who can meet it, the right tools, and a result that reaches the customer. The girls didn't build a sophisticated platform. They put their separate little products on one table, stood behind it, and heard an answer from the people who stopped and bought things. That table was small, but it made the distance between “I made this” and “someone got value from this” visible to me.",[10,129,130],{},"I hope my daughter gets more chances to do things like that: make something, work things out with other people, face an uncertain room, and see whom her work helps. I want the same reminder in my own projects. Before I add another feature, I want to get closer to the person using it. Alongside “How do we build this?” I want to ask who will put it to work and who will stay to learn from the result.",[10,132,133],{},"She may simply remember a fun day at a crowded table. I'll remember that I nearly missed what was happening there because I thought slime had no use. The next time I finish a feature, I want to stay close enough to see who uses it, what gets in their way, and who helps them across that gap. Yesterday, the kids showed me why that matters.",[10,135,136],{},[137,138,139,140,147],"em",{},"Watch the video version: ",[141,142,146],"a",{"href":143,"rel":144},"https://youtu.be/87R5gQ3D0Ys",[145],"nofollow","What My Daughter’s Fair Stall Taught Me About Building Products",".",{"title":149,"searchDepth":150,"depth":150,"links":151},"",2,[152,153,154,155,156],{"id":32,"depth":150,"text":33},{"id":60,"depth":150,"text":61},{"id":85,"depth":150,"text":86},{"id":98,"depth":150,"text":99},{"id":117,"depth":150,"text":118},"My daughter's busy fair stall reminded me to connect customer needs, teamwork, and technical work to a useful result.","md",{"date":160,"image":161,"alt":162,"youtube":143,"category":163,"tags":164,"published":168},"27th Sep 2026","/blogs-img/2026-09-27-fall-fair-cover.webp","Illustration of a school fair stall under a blue canopy, with a red table and handmade goods","business-strategy",[165,166,167],"customer-needs","product-design","family-life",true,"/blogs/en/school-fair-stall",{"title":5,"description":157},"blogs/en/33.school-fair-stall","zf3kcE56lOQNQyHpX0xboUtdX7jAE_NNyXbl__xWTk0",1790602944778]