Empathy, not algorithms, will unlock digital SA 

Artificial intelligence may be dominating the global technology conversation, but I believe many South African businesses are overlooking a far more immediate competitive advantage: understanding the people they are designing for.

For me, the conversation about women in technology has never simply been about representation. It is also about who is trusted to shape the products, platforms and customer experiences that millions of South Africans rely on every day.

Women currently account for only around 23% of technology roles in South Africa, with representation narrowing further in senior and decision-making positions. This matters because the decisions made inside technology teams extend far beyond the industry itself. They influence how people access banking, healthcare, education, transport, public services and everyday opportunities.

The conversation should not stop at getting more women into technology. It must also consider who gets to define customer experiences, shape product strategy and influence the decisions that affect how people interact with digital services.

Throughout my career, I have worked across information design, brand design, UX/UI, product design and service design. The further I have progressed, the more I have realised that the boundaries between these roles are not nearly as clear as they first appear.

Whether you are shaping a brand, designing a digital product, or improving a service journey, the foundation remains the same: understanding people and creating meaningful experiences around their needs.

This is not simply an ideological argument. It is a commercial one.

South Africa’s digital economy serves one of the most diverse consumer markets in the world. DataReportal estimates that the country had more than 50 million internet users at the beginning of 2025, yet approximately 13.6-million people remained offline.

Even among connected users, digital experiences vary dramatically. Device quality, data affordability, language preferences, payment behaviour and levels of digital confidence all influence whether a product feels useful, accessible and trustworthy.

There is no single “average South African user”.

When businesses design around assumptions rather than evidence, those assumptions quickly become barriers. A product might technically work but still fail the people it was intended to serve.

South Africa challenges us to design for an extraordinarily diverse group of users. That complexity should not be treated as an inconvenience. It should be viewed as an opportunity to build better, more resilient products.

Research from Forrester has found that every dollar invested in user experience can return up to 100 dollars in value. International research also repeatedly shows that customers abandon digital journeys when onboarding is confusing, trust signals are weak or products fail to reflect their circumstances.

Yet many digital products begin to lose customers long before they reach the market.

The misunderstanding often starts at the beginning of the design process, when teams make assumptions about who the customer is, what they understand and how they are likely to behave.

The most effective designers I have worked with are no longer defined by a single discipline. They are the people who can connect customer research with strategy, technology, commercial thinking and experience design to solve complex problems.

This is also why I believe empathy is one of the most commercially valuable skills a technology team can develop.

Empathy is sometimes dismissed as something soft or subjective. In practice, it gives businesses the ability to identify friction, understand hesitation and recognise why customers abandon a product or struggle to trust it.

It allows teams to ask better questions.

What happens when a customer cannot afford to complete a data-heavy onboarding process? What happens when the language used by a financial platform feels unfamiliar or intimidating? What happens when a payment method does not reflect how someone actually manages their money?

Different lived experiences lead to different questions. Answering those questions creates criteria that are specific to the market, which ultimately leads to better-designed products.

My own career has reinforced the importance of this diversity of thinking.

I have worked as the only design lead within a product team and as part of larger multidisciplinary design teams. Each environment develops different strengths.

Working independently builds ownership, confidence and the ability to make difficult decisions. Working within a broader team challenges your thinking. Other people notice things you have missed, bring experiences you do not have and help create stronger solutions than any one person could develop alone.

Businesses are beginning to reconsider what good product design looks like. Design can no longer be viewed as a specialist function focused only on interfaces, visual polish or aesthetics. It is a strategic capability that directly influences customer acquisition, retention, loyalty and trust.

This becomes even more important as artificial intelligence makes it easier and faster to produce digital products.

AI has flooded the market with templated solutions that may look right but often perform poorly. The differentiator will not be the ability to generate another interface. It will be the ability to understand whether that interface solves the right problem for the right person.

As South Africa considers the future of its digital economy and the career opportunities available to young people, I do not believe our competitive advantage lies in creating increasingly narrow and specialised design roles. It lies in developing versatile, strategic thinkers who can work across disciplines and understand the commercial impact of their decisions.

The designers who remain valuable will not necessarily be those who fit neatly into a single category. They will be the people who deepen their commercial understanding and recognise how experience design contributes to revenue, retention and long-term customer trust.

Technology will continue to evolve. Customer expectations will continue to change. AI tools will become faster and more capable.

But businesses that understand people better than their competitors will always have an advantage.

The future of South Africa’s digital economy will not be unlocked by algorithms alone. It will be unlocked by the people who know how to look beyond the template, ask better questions and design with genuine understanding.