Some initial notes on what my first customer taught me

Mike's Notes

The first in a series of notes reflecting on what my first customer has taught me so far. 

Resources

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/mr-g-galeno-chua-7692b792/
• https://startupaotearoa.org
• https://design-system.service.gov.uk/accessibility/
• https://www.blog.ajabbi.com/2023/12/uk-government-design-system.html
• https://steveblank.com

References

• Reference

Repository

• Home > Ajabbi Research > Library >
• Home > Handbook > 

Last Updated

12/06/2025

Some initial notes on what my first customer taught me

By: Mike Peters

On a Sandy Beach: 09/06/2025

Mike is the inventor and architect of Pipi and the founder of Ajabbi.

Mr G, my excellent former Startup Aotearoa coach, had suggested that for my first customer, I find a "teaching customer" who was happy to be a crash-test dummy.

It was intended to take something that works in the lab and apply it in the real world to solve real problems for a real customer, who would provide feedback, and I would learn some valuable insights.

What happened wasn't what I expected, and there were lots of surprises. I'm still learning something new every day by having to get out of the door and solve real-world problems (Thank you, Steve Blank).

First customer

This week, the website of my first (pro bono) customer went live as an early beta. It was a great success, despite there being a lot more to be done. 

The website is for a national disability organisation in New Zealand.

Requirements

The website should be published in different screen formats and languages, similar to how Wikipedia operates.

• Screen formats
• Mobile
• Desktop
• Braille device
• Languages (number of speakers in NZ)
• English (4,482,000)
• Māori (213,000)
• NZ Sign Language (20,000)
• AAC picture language for non-verbal people, similar to what Prof. Stephen Hawking used. (?)

The login area should be easily customised to meet the specific needs of each registered user. Examples include

• Colour-blind (14 types)
• Autism
• Dyslexia
• Muscular Dystrophy (large buttons)
• Deafblind (some of whom can't use screen readers, so use tactile braille)
• Epilepsy
• etc

Pipi CMS needs to provide extensive automation, making it easier for a volunteer team to handle the configuration aspects and allowing people with disabilities to maintain the website in the long term.

Many disabled people in New Zealand are isolated and impoverished because of the lack of government support. It needs to work for elderly people who often use much older computers, as well as for the young who use the latest technology. No one gets to be left behind.

It needed to be

• simple
• predictable
• reliable
• work on any screen or device
• and assume nothing

The website needed to have the capacity to scale without restriction.

What happened

Pipi CMS can easily handle the work. The challenge was figuring out what it needed to produce. Designing and building this website had to be fast, cheap, simple and able to be done by volunteers who also faced their own health and support issues.

No complex tools, such as Figma, were used.

A great deal of rapid experimentation was conducted to determine what would work, using straightforward technology.

• Built the 1200-page website by hand
• Used simple standard layout templates
• Used real data
• Performed extensive search and replace operations
• HTML Pages were manually laid out using an outdated but fast and straightforward method: hidden nested tables.

During this time, Google Search was blocked.

Testing

The beta version of the website was made available to many people with disabilities, their families, and support workers to gather feedback. Further modifications were then made rapidly until everyone was happy with the result.

Google Search was then unblocked, and a wider group was invited to use it.

Next steps

The existing layout templates (using nested tables) will be imported into Pipi CMS, connected to the content database and then automatically created by Pipi 9 CMS as static HTML pages most days.

All of the HTML code in these templates will then be converted to use CSS style sheets, which will make the website mobile-friendly (it's not yet). This will also enable significant changes and enhancements to the website's appearance.

A separate website for mobile with precisely the duplicate content, similar to what Wikipedia has done, will then be created.

The website will then be promoted to a broader audience.

Screen Reader

A significant effort will then be made to ensure it works seamlessly with screen readers, braille machines, and meets the WAI-ARIA 1.2 and WCAG 2.2 standards for web accessibility.

What I learned

Initially, attempting to make the website WAI-ARIA compliant proved to be a significant mistake, resulting in a 4-month delay. So was using style sheets.

It was much faster to create cheap and dirty HTML web page prototypes with rapid feedback loops measured in hours. The design and testing process went through several hundred cycles.

The biggest challenge was discovering the customer solution (how the website content and navigation were organised), not the technical means to deliver it.

How forgiving people were in an honest and open process, which initially went down many rabbit holes.

It was a privilege and an honour to be part of this. This kind of learning is priceless.