Project Foundation and Boundaries

Your Why
You began your journey into skincare in 2017 when you saw firsthand how a skin-related problem affected someone close to you, and that experience opened your eyes to how many people struggle with dry, sensitive, itchy and problematic skin. What struck you most was realising these challenges are not simply cosmetic—persistent skin discomfort affects how people feel about themselves, what they are comfortable wearing, and how they participate in everyday life. You became increasingly aware of a gap between what people want—gentle, effective and affordable skincare—and what is realistically accessible to them. You have moved from observing this problem to developing the knowledge and skills to potentially address it, and this is why the work matters to you personally. You do not yet know whether your proposed solution will achieve the change you hope for, which is precisely why you are testing your assumptions with real people and allowing the evidence to shape what you ultimately develop.
Your Project's Purpose
Help people with dry, sensitive and eczema-prone skin move from limited access to gentle, effective and affordable skincare toward greater comfort and participation in everyday life. You are focusing initially on South Africans who struggle to find suitable products they can afford to use regularly, with potential to expand across African markets facing similar challenges. What becomes better for them is not simply the availability of different products, but improved everyday experiences and the ability to maintain their skin barrier without financial strain. This matters because persistent skin discomfort affects how people feel about themselves, what they wear, and how they move through daily life. You recognize this is a working purpose—you do not yet know whether your proposed solution will achieve the change you hope for, which is precisely why you are testing your assumptions with real people and allowing evidence to shape what you develop. Your project can directly influence the formulation, quality, safety, affordability and accessibility of skincare options, and how clearly their use is communicated. You cannot control the underlying causes of skin conditions, genetics, environmental factors, healthcare access, individual consistency of use, or whether the product works equally for everyone. The change you can influence is the availability and quality of potential solutions and people's access to them, but not the broader health, social and economic factors that contribute to skin problems.
What You Bring
What you have already done and currently know: You began in 2017 by learning about natural ingredients while exploring solutions for someone close to you, and you moved from informal experimentation with cream bases sold in malls to a more structured product-development approach. Through direct customer interactions, you encountered people dealing with sensitive skin, acne, dry skin, atopic dermatitis and post-traumatic hyperpigmentation, which revealed to you that skin problems are common and people actively seek safe, comfortable and affordable products. You have developed knowledge of natural skincare formulation and are working with both evidence-based cosmetic ingredients and selected South African botanical ingredients. You currently believe there is a need for gentle, barrier-supporting, accessible and affordable skincare products for people with dry, sensitive and eczema-prone skin, and you see potential in incorporating locally relevant botanical ingredients for differentiation. However, you recognise that your knowledge comes mainly from personal experience, customer conversations and formulation work rather than systematic market research.
Knowledge gaps you are addressing: You do not yet know how widespread the specific problem is, what potential customers consider their biggest unmet needs, what they currently use, what they are willing to pay, or whether your proposed product would be perceived as a better solution. You acknowledge this is an important gap that you need to investigate through direct conversations and research with potential customers before moving further ahead with product development.
Formulation and technical capability: You have access to your own knowledge and experience in natural skincare formulation and the preliminary product concepts you have already developed. Through the innovation programme, you can draw on external technical expertise and specialised services when required, particularly for formulation, safety, stability, microbiological testing and regulatory compliance.
Access to potential users and feedback: You have access to potential customers whom you can approach for interviews and questionnaires to begin validating the problem and your assumptions.
Resources and constraints: Your current resources are limited, particularly in terms of funding, specialised testing facilities, manufacturing capacity and established distribution networks. Your plan requires access to suitable and consistent-quality ingredients, the ability to develop and test formulations properly, reliable feedback from potential users, and access to appropriate testing and regulatory support before making the product commercially available. The next stage depends critically on access to potential users and honest feedback from them before investing heavily in formulation, packaging or production.
Relationship-building capability: You recognise that the project depends on your ability to build the right relationships as it progresses, including with potential customers, ingredient suppliers, technical and testing service providers, regulatory advisors and eventually manufacturing or distribution partners.
Where You Must Begin
ConstraintWhat it means for where I startYour own knowledge and experience in natural skincare formulation, and preliminary product concepts already developedYou can begin with customer interviews and questionnaires grounded in what you already know, without requiring new technical resources at this stage.Access to potential customers for interviews and questionnairesYou can validate your problem assumptions and gather honest feedback before investing in formulation, packaging or production.Access through the HIP Development Challenge to learning environment, guidance, peer perspectives, and structured evidence-based developmentYou can develop the project incrementally and draw on external technical expertise and specialised services for formulation, safety, stability, microbiological testing and regulatory compliance as needed.Funding, specialised testing facilities, manufacturing capacity and established distribution networks are currently limitedYour project must develop incrementally rather than moving immediately to large-scale production, which means you must establish market validation and obtain appropriate testing and regulatory support before commercial availability.Access to suitable and consistent-quality ingredients, proper formulation development and testing, reliable user feedback, and appropriate testing and regulatory supportYou can only proceed to commercial availability once these conditions are met.Your ability to build relationships with potential customers, ingredient suppliers, technical and testing service providers, regulatory advisors, and eventually manufacturing or distribution partnersYou must prioritise this relationship-building as the project progresses, recognizing that the next stage depends fundamentally on these connections.Safety and preventing harm must come before commercial success; you must not make unsupported claims that the product can cure, treat or prevent medical conditions; formulation must remain within cosmetic regulatory boundaries; people with active or severe skin conditions must not be encouraged to replace professional medical adviceYou can only conduct product testing once the formulation is sufficiently developed and safe for that type of testing, and you must ensure any claims about performance are supported by appropriate evidence.Participants in interviews, questionnaires or testing must understand how their information will be used, participation must be voluntary, information must be kept confidential and stored securely, you should avoid collecting unnecessary sensitive personal or medical information, and you should seek input from a reasonably diverse range of potential users rather than designing around one groupYou can collect customer feedback responsibly, but customer reports cannot be presented as proof of clinical effectiveness and must be kept separate from what you can scientifically and legally demonstrate.How You Think the Change Happens
Chain of steps: You believe the change happens through developing a moisturising cream or lotion formulated with evidence-based cosmetic ingredients and indigenous African botanicals, then if the product is safe, effective and pleasant to use, people may be more willing to incorporate it into regular skincare routines; consistent use could help maintain skin hydration and support the skin barrier, which may improve everyday skin comfort and reduce problems associated with dryness; and if you make the product affordable and accessible, people may continue using it and recommend it to others.
Least certain step: You identified the transition from having a product you believe can meet a need to having customers actually value it, use it consistently and experience enough benefit to continue using it as the weakest link, because potential customers may have different expectations about texture, absorption, fragrance, packaging, price or speed of results, may already trust existing products, and the indigenous botanical component may not matter to them or influence their purchasing decision; you also noted uncertainty about whether the problem is sufficiently important and widespread within your intended target market.
Critical dependencies: The project depends on potential users' experiences with dry, sensitive, itchy and eczema-prone skin and their willingness to participate in research; on skincare formulation expertise to ensure the formulation is technically sound, safe and stable; on regulatory and compliance expertise to understand cosmetics requirements in South Africa; on suppliers and manufacturing partners for ingredient availability, consistency and costs; and ultimately on you bringing these inputs together and making key decisions, though you noted the credibility and viability depends on listening to the people who will use the product rather than developing it in isolation.
User input on decisions: The people affected should help you decide whether you are addressing the right problem and what a genuinely useful solution would look like, including how significant their skin concerns are in everyday life, what they currently use and feel is missing, what they value most in a moisturiser, whether a product combining barrier-supporting ingredients with indigenous African botanicals is meaningful to them, and what packaging, size and price would make it practical and affordable; they should also help refine sensory characteristics during product development, while you retain responsibility for technical decisions such as safety, stability and regulatory compliance.
What You'll Test First
Your first important assumption: People with dry, sensitive, itchy or eczema-prone skin experience a meaningful unmet need that is not being adequately addressed by the products they currently use, and you need to establish whether the problem itself is important enough to justify developing a new solution rather than testing whether people like your proposed formulation.
What you need to learn: Whether the problem is real, meaningful and sufficiently important to the people you intended to serve; how common and significant these skin concerns are; how they affect everyday lives; what products people currently use and what they like or dislike about them; what they believe is missing from existing solutions; what characteristics they value most in a moisturising product; whether affordability, accessibility and the use of indigenous African botanicals are actually meaningful to them; and whether there is enough interest in an alternative product to justify further development.
Your decision to continue: You will continue if the evidence shows a meaningful problem, a clearly identifiable group of people experience it, and genuine interest in a better solution.
Your decision to revise: You will revise the idea if the problem is real but your assumptions about the target customer, product format, formulation, price, positioning or value proposition appear to be wrong, and you will use the feedback to modify the concept.
Your decision to pause: You will pause if you discover important technical, safety, regulatory, financial or resource constraints that need to be resolved before you can responsibly continue.
Your decision to stop: You will stop or reconsider the project if the evidence suggests that the problem is not significant enough, potential users are generally satisfied with existing solutions, there is insufficient willingness to adopt or pay for an alternative, or you cannot develop the product safely, responsibly and sustainably within your available resources.