Testing before translating: how Ditto validated its value proposition before expanding into the UK
Before spending time or budget on a new market, Ditto's design team needed to know if the messaging that worked in the Netherlands would actually resonate in the UK — or if the product and positioning needed to change first.
Summary
See how Ditto validated its value proposition for a UK expansion in under two days, surveying 100 UK participants and uncovering a cultural difference in messaging before changing a single word.
Key results at a glance
A value proposition tested with a new audience before a single line of messaging or product changed.
100 UK participants surveyed in under 2 days, revealing a cultural difference in how the core problem should be framed.
Panel testing corrected a core assumption, revealing the sharing feature's real audience was family caregivers, not partners.
8+ years as a loyal user, used as a go-to tool through the company's growth from early-stage startup to a live hospital deployment.
"If you're stuck in your design process and you just need a second pair of eyes, use Lyssna and get insights very quickly. You'll probably find something surprising."
Ilayda Küçükosmanoğlu
Head of Design
Ditto’s story
Company stats:
Industry: Healthtech
Headquarters: The Netherlands
Employees: 11-50
Ditto is a Netherlands-based health-tech app that records medical appointments, turns them into clear summaries, and lets patients share those summaries with the people who matter.
The problem it solves is a familiar one: you walk out of an appointment thinking "wait, what did they say?" — and then have to explain it all over again to everyone who asks.
That problem statement, and the messaging built around it, had been shaped and refined in the Netherlands, including who the team believed they were solving it for.
Ditto started as "radically patient centric," focused on building the best possible product for the person in the appointment. Research kept widening that. When someone needs care, other people are always involved, sometimes the patient manages alone, sometimes they lean on the people around them. The team had assumed those people were mostly partners, the ones who'd want a summary of an appointment.
Panel testing told a different story. The stronger need was among family members — adult children and siblings — supporting elderly parents through their care. It was one of several insights that moved Ditto from designing for the patient to designing for the care circle around them
So when Ditto started considering a UK expansion, Ilayda faced a related question with no easy answer: would the same value proposition — built around this now-validated audience — land with a UK audience, or would the product or the message need to change again?
Rather than guess, she tested it.
What research challenges was Ditto facing?
Ditto is young – the company is about a year and a half old, and its app has been live for just over a year – but it's growing quickly: 75,000+ users, a 4.7-star rating, partnerships with healthcare organizations across the Netherlands, and an app launch inside a hospital the same week as this conversation.
Ilayda joined at the very beginning, working alongside the founders and one AI engineer. The creative team has since grown to three: a product designer, a brand designer, and Ilayda herself, who leans toward research and strategy while her product designer translates insights into design decisions.
Two connected problems stood out:
Untested assumptions about who the product was really for.
The team's early thinking on their sharing feature centered on partners. Without a fast way to validate that assumption against real behavior, they risked building — and messaging — for the wrong audience entirely.Guessing at messaging fit for a new market.
Once the audience picture was clearer, the team still needed to know if their Netherlands-tested value proposition would translate to the UK.
As Ilayda put it, before testing, she was essentially guessing whether UK sentiment around the core problem would differ from what they'd seen at home and, if it did, whether that meant changing the product, the messaging, or both.
With a lean team and limited time, there was no appetite for finding either of these out the slow way — through a soft launch, or trial and error in-market. They needed a fast, low-risk way to check their assumptions before committing resources.
The search for a tool that fit a resource-strapped team
Ilayda's relationship with Lyssna goes back further than her current role. While working at a global digital agency, Dept Agency, she was responsible for setting up user research practices across the design team and tested a range of tools before landing on what was then UsabilityHub:
"I just remember it was so easy to quickly set up a test, quickly get insights."
Ilayda Küçükosmanoğlu
Head of Design
She used it and stuck with it ever since, describing herself as a product ambassador — and it was the tool she reached for both to test who the product was really for, and later, when the UK question came up.
How Lyssna helped
Ilayda's usage spans most of the platform, built around a clear split: Lyssna's research panel for fast, broad validation, and her own product's users for testing things they'll actually recognize.
Early concept testing on the panel is what first surfaced the shift from "partners" to "family members caring for elderly parents" as the real audience for the sharing feature — a finding that reshaped both the product direction and, eventually, the decision to rename it "Together."
With that audience clearer, Ilayda used the same panel to validate the value proposition ahead of the UK expansion — running a proposition test with UK participants, no visuals or polished concepts, just the core messaging they'd been using in the Netherlands, tested directly against a new audience.
The test was designed to answer one question: does this resonate the same way here as it does at home? The panel surfaced an answer faster than a soft launch or a slower research process ever could and revealed something Ilayda hadn't expected.
In the Netherlands, people tend to downplay forgetting what a doctor told them, out of pride. But the UK panel responded strongly to that exact problem statement.
"There are cultural differences in healthcare. Being able to figure that out with Lyssna is actually a super, super good thing."
Ilayda Küçükosmanoğlu
Head of Design
The results
A go/no-guess decision on messaging. Rather than assuming their Netherlands-tested proposition would translate, Ditto validated it directly with a UK audience, replacing a guess with evidence before committing to a market move.
A cultural insight that shaped both the message and the product. The test showed the underlying problem still resonated in the UK but the way people related to it was different enough that it fed directly into product decisions, not just framing. It was one of several Lyssna tests whose insights helped shape Ditto's move to rename their sharing feature from "Ditto Loved Ones" to "Together".
Validation in under two days. The proposition test went live in 10 minutes and collected 100 responses within two days — fast enough to inform a market decision without slowing the team down.
"I've also seen the tool evolve over the years, and I think it's just really good."
Ilayda Küçükosmanoğlu
Head of Design
