Field-Testing Gari Me: What the Jamhuri Car Bazaar Taught Me About User Feedback

Overcoming the noise to build something real.

Before heading to the Jamhuri Car Bazaar yesterday to market garime.co.ke, I turned to X for some guidance. While a few people pointed me in the right direction, several actively discouraged me from making the trip.

I went anyway.

When you have been navigating the tech space as a software engineer since 2010, you quickly realize that the most valuable validation does not come from social media echo chambers—it comes directly from the market.

The Power of Ground-Level Marketing

The market delivered. I spent the day pitching face-to-face with dealers, walking them through the platform, and answering questions on the spot. It was a massive success. I managed to secure several new signups and live car listings right there on the ground.

There is a unique kind of momentum that comes from watching someone use your platform in the real world, rather than just analyzing traffic metrics on a dashboard.

Building in the Open: Catching the Blind Spots

The biggest win of the day was the rapid, unfiltered product feedback. Watching real users navigate the platform on their mobile devices revealed a few critical blind spots that testing in a local environment missed:

• The Mobile UX Gap: Users quickly pointed out that a delete button was missing on the mobile interface, making inventory management frustrating on the go.
• Media Control: The system was automatically setting the first uploaded photo as the featured image. Sellers had no control over which angle of the car was presented first to potential buyers.

“Get out of the building. Talk to your users. Build what they actually need.”

The Fix: Both of these issues were addressed, patched, and pushed live immediately. You can see the updated media selection UI in the attached graphic file, which now gives dealers full control over their listing presentation.

A Major Shift in the Roadmap

The most consistent request from the dealers at the bazaar was for a dedicated mobile app.

While an app has always been in the long-term plans, hearing that demand directly and repeatedly from the end-users has completely shifted the timeline. Firing up Flutter to build and deploy this mobile app is now at the absolute top of the priority list.

Building in the open means letting the market dictate the next move. Yesterday was a perfect reminder that the best product roadmap is written by your users.