Individual Reflection – Joseph Ngo

I really enjoyed the class! Coming from an engineering background, I really had a “build build build” mindset towards creating products. Obviously, this class has taught us that brute force building is definitely not the way to begin a new product. The focus towards product market fit and how to achieve that was probably the most valuable thing I learned in this class. Conducting user interviews, making experiments to test our assumptions, and iterating on the product design was something I never really got in any other CS classes.

I think the class could benefit from more clarification on what the major assignments were. It’s really really overwhelming to open an assignment handout and be met with a ginormous wall of text. I think each assignment just needs 1 or 2 clear goals, instead of a bunch of sub goals. For example, the prototypes; I didn’t know if we needed 3 or 5 or what even counted as a prototype.

I think it’s also very very important that during lecture, new terms always come with a definition. All these terms like “agile” and “lean” float around and it sucks to feel like I don’t know something when I’m trying to follow.

I actually really enjoyed the team project format. Putting your heart into your own project and starting it from the ground up teaches you a lot about product management and is very applicable to working on an already existing project.

Another thing I really enjoyed was Christina’s lectures and sit down talks with speakers! It was really nice to see how down to earth the class was!

On the topic of section, it’s really hard to fit two 3 hour blocks into my schedule. My team met regularly outside of class which kept us up to date with deadlines and many of us had other commitments after class. I honestly think this class could have been done without a separate “section” and the section material could just be worked into the lecture. TA check-ins could still happen after class.

Another thing that came to mind was that a lot of the material from weeks 1-4 was physical which is nice to change things up from typing all the time, but I wasn’t sure if we needed to keep the huge pieces of paper we used for a class exercise. I didn’t know if it was an exercise or a deliverable we need to keep and use later, so more clarification on that would be nice.