Individual Self Reflection

I thought that I was sure that I wanted to be a PM when I first took this class. While I think that there are a lot of things that I find interesting about the PM role, I learned that I really enjoy the design process more. I have always really enjoyed thinking about the business-side of tech products which is why I thought I wanted to be a PM, but I realized that there is enough business overlap in design work. I learned that I enjoy how design work allows me to focus on one specific aspect, which I find more enjoyable than being spread thin across many different product aspects.

On my team, I mainly focused on product design and ideation. I enjoyed thinking about how the user would interact with our company (the user flows), how to synthesize information from our user interviews into pivots for our company and how, in the end, we would make money from all of this. I came into this class only being familiar with B2C companies and it really opened my eyes to think about the different motivations and incentives that B2B companies have, as well as the different kinds of value that they create. If we had more time, I would love to conduct more interviews with company office managers and university department managers to see what commuter programs they have considered in the past and to gauge interest. I learned so much from interviewing the Stanford Transportation Department representative that I feel like there is still so much more to learn.