Working on the GoodWalks project was a very informative experience, and helped me put into practice many of the different points of product development that we have learned about in this class. Also, doing so in a team environment helped make that learning experience even more valuable, as contending with the associated dynamics is very similar to working on a product team.
Our initial perspective on the direction that the project should go went through several iterations before we landed on the customizable high hell approach. During this time we made assumptions about what our crafted personas would want while also trying to ground our decisions in the user interviews we had done. This lead us to making a fashionable shoe that wouldn’t compromise on comfort, and also allowed our customers to design them themselves, making sure we never miss out on someone’s unique style. This process had a significant amount of collaboration, and while we definitely had disagreements within the team at times, there were always relatively quick resolutions, as we all agreed on the fact that we should be basing everything we did in what our users told us they wanted.
As we moved towards preparing for our presentation, we had an effective division of labor and organized our efforts well. We were each able to identify our own strengths and take over pieces of the presentation that were best suited to us. One of the most interesting parts of this for me was designing the “ask”. Because we are an established company, we were simply looking for budget for our project, but I approached the issue in the same way I would if I were looking to raise venture funding. I also have zero background in fashion/manufacturing, so doing the research to understand what it would really take to make our project a reality was an informative process. The company I work with is expecting to raise VC funding at the beginning of next year, and it will be the first raise that I am on the team for, so I treated this project as a mini dry-run for this process and trying to understand what we will need from investors.
Finally on our team dynamics, I was very happy with the way we were able to work together and come to solutions quickly. We had several quick pivots early on in our project, but the team was able to move rapidly while still understanding our goal
