Reflection

After spending the past 10 weeks learning about product management and working on Orbit, I’ve learned a lot about the intersection between technology and business. In particular, class assignments heavily emphasized interpersonal communication and soft skills as key ingredients for successful teams. 

I initially thought it would be difficult to find a team that could quickly narrow down a project idea that would stick with us throughout the quarter. I was afraid that there would be several disagreements, diverging interests, and overall conflict. Indeed, my teammates and I did not agree on everything, but our differences made the team stronger.  Some of us wanted a more complex implementation for our social reminder app so that users with demanding work schedules, family responsibilities, travel duties, etc could customize their reminders, making the Orbit journey more accessible. Others on our team saw things differently. Apps that are very simple offer the benefit of quick, straightforward onboarding which can be perfect for users with visual or motor impairments, for instance. We certainly spent time hashing out these disagreements, but each conversation was an opportunity to explore the potential social impact of our project. 

Our team is made up of students who strive to make the world a better place through designing and building products, and we were lucky to have a teaching team that shared those values. I learned a lot about the ethical mistakes made by current technologies ranging from privacy violations to addictive features. I found the mid-term essay to be a really interesting way to explore how our project would impact people in the real world because it encouraged us to delve deeper into a sub-topic of tech ethics rather than simply scratching the surface. The case studies were also really helpful for contextualizing how these ethical issues manifest and what action businesses take in response. 

If we had more time, I think it would have been cool to learn more about how mobile apps are designed. While we learned a lot about business decisions, we didn’t learn as much about specific mobile app features and what impact they have. For example, I always found it interesting that the pull-down bar for notifications was designed to replicate slot machines so that it would have the same addictive, dopamine-enhancing effect as gambling. Those small details are really important to cover, especially when considering products like iPhones which have over 1 billion users. I don’t have as much design experience as I do with coding, so it would have been nice to learn more about the subtle psychology behind button placement and colors and how that could make products more or less addictive.

Overall, I enjoyed my time in CS 177 and am grateful to have learned so much about product management.