Sophia Fay Individual Reflection

There were many assumptions I made about target users for StudioHub as well as product management in general that were proved wrong throughout this class. First of all, I thought that product design students would be the ideal target for StudioHub, as the majority of product design students are required to have personal portfolios/websites for the jobs they are applying for. However, through user research, I learned that product design students would actually not be the ideal target customer as they prefer having full control over the design of their personal portfolio — they want to be able to design their portfolio completely from scratch as a way to showcase their skills and personality to recruiters. They care less about having a quick, easy, efficient way to make a portfolio because the actual making of their portfolio is a reflection of their skills and eye for design. In addition, regarding product management, I did not think that soft skills such as negotiation, persuasion, and managing conflict were as important to the job. I initially thought that the more technical or “hard” skills (being good with metrics, Agile, etc.) was much more important and a larger part of the job. I was wrong! I am excited to spend more time learning the softer skills that I had initially dismissed.

A few of the things I did (and learned how to do) were: creating Figma wireframes and a style tile in Figma for the “Look and Feel” StudioHub prototype, conducting user interviews, creating a BMC, VPC, and user story map. I really enjoyed learning how to use Figma more in-depth, as I had never used it to create wireframes before. I also absolutely loved learning how to create a comprehensive user story map and seeing how one, seemingly simple step in the user story can be broken down into many sub-steps and multiple features. I learned what OKRs are and how to actually create them! I wrote OKRs for StudioHub and learned what a good metric is and ways to actually measure those metrics.

If we had more time, I would have built the StudioHub MVP web application and began testing it on Stanford beta users. However, Sreya, Sophia, and I have decided that we are actually going to build the StudioHub MVP next quarter for our senior project! In addition, if we had more time, I would have interviewed more new graduates and people not on Stanford’s campus to have a more broad, comprehensive understanding of our potential users.

I really enjoyed this class as it allowed me to learn something and then directly put it into action on our StudioHub project. I like learning by doing, and that is exactly what this class allowed me to do. This class has also confirmed for me that product management is a career path I am very interested in and excited about. This is only the beginning of my PM journey!