I was totally unaware of the fanciful terms about the Internet realm until I coincidentally came across a founder of a travel startup who was in bad need of revamping their website. My knowledge back then was limited to layman terms such as “websites”, “webpages”, “sitemap” and “user interface” thanks to my previous internship at Fourmedia, an advertising agency in Singapore that does online brand visual identity for clients occasionally.
So said the founder and the tech guy who he outsourced the revamping project to, “why not you take the lead on doing the wireframe stuff as the branding hustler?”
I was 22 and that was when I first heard about the jargon, which surprisingly and irreversibly steered my career path from a hardcore life scientist to a product enthusiast, and again, I knew too little about product management to use proper wire-framing tools like “Axure”.
So I started drawing, in the most traditional manner, with 5 2B pencils sharpened, a fresh eraser and a 30cm ruler. All information or instructions given were scattered beads and I was to connect the dots into an information architecture. It involved a lot of modifying and shifting of buttons, which I only got to know later that it was about user experience. Though through later practices I have found myself in love with using Sketch app and Apple pencil, the habit of drawing rectangles and arrows on has greatly enhanced efficiency of communicating ideas whenever it comes to product design.
Tech entrepreneurs tend to get their feet off the ground too easily when it comes to product design. Many of us often jump into drawing the main pages immediately when an idea is still coarse but the mind is too fresh to wait. Below is a photo of the wireframe prototype when I was doing the Tutormy project (a full-stack project that provides a platform for tutors to get discovered by students directly) with four brilliant engineers from Fooyo.
Did these pages come across my mind with a finger snap? Certainly not. According to my personal experience, to quick start on a product design journey, it is often useful to do the following:
Establish user persona.
Understand who your product is talking to or serving. Try to describe your users in short paragraphs and keep asking yourself why would your product help them in solving specific problems.
Understand your users.
Do a proper research on what your users may want to achieve through using your service. In this process, however, some might argue that users often do not know what they want to achieve exactly. My take is that a paper prototype with key pages drawn could help you to observe if there might be any confusions as they switch between pages.
Learn from your competitors.
Competitor studies often inspire me tremendously. You might not have direct competitors but it is good to learn from folks that are interested in solving similar problems as you do. For example, if you are building a bus booking app and you need to understand the commuters, learning from Uber and Lyft might give you sparks as you are serving the same group of people.
Listen to your end users, but do not follow blindly.
A very important skill of a product manager is to know when to do what. About planning on which features to develop first, a good read can be found here. It is good when user requirements align with your business goals, it is however impossible to kill all birds with one stone.So, focus on the major functions that matter the most first.
Run through user flow a thousand times if you can.
User flow charts are flowcharts that describe the relations between main pages and critical actions. Attached below is a product I did to enable users to place food orders on their handphone, which would be sent instantly to the POS in restaurants. It is advised that PM sit down with the developers to discuss ways to optimise interactions should a project involves more than one end. For example, LinkedIn build products for both job seekers (the Customers)and the talent seekers (the Business). Crosstalk between both ends is a challenge, especially when it comes to notification system and IM (instant messaging) system.
My first encounter with Internet product, however, did not go this far. It stopped at a few wireframe drawings done by Powerpoint, which worked wonders at that time. Therefore, it is not a must for PM aspirants to kickstart by mastering a certain software. Softwares are more important in later parts of the story when you need to create low fidelity prototype or drafting PRD (product requirement document), which will be mentioned in my other articles in the near future (hopefully).
Knowing what goals and objectives you are achieving is all you need.I fell for Product Management knowing I could now solve problems with greater productivity thanks to the evolution of Web x.0 era. So do get yourself a fanciful notebook if you can’t get your brain rested as I do.
