Tech product development.
Tech Product Dev. Spring ’23. Jawwad Farid. IBA SMCS, Karachi.
“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like,”
“That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” Steve Jobs
70% of firms in Pakistan’s technology sector focus on shipping services. Less than 30% focus on building products[1].
While seeding a services focused technology team is easy, building a product focused team is much harder. While products focused teams are likely to be more profitable, they also need longer runways, specialized talent, multi-dimensional thinking, and prior exposure to product development expertise.
Why do products matter in the technology services sector?
Unlike services products create the foundation for intellectual property. While code written for services is beholden and under ownership of clients, product intellectual property is free for reuse, repurposing, and repeated sale.
The most common path in our industry is productizing services after services reach a certain threshold of traction. Is there an alternate path? Can a product team start from zero?
This course takes a deep dive in understanding the process of technology product development. We look at lifecycles, frameworks, case studies and models with the objective of mastering the product development process.
Product and Search
One way of looking at product development is using search as an analogy.
Product market fit is a multi-dimensional search problem. Product market fit represents the optimal point in this space. The point where product, market, price, customers, features, opportunity, and cost come together for an optimal solution.
What can we do to tweak our search algorithm for faster, efficient more relevant results?
Start with mindset. How is a product development role different from that of a developer, a project or account manager? Are we supposed to think differently as product managers? Doesn’t it all boil down to code or software at the end?
We propose that the primary difference is in ownership. Product managers own the entire process. Services or development team own only one step of the cycle.
Product teams are wired differently. They are not judged or gauged on lines of codes written but launch, traction, and engagements. If you are not aware of the metrics we will be judged on, we can’t engage or beat them.
[1] State of Pakistan’s Technology Industry 2018–2019. Unpublished industry survey report.
Prescribed Readings
Build by Tony Fadell — https://twitter.com/tfadell
Start at the End. Matt Wallaert — https://twitter.com/mattwallaert —
Contextual Design, 2nd Edition. Hugh Beyer, Karen Holtzblatt — @kholtzblatt
Pre-course viewing assignments for day one of Tech Product Development (TPD).
Day One. Design themes for Tech Product Dev.
- Don Norman talks about 3 ways good design makes you happy in 12 min.
2. Tony Fadell and Build on building great tech products. Tony talks about building the iPod, the Nest, building great products, customer journeys, why versus what, story telling, mission driven assholes and more in 70 minutes.
3. Tony’s second podcast interview with Pete Flint on Story telling, learning to see things, constraints, product design process and mistakes.
4. Design thinking is bullshit. Natasha Jen (https://behance.net/njenworks) calls it out simply and plainly — Design is a messy process and it goes beyond 3M post it notes.
4. Natasha Jen redux. A follow on chat a few months later re-emphasizing the granularity required to make good design work and why the popular view of design thinking is flawed and broken.
4. From Abstract series on Netflix, the Art of Design — Paula Scher: Graphic Design.
Abstract is a great series. 2 seasons that you should watch. I loved Paula work and story most across all of them. If there is one episode you watch, watch Paula.
Then once you have done the 4 videos, here is the mandatory pre-course registration assignment.
Pre-course Assignment One
Using @OpenAI and @Dalle2generator write a short visual story that I would love to read. No assignment, no registration.
See following example:
If for some reason you are not on Twitter, you should be.
Post a link to your story below this thread and tag me on it. Or post it on medium and tag me on it.
The assignment is a test of your ability to follow through on:
a) Fairly heavy reading and viewing course load for TPD
b) Pass the first test of a great product owner. Empathy.
So write a story using a combination of theme, story, visuals, images and words that connects with me and people like me.
That is the assignment, build a connection, with a stranger that you don’t know much about.
Don’t know how to do that, see the TEDx talk below.
DM if you have questions.
Related materials.
Purdue University case study on the Nest Learning Thermostat.
Tony Fadell at Aspen on Making things worth making.
Natasha Jen’s poster on Design Thinking
Day Two. Story Telling.
- Dr. Aaker walks through the process of building stories, the structure of great stories and the power of telling stories.
2. Andrew Stanton walks us through the structure of a great story.
3. How to write a Haiku and tell a story at the same time.
4. Neil Gaiman commencement address. How to tell the story of your life to random strangers and yet connect and inspire them at the same time.
5. Neil Gaiman on how and why stories last.
6. Story Telling In Business — Pixar Story Teller Mathew Luhn at CIMC
Abstract: The Art of Design | Ilse Crawford: Interior Design
The process an interior design team uses to create the space that connects, touches and represents the profile, expectations and needs of its occupants.
It takes time to build, but the themes Ilse Crawford touches are important and relevant to the work of product managers across the world.
Pay attention to the design themes for the Cathay Pacific first class lounge, the functionality of chairs and tables, colors, contrasts, warmth and feeling.
Connecting design to user stories and spaces they live in. Making the ordinary, extra ordinary.
Assignment for Day Two
Step One. Write a haiku that follows the spirit of haiku and tells a story that is personally important to you.
Step Two. Keeping that story in focus, write a second haiku that focuses a different of emotions and feelings in you and the reader than the first.
Step Three. Add a three line context to both Haiku and submit a power point deck that represents a finished product centered around the two Haikus and the stories behind them.
Think of your final submission as a design proposal. It is as much about the stories and the haiku as about presentation and the response it would evoke in your readers.
Take inspiration from Paula and Ilse design proposals for your work.
Day Three. Idea Selection Filters and Product design.
Four themes.
a) Idea selection
b) Feature Prioritization
c) Launch
d) Founder math
Idea selection. If I have six ideas in my head, which one should I pick and work on?
Julie Supan on High Expectation Customers (HXC)
Been there, done that. Finding product market fit by thinking about feature prioritization.
Product market fit at Superhuman
Launch lessons for founders.
Founder math for engineers.
Assignment for day three.
You have already privately launched two products in the first two weeks of this course. In week three you will launch one in the real world.
The challenge? You only have a day to design, develop, lock, finalize and launch your product. Given the materials covered so far you should now understand the process that goes into building something. We recommend that you take:
a) a day to think about what you want to do, take another day to do it,
b) take a third day to figure our launch logistics,
c) use day four to launch,
d) day five and six to track and report back on metrics and present collated results as an evaluation report on day seven.
Day Four
Additional assignments and readings
Related lectures from earlier iteration of this course
Resources
22 rules of story telling from Emma Coats
