Getting into the business
The company objectives serve as north star, guiding us on a collective mission. By understanding these shared goals, we can explore how our efforts can contribute to the company’s success. Here’s how I started connecting with the business mindset:
- Deciphering the company’s ambicion
Avenue directors have a clear vision for the business’ future, both near and far. Immersing myself in their strategic plan was great to align the discovery with their overarching vision.
- Stakeholder interviews
Stakeholders hold significant influence on the team’s direction. To grasp not only their ideas but also their underlying motivations, I conducted in-depth interviews. This also brought them closer to the product development process, helping to evolve their perspective on how we build products. - Consuming internal data
Reviewing the company numbers, both results and product metrics, to create realistic goals and know what prioritize based on the KPIs we could impact the most.
Analyzing user insights
Products are designed for people. Without understanding their needs, you’re building in the dark. While direct user interviews weren’t viable, I leveraged these alternative methods to map user perception, categorize and prioritize based on volumetry and sentiment.
- Customer support tickets
Analyzing ticket trends and patterns identifies recurring problems or feature requests, providing invaluable data on usability concerns and opportunities for product enhancement. - App store reviews
Interpreting users’ immediate feedback, both positive and negative, helps to understand their current needs, identify pain points, and discover desired features to address weaknesses and meet expectations. - Quantifying User Preferences
Using a survey to quantify insights based on user preference data, and also analyzing researches conducted by other team designers adds valuable context to quantitative findings.
Wandering through market competitive landscape
After a review of the company’s internal data, I turned my attention to the external environment by mapping the context of the Brazilian financial market. This is what I did to understand market demand and the competitive terrain:
- Industry data overview
Analyzing industry reports, market research data, and competitor financial statements to gain insights into the size, growth, expectation and key drivers of the Brazilian financial services market. - Benchmarking
The market isn’t static. A good way to evaluate our strenghts and weekness against the competitors is doing a comparative analysis. This benchmarking exercise provided insights into our competitive positioning and potential areas for improvement.
An eye on innovation
As Jobs said once, innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower. To not only go with the flow of the market but to find opportunities of implementing untapped features, this is what I did:
- Sketching futures, not features
By bringing unexplored concepts to life, I transformed abstract ideas into tangible opportunities. By visualizing the possibilities, we could chart a course towards a truly groundbreaking future.
2. Brainstorming with engineering
Engineers aren’t merely interested in new technologies, they’re brimming with potential for creative problem-solving. By engaging them in brainstorming sessions, we challenged assumptions, explored the frontiers of new technologies, and ultimately reimagined how we could do things differently.
The outcome
With valuable insights collected across the process, it was time to transform these knowledge into actionable opportunities. Here’s how I materialize it:
- Opportunity Solution Tree
I employed the Opportunity Solution Tree framework to helped us organize, prioritize, and dissect the identified opportunities, ensuring a clear path from the desired outcome to solutions and experiments. - Effort and impact prioritization
After the OST, I presented the compiled insights and opportunities through the tree for the team, and we engaged in open discussions about feasibility, impact, and alignment with user needs. This dynamic led us to an effort x impact matrix, the methodology I used to ease the prioritization.
After this collaborative process, the product manager could prioritize opportunities and translate into a concrete roadmap, outlining clear milestones and timelines for their development and implementation.
