Demystifying the product path

1. Demystifying the product path
Tedi Konda (@tedi)
Instructor, Curriculum Fellow, General Assembly
Executive Director, Technology, Unison

2. The idea is not nearly
enough

3. Neither is just the
technology

4. The special sauce lies in
execution and ability to
get the product in the
hands of your audience

5. …however the idea is a
good first step

6. Find one job to guide your purpose and
focus
The more focused you are at trying to
solve one problem, the higher the
chances of succeeding
Founder

7. Lesson 1: truly understand your purpose

8. 1. Market analysis
2. Audience research
3. Competitive research
Research
Researcher

9. Lesson 2: understand demand,
competition, and audience

10. User personas: think through the eyes
of your audience
Researcher

11. Humanize your
product

12. Lesson 3: use empathy to guide your
product design

13. Break down business rules to user
stories to guide your product
development
Researcher

14. Sketch out product taxonomy

15. Build out wireframes
Wireframes = blueprints
UX Designer
WireframeResearch

16. Design the user interface…essentially
the paint job
Designer
WireframeResearch
User
Interface

17. Build the damn thing!
Developer
WireframeResearch
User
Interface
Build

18. What’s involved in the build?
What methods of delivery does your
product need to launch with?

19. Technology Stack
Front-end dev
Back-end dev
iOS dev
Android dev
Objective-C
Swift
Java
HTML
CSS
Javascript
Ruby
Python
MySQL
Servers

20. Testing
Quality assurance
QAResearcher
User testing

21. Lesson 4: always get validation

22. …but wait, we forgot two important roles

23. Product manager: the glue to all
these rolesPM

24. Marketing: just because you build it,
doesn’t mean they will comeMarketer

25. Tweak RepeatMeasure

26. So what’s the secret sauce?
Be nimble
Be transparent
Open all lines of communication in the project
Involve people often and early

27. This is a lot of people for my little idea
Founder
Researcher
UX Designer
Designer
Developer
Back-end dev
iOS dev
Front-end dev
Android dev
QA
PM
Marketer

28. Do I need all these roles?
Founder
Res
UX
Designer
Developer
Back-
iOS
Front
Andr
QA
PM
Marketer

29. Next steps? 3 options to get a MVP
(minimum viable product) off the ground:
Teach yourself and do all the heavy lifting solo
Play to your skills: hire where you are lacking
Hire external agency

30. Last words
Implement the start-up model of always measuring growth
wherever possible
Always analyze market
Build everything with your audience in mind
Have a good plan of communication and transparency

31. Thank you!
Tedi Konda (@tedi)
Instructor, Curriculum Fellow, General Assembly
Executive Director, Technology, Unison