Building My First Product in U.S as a Product Manager
Remember to follow me on Medium to get instant notification of my new article. As mentioned in the previous articles, getting data from any existing product is very difficult owing to some confidentiality issues. Therefore, I have been thinking I might create my own product. From identifying need, drawing product wireframe to executing product development and finally optimizing products with product analytics, I believe this process is complete enough to grant myself an overview of products and chance to think as a product owner.
This product is my own portfolio website. The link is here. It is a snapshot of myself, which tells my story, plays the role as my advocate, and sells me in front of HR and hiring manager. For the candidate in master of computer science, data science or user interface, it is normal to build a portfolio website to showcase your previous project and working experience in the related field. Therefore, I decide to start building my website in the end of November, and below is my thinking process of developing this product.
Goal setting
The goal for a portfolio website is very straightforward: to help me land on a dream job. To achieve this goal, several criteria need to be met.
The first one is that the website need to told my story clearly. It has to showcase my ability, my past experience and my story.
The second one is that it needs to function as a hub of my previous experience. It has to be organized to collate my projects, my career snapshot and other valuable things.
And for third one, since my dream job is related to product analytics and management. I’d like to present my product knowledge. Therefore, the portfolio website has to be flexible for experiments. I can conduct some testing on this ‘Product’ and further polish my product skills.
By reaching these criteria, it might lead to the result of finding a dream job.
Persona Definition
To simply define the persona for my portfolio website, I create two personas. The creation of persona can help me more focus on the features and user journey of the website, and further reduce some extra and redundant design for this simple product.
My first persona is Luke. He is 32 years old, the senior talent recruiter at Airbnb. He lives at bay area, loves swimming, travelling and new technology. He has been working at Airbnb for two and half years. He knows the important of talents who can make a company grow. He screens the resume mainly for data science and data engineering team. He usually review about 50–60 resumes a day.
My second persona is Emily. She is 28 years old, the product analyst at Medium. She works in NYC. She loves reading, writing and going to Broadway shows. She is also an active writer on Medium. She loves this website, and feels like she was the luckiest person in the world who is able to work for this beloved platform.
The user journey for Luke toward my portfolio website is make him feeling refresh and find my background interest and distinct from other applicants. Most of the job seekers have similar background and same format of resume, a portfolio website is really catchy to him, and it can trigger his interest to know more about me after browsing my website.
The user journey for Emily on the website is that I will shot her my website while I’d like to network with her. She might click into website on the LinkedIn message, trying to figure out who I am and further decide if she is fine chatting with me. The website needs to be clear and full of organized information about me, and further incentivize her to spend some time having a phone chat with me.
I try to conclude the user goal on my website. The practice leads to the roadmap for the website. I can try to picture each step Luke and Emily take whenever they first click on the site link.
Resource Check
For every product manager, resource is always a crucial issue. I categorize my resource as three parts.
First, my time. As a MSBA student, time is a pretty limited resource for me. Therefore, I saved only my time in Thanksgiving holiday for executing my product plan and finish my website, approximately 12–15 hours in total.
Second, my budget. The only cost for portfolio website I plan to spend is used to buy the website domain. I haven’t spend much time screening domain options. I will just bundle my domain payment with my website solutions.
Third, the resource is me, the human power. I joint down my skills and abilities I can utilize. I am not the expert in frontend engineering and user interface design, but I am good at structure thinking, wireframe drawing, and writing. The limitation of my capability also direct a way to me which website solution I should use for this product.
Based on my goal setting, persona, and limited resource, I decide to use Squarespace as my website building solution. It is eye-catching, elegant, time-effective, and doesn’t require much front-end skills.
After deciding the platform, it is time to build my product wireframe.
Product Wireframe
Wireframe is the outline of a product. It gives designer and engineer a clear guideline what the product looks like. The wireframe of my portfolio website is quite simple and clear. As a hub of my past experience and projects, it will be linked to different website, such as Tableau, LinkedIn, GitHub and Medium. Personas are able to find what they want when using my product.
There are more extended page in the “About” section. I position it as a knowing-me- more section. The first page of experience is similar to my resume and LinkedIn profile page, listing all my past working and education experience. And for another two sections in “About”, I’d like to emphasize my internship in U.S., which is an outstanding point which distinguishes me from other applicants. I am also a person who enjoys sharing my MSBA experience. In “Learning in MSBA” section, I will act as the loyal advocate of my program.
Data Portfolio is another essential section for an aspiring data scientist/product analyst. It is the home for all my GitHub repositories. Through this page, persona is able to get access to my GitHub and fork my code to play around with.
Data Journal and Product Insight is in similar design. The only difference I create here is that for the reason I am targeting at more product-related position, I’d like to showcase more focus on my product-related project. Therefore, the section of Data Journal accommodate more articles that is not centered around products itself. Here, the “Read More” buttons are linked to my articles to Medium, where I store and show most of my articles.
Data Viz is the section where I display most of my visualization project. I plan to store most of my visualization graphs here, since visualization is a very basic skill a data scientist need to have.
The section of “Read” is relatively straightforward. I enjoy reading, so I just will just put some book I read which is related to data, product and innovation in this section.
The final section is just a button linked to my resume pdf. Resume is still the dominant tool for company recruitment. I just put here in case my persona want to retrieve some formal documents of me as a candidate. They can download my resume for this section.
Product Roadmap and Development
Owing to the simplicity of product and time limit for development, I only propose three phases of product roadmap.
Phase one is mainly focus on development of most pages. I left the building of Data Viz in phase 2, since I don’t have much visualization to show so far. Building content is also a key focus in product development, which can’t be ignored. Phase 3 is the regular update and upgrade. Based on what I have at hand, features of my portfolio can expand or shrink. It is a dynamic process.
The most important is the retrospective system. Always remember to get feedback from user. I have sent my portfolio to different users for screening and collected their opinions to better suit to the job market standard. Few smaller sprint will be arranged into the middle of phases to optimize the product.
As for development, Squarespace provide very clear instructions about how to design the website. It is just like WordPress and Google Blogger system, but is more intuitive and user friendly. I am not going to put much emphasis this part. The core for Squarespace is trial and error and find some good template for reference.
Metrics Setting and Optimization
The final step for my portfolio website is to set metrics for observation. Analytics features provided by Squarespace don’t include much insight.
I will observe several metrics as I mentioned below to better the website.
1) Pageview: Pageview is linked to the analyses of popular contents. Based on this metrics, I am able to identify which page is most viewed by users. And for those pages with less view, some adjustment can be further conducted to better the engagement.
2) Traffic source: I once posted my website on my Facebook timeline. And the traffic has a peak there, indicating the traffic from social media referral. How come I think this is an important metric for the product? Since the goal of the product is to help me land on a perfect job, checking the source is a good way to verify if employer has get access to my website. The source from employers probably will be categorized as direct, or I can even bury a tracking code there, which enable me to identify their behavior on the website and I can better optimize it through their footage.
Setting metrics is a good way to implant data-centered mindset in product management. It will grant huge benefit for each product iteration. And I will based on that turn my product more user-centered and more reflective to user’s demand.
Conclusion
Portfolio website is not a formal product which will be used by million of users, but I try to force myself to walk through the process of creating an online product. I have to take charge of product just like taking charging of my career hunt in spring. It is a fun practice, and I quite enjoy the process. And with the website at hands, I think I am ready for any chance in the data science field.
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