It’s here — my final internship update! 🥺💙 Although it’s hard to believe how fast my time at Twitter flew by, I’m so grateful to have had this opportunity and met so many amazing people. I hope these internship updates have been able to give you a glimpse into my experience at Twitter this summer, and that you were able to learn something new!
#FullSteamAhead (Week 10)
Week 10 was full of multi-tasking with work on NUX, custom app icons, and upsells for Twitter Blue. With my recommendations on the proposed next steps for Twitter Blue’s NUX, my second goal was to see what NUX resources and previous work existed at Twitter. Since NUX was so important for our new user journey, I wanted to make sure that we were taking advantage of any NUX-related work at Twitter, such as research or experiments, so that our proposal document could be as well-informed as possible. To do this, I connected with the design systems team to see if they had any NUX guidelines or tools to use. The design systems team is responsible for creating a set of design standards using reusable components, patterns, and guidelines to ensure design parity across the Twitter app.
Going through all of Twitter’s past NUX work with this team was absolutely fascinating to me because I got to see the sheer amount of research and data they generated to constantly ensure Twitter’s design was up to date. After meticulously going through the many research documents and experiments, I was able to add valuable information about previous NUX research and knowledge to the Twitter Blue NUX proposal. This was helpful to Twitter’s proposed NUX because we could look at past research to see if 1) we were heading in the right direction based on established guidelines and 2) draw upon past data to help ground our assumptions. It was important to me that the proposal was as thorough as possible by looking at the industry standard of NUX in other subscription products and Twitter’s own past NUX work so that when the time came to execute, we had all the information needed to make the best-informed decisions.
Another piece of work that I focused on this week for Twitter Blue was helping to propose its next stages of custom app icons. I’ve primarily talked about Twitter Blue’s 3 main features of Undo Tweet, Bookmark Folders, and Reader Mode, but Twitter Blue also offers subscribers the fun option to have custom app icons and theme colors. Since launch, users had been requesting a multitude of different custom app icons, from being able to input their own color scheme to app icons for the holidays. With so many different paths that custom app icons could take, it was my role to collect all of the user feedback, find the reoccurring patterns, and then use that information to help propose the next icons.
To do this research collection, I worked a lot with Morgan (Twitter Blue researcher) and Jordan (Twitter Blue community manager) to see what custom app icon feedback we had formally and informally collected from users. Although this work wasn’t focused on developing a new feature like my role with upsells, I found it super rewarding to put together a synthesized feedback document because it was another opportunity to dive deep into Twitter Blue customers. As a product manager, I’m always trying to bring my work back to the customers’ needs, and synthesizing user feedback is one of my favorite ways to keep my customer sense sharp. The end result for my work with custom app icons was a comprehensive document listing all the user feedback that had ever been given on custom app icons, what other companies were doing for custom app icons, and a proposed list of custom app icons to develop next.
#PreparingForFinalFlight (Week 11)
My focus for my second to last week at Twitter was…
- Making sure upsells and the rest of my projects were in a good space and ready to transition back to Smita, my manager.
- Preparing for my final internship presentation.
- Spending quality time with Tweeps (Twitter employees) and Terns before I left!
Upsells had been making a lot of implementation progress in my last few weeks at Twitter and the engineering team was focused on making sure the upsells were comprehensively tested. In the meantime, I worked on clarifying any grey areas left in upsells and made sure those clarifications were reflected in our product requirement document. One key clarification that I worked on with the engineering, Customer Journey, and home timeline teams was getting final approval on our upsell fatigue rules. Fatigue rules are guidelines put in place to ensure there is healthy viewership of the upsell, which means making sure we don’t inundate potential customers with too many upsells while also having the upsell be shown enough to be effective. A key component of finding this right balance was creating fatigue rules for each interaction type a user could have with the upsell. For example, a user who clicks on the upsell will be shown it more quickly again rather than a user who dismisses the upsell.
Collaboration across the three teams of engineering, Customer Journey, and home timeline was necessary because we first had to ensure our technical implementation of fatigue rules was feasible, and then find an acceptable balance of when the upsell was being shown/not shown. Coming up with balanced fatigue rules for home timeline upsell was a bit trickier due to its highly popular location and interaction with ads, so we decided to air on the side of caution with more conservative fatigue rules first. Depending on how the upsell’s location at the top of the timeline affected the ads, we decided to eventually experiment showing the upsell more and removing some of those fatigue rule restrictions. Overall, being able to go through this process of finalizing the upsell fatigue rules with the different teams was great practice thinking about the potential risks and mitigation strategies when launching a new product!
After working on the fatigue rule situation for upsells, I also wanted to make sure that I spent some time with the other product manager interns before we all left! One of the best parts about going through this internship was having other product manager interns to talk to and learn from along the way. We loved to share tips or any useful advice with each other, which I think is a huge testament to the amazing culture that the Twitter internship program fosters. Even though we didn’t see each other on a daily basis, we knew that we could always rely on each other for any kind of support, whether it was sharing documents or just letting someone talk through their work. From our weekly coffee chats to our product fireside chats, being with the other product manager interns really added a lot of fun to my internship this summer, and I’m so glad we met!
#LoveWhereYouWork (Week 12)
Going into my internship at Twitter, I had three main goals that I discussed with Smita (my manager), Aria (my mentor), and Manny (my associate product manager buddy). They were…
- Build knowledge in technical relationships (i.e. learn from not only engineers, but all cross-functional partners such as researchers, designers, and data scientists in their respective technical fields).
- More effectively communicate with cross-functional partners and improve on promoting clarity in conversations.
- Take my strategy skills (ex: roadmapping, creating product requirement documents, prioritization, etc.) to the next level.
Looking back on my time at Twitter, I can confidently say that I achieved all three of these goals, and learned even more than I had hoped. For goal #1, I met (sometimes weekly!) with my cross-functional partners to specifically discuss the technical aspects of their roles. I wanted to make sure that I understood what they did from both a high level and in-depth perspective. To make sure I achieved goal #2, I sent weekly comprehensive progress updates to all upsell stakeholders, ran weekly meetings, and shared daily updates with Smita and Aria. Lastly, for goal #3, I created the product requirement document and vision for upsells, made competitive analyses, and wrote proposal documents. Although I learned so much from each of these goals and throughout my internship, it was actually my goal #3 that gave me the biggest takeaway of my time at Twitter.
In my past product experiences, I was always focused on creating a great strategy for the product. Whether it was writing product requirement documents or setting the vision, I considered strategy to be the “bread and butter” of a product manager. However, after spending time with Smita and the other product managers at Twitter, I realized there was something equally as important as strategy that I needed to focus on. This something was execution. Although strategy is essential to the product management role, it means nothing if it is not executed upon. Looking back, I had been executing my strategies, but I didn’t fully understand the significance of this two-way relationship. Going forward in my product management career and life in general, I know that this renewed emphasis on both strategy and execution will be super valuable.
Without strategy, execution is aimless. Without execution, strategy is useless. (Morris Chang)
So, what was the final outcome and next steps for upsells? The first milestone of the home timeline upsell was shipped to customers on August 26th!!! and I created a fully scoped PRD for future upsells, as well as a competitive analysis. In terms of next steps, the Twitter Blue team will measure and track the first milestone’s performance, and depending on how it does, they will create additional experimentation with different upsell layouts and develop feature-specific upsells. Once the inline upsell prompts are shipped, the team will move onto reactive upsells in the roadmap.
To close it out, my past 12 weeks at Twitter were absolutely amazing and I’m so grateful for all the experiences I’ve had. From becoming a part of the Twitter Blue team, joining in on workshops/hack weeks, going to intern fireside chats, and more — my time here at Twitter is something that I will always cherish.
Thank you to everyone who helped, guided, and mentored me throughout my internship. I’m beyond appreciative of everything that you’ve taught me. Because of you, I’ve was able to truly experience the meaning of #LoveWhereYouWork 🐦💙.
