Week 9 — Magic
This week’s been about magic. Thomas has been doing a great job building the machine learning model behind our product, and Jack’s been moodboarding and creating the visual identity. We want to differentiate our product from the clinical white background + helvetica -interfaces out there (don’t get me wrong though, I love helvetica), and bring some personality and fun to it through celebrating the difference between focused work and relaxed break time. There’s a fine line though, and we definitely want to avoid being too obvious or naive.
Besides creating something from nothing, some actual magic happened as well! On Wednesday, we had the chance to join together with a few MxM members and clients to learn presentation and communication skills through magic. The day was filled with laughter and some crazy good magic performances, and we all got to learn three easy (but quite impressive I’d say!) magic tricks. I found the workshop enlightening and further validated my thought that we all have our own styles of presenting, and to become a good presenter it’s more about self-awareness and identifying and playing to your strengths, and taking the time to improve your weaknesses through practice.
As a product manager intern, for me this week has been more about taking a step back, making sure things run smoothly in our team and encouraging Jack and Thomas to speak up whatever challenges they confront in their work. I’ve been mapping where our product (codename “Blorch”) lies in the forest of to-do apps, time management apps, productivity apps, focus and break apps and pomodoro apps, and what are the unique selling points of it. I’ve also been contacting pilot companies who would be interested in testing our product, and luckily we’ve got at least one confirmed for week 11! Going to be very exciting to visit the company, give a proper briefing about our product and iterate on the feedback we receive.
The remaining three weeks will be busy with building, designing, piloting and wrapping up. On a personal note this week, it’s been awesome to see how well-thought design decisions can solve many of the usability hindrances we thought would exist. As the building moves along, I’ll start to have a look at how to handover this product and what kind of useful material we could provide. Will be fun to ideate a wee bit on the business side of it, and map some future scenarios.
Looks like it’ll be a sunny weekend in London! \,,/
/Niklas
