Marcelo Knakiewicz — The 5 What
Marcelo Afonso Knakiewicz
Technical Business Analyst at VAKT Global, lives in Lisbon, Portugal
About
A mix of introverted and extroverted talkative guy. Chemical Engineer by education, Movie and Series Geek by nature. You can find him reading fun and curious facts or laughing about any cat/dog video on youtube on the Lisbon Metro. He fell into the Product career in early 2016 and could not understand how he stayed so far from it for that long! Definitely loves what he does, his smile when he sees the users amazed by the product is evident!
Contact
The 5 What
What is the most valuable thing you carry with you from the beginning of your journey as a product person?
One of the first things that I heard from my manager when I started was “Do you know your user?”. In fact, I thought that I knew, but usually, we are wrong about that. Get to know your user, what It feels, does, sees, think…. It’s by far one of the hardest things building Products.
Quite often we see Product Teams making mistakes by not observing the users properly, not hearing them properly and building something that no one needs. The users are a gold mine, what they tell you when they are speaking, and when they are not as well, It’s by far the most important thing ever!
What do you identify as a common thing among people working on product development?
Hum… Trick question! I would say flexibility and agility to react fast, It is very impressive how those people can change the course of the boat easily with the minimum impact possible.
What do you think will be the next big trend in product development?
The 1 million dollar question!
Let’s split my answers in two:
Market: A lot is happening in EdTechs, FinTechs, but…. I believe that will be something related to retail, more specific to clothes, shoes and accessories, the new generation Z and Alpha are not very consumerist and don’t care to share things. I believe that something may happen around that soon, fulfilling some new behaviour that those guys are bringing to the market.
Skill/Behaviour: Due to A.I. hitting all of us, I’m seeing a lot of Product People very technical, with skills enough to argue or even code some of those algorithms. It seems this is something that came to stay!
What have you learned recently?
I have taken an extraordinary course recently, “The Science of Everyday Thinking” created by the University of Queensland and Available in edX. Honestly, It is one of those things that every single Product Person must do, very focused on human behaviour, explaining a lot of bias and mind tricks that make human beings take bad, wrong or…. sometimes… good decisions. It’s the kind of thing that literally opens your mind to the world! Well… I’m a human mind lover, may have some bias… lol!
What would you like to say to the product people who are reading this text?
I’ve been typing and retyping many times to answer this question… that maybe some kind of signal for you product people that are reading this…
I believe that one of the things that must be stuck in your brain is: the routine is not something that you will face, each day is a different one, each day something new happens, bad or good and decisions must be taken.
Being a product person removes completely your option of being seated on the fence and waiting, that doesn’t work. Which also makes you fail, expect that, don’t give up instead, learn with every single error, fail that you make, it will make you better mistake by mistake!
