Written by: Yiling Wang
This semester, we collaborated with Bin and Ying and worked on their entrepreneurial project – Neesh. It is an online community for LGBTQ2+ college students in North America, which may help many students solve their identity, anxiety and self-exploration problems. We are so glad to have had a chance to work on this project and learn a lot during this process, such as cooperation, communication, design techniques and time management.
In the beginning, we had many group meetings to ensure we decided on the right direction for this project. We discussed and determined several subjects – filter system, animation, avatar system and user profile – I talked with our clients to narrow down these ideas. Finally, we decided to work on the avatar system because most of our group members have a visual and graphic design background, which is an excellent opportunity to show their design skills and contribute to Neesh.
A good beginning is the half of the battle. By making out what we would like to do, we started working on documents and the initial concept as we planned. However, things didn’t always go as expected. Our team began to isolate one team member since he made a terrible joke in a meeting. At first, it was like a big elephant in the room, and teammates avoided talking about it, although it affected the atmosphere and productivity of the team. Gradually, a chain reaction happened. Group members started complaining that the isolated member was not attentive, which made the situation worse and eventually caused some actual conflicts in the team. As a first-time product manager, I was overwhelmed and frustrated, but with guidance and suggestions from the instructor and other classmates, we solved the problem in time. In the following, I will explain how we solved the conflicts and what I learned from them.
The first vital insight is finding the right problem to solve. It took us some time to find out the source of this conflict – the lousy joke in our class. If we didn’t find it, we would keep blaming whoever is not industrious and attentive, yet not know the reason for our poor teamwork. When we saw the starting point of this chain reaction, we tried to communicate, but it wasn’t effective enough to resolve the issue or even help us address it.
That’s where Aida came into play. I explained the situation of our team, and her suggestions inspired me. In big tech companies, conflicts are everywhere, and it is the product manager’s responsibility to solve them. The one-on-one session was an operative way for this problem since group members are more likely to open up when we talk privately and in a friendly manner. Thus, we conducted a one-on-one session, and each member expressed their feelings and thoughts, which helped me understand their actions and convey each other’s feelings. Finally, we all agreed that we are a team since we share the same goal and objective, and we should find a way to work it out. Here comes the second thing I learned – communication is the key.
The third and final insight I gained from this process is setting the standard at the start. We are a young group with many talented members. However, we are not experienced. Also, team members have passions in different fields, for instance, games and film, which is irrelevant to Neesh. Therefore, we always have concerns and discussions about what we can do and how necessary it is along the way, and it is time-consuming and energy-draining. In such a manner, I wish we could have a clear standard before the project started so that we would know how deep we should go.
I worked on many new things as a project manager during this three-month project. This is the first time I have written professional documents for a digital product, and most of them I have never even heard of before. To finish them properly, I have to learn from the internet and ask the instructor and senior students for help, which is a productive way to learn something new quickly. Additionally, I played the role of communicator between clients and group members. By acknowledging clients’ requirements and needs, I learned more about the project scale and passed it on to my team members. It is an excellent way to practice understanding people and convincing them simultaneously, and it developed my communication skills. Furthermore, I created a testable prototype using Figma, and learned some technical skills as a UI/UX designer. Last but not least, we read many articles and papers about the LGBTQ2+ community to understand our target users and started empathizing with their stories, emotions, sufferings and perspectives.
If there is something I would like to improve in the future, I would say management skills which I can learn by being put in the spot – being the project manager for my team, and technical skills like UI/UX design which I will remember by working with people that are experienced in the field.
Overall, I enjoyed working on Neesh and learned many soft and hard skills by facing many unexpected occasions and obstacles. I hope to continue to learn and face the challenges ahead of me in the future as well.