Duration: Feb 2021 - May 2021
Team: Of one
During the spring of 2021, I became the Product Manager for my own product that I created from start to finish.
Here is my problem statement for the app idea I came up with.
Many tenants to new apartments or living situations are tasked with decorating their space, yet committing to decisions typically means drilling holes or making messes.
This would mean my audience would include users who find themselves struggling to decorate their home, simply because they are afraid to drill holes. They are someone who wants to see what their plan is before doing anything, to ensure their space is cohesive and telling of their personality.
This led to a solution.
I would create an AR mobile filter that would allow the user to select a piece of art or photo frame, plant, vase, or more, and view it in a real-world setting so as to see how it might look on a wall or open space.
Here is my pitch:
User Personas - Who will use this app?
Next comes the question of who might use this. To answer it, I developed user personas. These would be fictional yet realistic archetypes for my ideal user.
First, Samantha. A young millennial with an eye for design but crushing decision-making skills. She is a true perfectionist who would love to see what she is doing before she really does it.
Our other user persona is named Zach. He finally has a nice apartment with a stable job in tech and knows almost nothing about designing a space, but knows that he wants to make it feel like home.
Now that I have defined my users, it is time to get to work! Next comes more ideation, user flows, prototyping, and more.
MVP - User Flow
I started with developing a user flow for my MVP. Something that would be simple and intuitive to capture my intentions for the app.
Prototyping and Testing
I began working on a mid-fidelity prototype once I had a better idea of my app’s functionality.
I worked on UX testing of this prototype with classmates and friends who both fit and didn’t fit one of the user personas, and continued to iterate on my idea.
I received a lot of valuable feedback through this and decided to create a Next, Someday, Never list of features that my product would have and thus what I should focus on.
Pitch Deck
The last step was to use all of this information to create a business plan to further develop this product. The full plan and pitch deck can be viewed below.