I believe that creating a great product is an exercise in balancing desirability, viability, and feasibility. In my journey I've had the fortune to be able to look at product from different sides. As a designer I've looked at product through the lens of desirability, as a (wannabe) developer I've looked more through the lens of feasibility and as a ceo I've innately considered viability. It's by having taking on all there roles that I feel I can take on each individual role better. But still I have a lot to learn.
Desirability refers to creating a product that people love to use, are attached to.
Feasibility refers to the technical background of the product, whether it can be made.
Viability is about the business of the product, an invention is not a product if it cannot be brought to the market.
I started at Mimi as a user experience designer, and later took on more responsibilities around the product as we grew. At Mimi Iâve worked both on B2C products, as well as B2B solutions.
At the end of my stint at Mimi I lead a team of 3 product managers, 1 user researcher and 1 design lead (and her team), while working closely with my research and engineering peers.
My background is in strategic product design, which is the type of design that doesnât just make things pretty, but focuses on balancing the triad above. Balancing technical feasibility, potential business value and customer needs to come to a successful solution for a real problem.
While working on Atium I rediscovered my love for design, and have been able to practice my craft not only there but also in the projects I did for Koos Service Design in the second half of 2021.
Although I don't have a degree in Computer Science my experience has made me technically adept. Mimi forced me to gain a technical understanding fast, both on a software level and an audio level. Mimi's technology stack reaches from low-level Kalimba DSP code to native Swift and Kotlin code. Their core product is a software bundle consisting of DSP libraries and a user-facing SDK. That's all to say that many of the challenges I've faced there have been technical in nature.
Since I've learned how to code and have functioned not only as Atium's designer and CEO, but also as the front-end developer. I implemented my own designs for the various games and platform that we built. And let me tell you, implementing your own designs is a unique challenge.
I've been loving the experience of gaining technical understanding, and can only conclude that for me balancing a design approach with analytical thinking brings the best solutions.