csylifeblog

[csylifeblog]

Introduction to Me

Hello, my name is Cooper and I am a Designer and Product Manager. I have always had a bunch of hobbies but have mostly focused on creation and design. I currently am working at a small start-up and have moved from a purely UX / UI / Graphic Designer role into a more Product Manager + Design role. This has lead to me taking an interest in product management and what it actually means to be one.

Starting from the beginning I have always wanted to be a game designer. I have been making games since I can remember, all the way back when me and my best friend would sit around in the yard and come up with completely made up games about hitting a ball into a certain bush to get points or letting it bounce X number of times before you had to get from the tree to the playhouse. In high school I started creating computer games with a friend and haven’t looked back since. My dream role as I learn more about product management would be to take this knowledge and apply it to the game creation process. I would love to be a Product Manager in a game company, and in fact, I kind of already fake doing this for my own game company, Ivory Crow Games.

I am currently taking a class in Product Management through the Continuing Education department of the University of Washington. I am interested in doing this because I want to know more of the theory and disciplines behind being a product manager. I want to know how to take those core principle and apply it to the work I am currently doing and make our process better. I also really want to take what I learn and help teach it to my team at work and help us evolve and become a better product team.

The skills that I have now that make me a great fit for a PdM role can probably be boiled down into 3 main sets. The first is my ability to problem solve. I have always had an obsession with solving problems. I love taking something that no one else can figure out and finding the solution. My need to solve problems lead to an undergrad in Math and Physics and has always pushed me to find the answer to every question you can think of. The second skill that helps me be a good PdM is my ability to research. I love researching. Anytime I hear about something I don’t understand or am not sure how it works, I will go out and learn as much about it from as many different places as I can. It is not uncommon for me to have an absurd amount of tabs open when I am trying to learn about something new. I cross reference everything I learn and try to find the secrets between what other people have already figured out. The third set of skills that I have is my organizational skills. I keep a todo list for absolutely everything in my life. All the way from what I need to be doing at work, down to doing the dishes every night before I go to sleep. I also organize everything about my life, I keep spreadsheets for my finances and the purchases we need to make. I keep data on my weight gains and loses and I plot all of this to try and see the patterns in my life and learn to use them. This organization will help me organize products and teams in the best possible way.

 In the product management course that I have taken so far I have learned a lot about the beginning of creating a product. From the market research and analysis to user studies that you do before you have any kind of an MVP. I also learned about faking out finances so you have an idea about revenue and different methods for making sure that the problem you are trying to solve really needs to be solved. I also have learned that UX is surprisingly close to a lot of product management tasks which is probably why my boss had me transition into a product management job in the first place.

In this blog I hope to keep track of what I learn as a product manager and hopefully teach people some things along the way.