Making 3 Tech Products at Once?!! Here's how I'm doing it...

Welcome!

In this newsletter you will learn the following:

I hope that sharing my journey building these projects will show you how I grow as a builder and inspire you to take the steps needed to level up your skills as well.

It’s important to take small, but intentional steps to get to where you (and I) want to be.

Enjoy ;)

Project 1: Addressing Senior Isolation

Picking a product idea with a team

I have a team of 5 engineers from my class.

We all have different majors in engineering ranging from biomedical to industrial engineering.

We first had to decide what topic to tackle and wrote down 5 need statements each without including a solution in the need statement.

Here is our chosen need statement:

Notice that I didn’t say “Using an AI companion to increase drug adherence for seniors” or “Create a web app to do X”

The AI companion and web app are solutions. We made sure to address ours as a general need without implying a solution.

Here are some visuals showing how we choose what to work on together:

At first, we weren’t all happy that the 5th need statement won…

But then we took 2 days to think things over and explore the top 2 options…

Everyone became more comfortable with the 5th need statement so we chose it and ended up happy with the decision!!

How did we do user research?

Last week (2/11 - 2/17) we applied and practiced a valuable skill - user research.

I never knew what user research was until it came up in a random conversation I had with someone working on a startup.

It’s the #1 way you know if your idea is truly good. The best part is, you can do this before putting any coding work in…

So how did we start?

We picked our top 4 stakeholders and had to do 5 user interviews each:

We created the questions to ask each group beforehand, so we could divide and conquer!

Then we divided it based on who we already knew and who we got lucky to meet throughout the week.

Together we conducted 25 interviews this week, and you could bet we learned a lot!

In our meeting, I asked each team member to talk about the following

• problems that their stakeholders expressed

• what information made them feel this was a problem

• think of a potential solution (as a reflection exercise)

In a future newsletter, you will see how we will brainstorm our specific solution and get started!

Project 2: Pomo

Pomo is a Pomodoro Timer Chrome Extension!

So far, my friend Teresa and I brainstormed the idea, thought about its design and user experience, and put together goals for this week to set up the chrome extension.

As usual, here are our project goals!

Unlike our last app, the personal visionboard builder, we wanted to have a strong focus on user experience and product development.

We also wanted to learn new tech, which is why we are making a chrome extension and not another web app.

Project 3: BuilderCollab

For those of you who don’t know- I made a web app to help connect people who are building tech products!

I took a break because I had 2 friends tell me that I would burn out if I didn’t take a break.

Even though I felt fine at the time, it only took 2 days for me to realize that they were right…

It is draining to work on one thing by yourself for months in a row, and sometimes taking a step back to give yourself an intentional break helps you come back to it with an improved mindset.

This week I made a plan to get my first 100 users… my goal is to have 1 user next week.

Let’s see what happens!

Takeaways

• Set project goals before starting a project to establish your WHY

• Once you are confident in your tech skills, leading and working with a diverse team gets things done faster and easier

• Want to build something? Talk to people about the problems they face

• Don’t get burnt out, breaks are worth it

• Start small. Dream big. But seriously, start.

In the following newsletters, I will share weekly updates with you on what I’ve learned, my startup/builder journey, UF student founder stories, and will strive to be a source of encouragement for you guys.

In exchange, this will help me communicate better and keep me accountable.

Feel free to share this newsletter with anyone else who would find this useful on their tech journey!