From 1 AM Traffic Jams to Product Management Wins: My Week in Lagos

I’ve wanted to write this for a while, but I wanted to come up with a title first. I’ve been stuck for two days now and you know what? I’ll just write as the spirit leads, and when I’m done, I’ll give this piece a fitting title.

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Last week was a roller coaster. I went to my usual 9 to 5 job on Monday and Tuesday and got home late due to the wicked Lagos traffic. Your future techie babe got home at 1 am on Wednesday… 1 am!!! Drenched in the rain and scared that I would get robbed.

The only thing that kept me engaged and not frustrated throughout this experience was Davido and Chioma’s wedding content that filled the internet. At least something great was happening for some people, and it was nice to see.

The rest of my week was mostly spent trying to finish up a product management assignment given to me by Utiva. It was tiring, but I enjoyed the outcome. What I’ve come to understand about myself is that I don’t enjoy the starting point of creating anything, but once I can see some part of it come to life, I get hooked and start obsessing over it until I’m done. Am I the only one? That’s how the assignment went for me. As I put my thoughts together and could visibly see progress, I got more and more in love.

This week we covered Design Thinking. I had to critically analyze an existing product and find ways to improve on existing problems to help the users. I did this by going through all the Design Thinking phases:

Empathy — Define — Ideate — Design — Test.

The most annoying stage was the Empathy stage. Unfortunately, this is the most important aspect because we don’t want to spend our resources building a product or developing a feature that users could care less about. That would be a major bust! I needed to speak with the users of this product to understand what they want, need, and their overall user experience. I managed to do one-on-one interviews with a few people, but I saw shege (trouble) with the online survey I shared.

News flash, guys… PEOPLE DON’T HAVE YOUR TIME!

I shared, reshared, and entered into people’s DMs just to plead with them to fill out my form.

Without an incentive, you will roll on the ground pleading and cry at least 1 pint of blood.

I felt pathetic, but I had to get my assignment done, and that was much more important than any feelings I had.

Once I had all the information from the research, every other stage felt like a breeze for me. To be honest, I find Product Managers and Product Designers to be creatives. Being tagged as a creative shouldn’t just stop at those who work in arts or entertainment.

Coming up with innovative solutions and bringing them to life takes a creative and strategic mind. This is me giving PMs and Product Designers who are rocking it their flowers because they sure as hell deserve it.

I felt so good after coming up with my solutions and bringing them to life with my Lo-fi wireframe prototypes. You might think I’m excited over nothing since it was just an assignment, but I loved that it opened my eyes to my strengths and the possibility of thriving in this new field I’m entering.

I mean, there’s so much more to product management, but I’m grateful for the growth I’ve had so far, no matter how little it is. This is a reminder that your small wins are just as significant as your big wins. Enjoy the process.

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section.

Hasta La Vista!