Yogi Product Development
by Justin Hakuta For my final project I worked on developing a prototype for an online yoga community I’m launching. I also focused on customer acquisition and landing page optimization. Here are some lessons I learned along the way: Developing a prototype See the future, act in the present. When conceptualizing and designing a prototype, it’s easy to get lost in the grand vision, the mature steady state mode with all the bells and whistles and network effects-based value and functionality established. The danger of this tendency is you can end up designing something that is way beyond a minimum viable product where suddenly everything seems essential, despite having designed a bloated product with layers of functionality that connect to untested hypotheses. This can lead to a drawn out, expensive development cycle that results in a product that hasn’t been vetted by the customer. I would recommend first knowing what the grand vision is for your product at a hig...