Meerkat

Academic

A project management productivity platform to store, visualize, and connect insights for design innovation teams

Overview

Taking Northwestern Product management for technology companies class, our team of six students with diverse backgrounds design a project management platform for innovation teams to streamline and enhance their product development processes by aggregating project data into a single searchable platform.

Vision

Professionals working on innovation projects struggle to manage projects across a myriad of digital platforms. Imagine you are Rivian and have conducted hundreds of user studies; only to find those research notes hidden and unorganized across different tools and personal accounts. Meerkat is a project management platform for innovation teams to streamline and enhance their product development processes by aggregating project data into a single searchable platform. This enables actionable discovery across tools and accounts through NLP-based (natural language processing) proprietary algorithms. Meerkat will allow users to surface research insights across various levels of specificity and connect project artifacts to the product development process through seamless integration of their existing collaboration tools.

Pain Points

Professionals working on innovation projects struggle to manage projects across a myriad of digital platforms.

This is the three main insights we generated from user interviews

Persona

We considered three personas across three different job responsibilities on innovation-focused teams.

Product Peter

28 year old product designer in Chicago

“As we generate insights throughout the innovation process, insights are easily left out by the way they are organized across different digital tools. The move to virtual work during the pandemic highlighted the need for a solution.”

Goals

Work more collaboratively with product and product-parallel teams internally

Document and organize the innovation process more appropriately
Carry insights throughout the process from research to the final product
Sort through archived work more efficiently to apply to current work

Needs

He is losing time searching through old materials for specific information

Frustrations

Peter may want to revert back to his old process because he believes it will help him land the project in a better place.

Product-Parallel Patricia

33 year old business strategist in New York City

“The product people sort of live in their own world and speak their own language. I can not even keep up with all of the digital tools they are using. I think both groups could benefit from one another if we could blend the working process together more and have a primary digital location for the project.”

Goals

Work more collaboratively with product people and executives
Better understand the innovation process and how the product-parallel efforts impact the work (and process)
Be integrated with the product person for more of the innovation process

Needs

Understand and work better with the product oriented people
Does not want to be overwhelmed with the technical aspects of the product process

Frustrations

Patricia is already working long hours and is worried about how this will add work and time to her already swamped schedule

Executive Evan

46 year old head of product in San Francisco

“Our goal as an organization is to be human-centered and innovative. We are not reaching our potential because of the way our processes are currently organized and managed.”

Goals

Be able to provide feedback or sign off on projects/products without direct communication
Have the flexibility to be as involved as desired

Needs

Be able to check in on the process of a project without needing long meetings whenever he wants information
Does not want to look at the entire process, he wants to be as high level as possible

Frustrations

Evan does not want to become too hands-on
Evan also wants to build relationships with the people he is managing though

EXISTING SOLUTIONs

#1: Shared Network Drive for Files

The most common method for storing research findings is within a shared network drive for files. Companies already utilize these systems to store other files, so it is also the go-to for research purposes. Popular examples include Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, or Box. Users are able to collaborate on files, search for files by name, and sort by file name, date modified, or file size.

#2: Jira

Jira is a proprietary issue tracking product that allows bug tracking and agile project management. Researchers can list out the tasks that they have to complete and place these tasks into columns depending on the status of the task. Jira is similar to Trello, which is more commonly used by students to keep track of their projects.

#3: Confluence

Confluence is a Jira plug-in built for teams needing a secure and reliable way to collaborate on mission-critical projects. Researchers can write discussion guides and research findings on Confluence that other researchers on their team can read and edit. Confluence is similar to Google Docs, which is more commonly used by enterprise customers to collaborate on documents.

#4: Mural/Miro

Digital collaboration tools, such as Mural and Miro, are increasingly used to generate and document insights. Researchers can arrange data visually to identify themes and insights that inform product requirements.

#5: Knowledge Management Systems (Stravito/Sharpr)

Current knowledge management systems, such as Stravito or Sharpr, use artificial intelligence to detect and centralize market research insights. Users upload their documents to the platform and key information is extracted automatically. For Stravito specifically, it has been compared to Spotify, where users can centralize internal and external information in “playlists,” which are known as Collections.

Why Meerkat

Remote Work

Remote work has highlighted the opportunity to better manage innovation projects

Process Focused

Tools today are not process focused but instead are outcome focused

Centralized

Organizations are using more tools for each project because of each tool’s specialized functions — but there is no way for them to be brought together

Emphasized Insights

Emphasis on the research phase and carrying elements of research throughout the process so the user is always top of mind