allWomen Interviews: Cristina Crucianu — Product Manager at ManoMano
Tags: Customer Centric Approach, Product Manager, Allwomen, Women In Tech, User Research

From startup entrepreneur to product manager, Cristina Crucianu shares her journey into product management and how to adopt a user-centric approach

Entrepreneur to sales to product manager

Cristina started out by developing a marketplace for tutoring called Hello Veronica while she was at University studying for a Masters in Educational Technology. Initially, it was a low-tech solution to match tutors to their customers, this was mainly parents of school children, via email. The parents wanted to know the background of the tutors, where they were located and if they were native speakers (in the case of language skills), this would be better served through an online platform.

In order to develop the market place, Cristina took on many of the roles of a product manager. Based on the requirements of the customers, she developed user tasks for the platform, such as being able to find tutors in a certain location, watch a video of the tutor etc. She bought a tech person on board to build the site, and continued to liaise between the tutors and the parents. The startup was bootstrapped and profitable, and attracted a lot of interest. There were even plans for an online classroom with resources for the tutors.

However, after five years on a small salary, Cristina moved back into the corporate world and took a sales position in Barcelona. Something she had experience with through Hello Veronica.

Recognise and highlight your transferable skills

Being a generalist with a range of relevant skill sets (e.g. entrepreneurship, sales and marketing), a friend suggested that she look into product management. After all, Cristina had developed a minimum viable product (MVP) and iterated the Hello Veronica platform. It wasn’t for millions of users like Amazon, but it was for real users and the product met a clear need from the users.

Cristina levelled up her skills and translated them to product management. She read books and networked within the industry. Then applied for a job requiring five years of product management experience.

In the interview, the company could see she had potential. They did not offer her this position but they did recommend her for a product manager role at a startup, which Cristina got.

Adopt a user-centric approach to product management

User research can save time, money and resources

At her startup, Cristina was closely connected to both the tutors and the parents, and iterated based on user feedback. In her first role as a product manager, the company had an idea, started building, but never spoke to the users. This wasted time, money and resources. If you don’t speak to the users, how do you know you are building something that they need?

Conduct user research on unused or new products and features

Communicating the importance of this user research can sometimes be challenging. In a company you have a lot of different responsibilities and are under time pressure. So, one way to do this is to sell the benefits of user research.

If the company has features or products that are not being used, you could interview users or even friends to find out why. If a competitor has a functionality that your company does not have, you could also do surveys and interviews to find out the benefits to the users. Then collect the data and share the results internally within the company. If there are features already implemented, you could do follow ups with the users and find out if there are any bugs. How could the product be iterated and made better?

There are lots of things you could do on a small scale to collect the insights and feedback and combine this with user data to get buy-in from the company.

User research can be done on a low budget

You don’t need a big budget to do user research. If you can’t talk to customers, or if you don’t have them yet, you can go out on the street and talk to people. You can create a google survey for free and share it. Or, you can talk to people you know. These could be friends or friends of friends.

Have a specific goal for your user testing

You could also use these same people for user testing. When you are doing your user testing, have a specific goal. What do you need to know? It is probably will this product, service or whatever solve a specific need? Will people use your product?

If you have an idea for a hardware product, you could test with a wood or cardboard prototype. If you have an idea for a software solution, you could create a website with basic features using a site like Wix. Then track the behaviour of users on the site with hotjar to create heat maps.

You don’t need to know if someone will complete the full sign up page for your website. You just need to know if they would use it.

Follow up after user testing for extra insights

Of course, most user testing is being done remotely at the moment. There are a lot of sites to do this such as Usertesting.com and PingPong, and there are tools like Zoom. Recently, Cristina had a phone call with a young mother to get feedback on a website. As you would suspect, there were a lot of disruptions on the call so Cristina did a follow up via email sharing the website and asking for feedback.

The key is to be flexible in these unusual times and offer extra opportunities for people to give their insights. One thing Cristina does is to share an Invision prototype internally with her team before sharing it with the user. This gives everyone time to comment.

Categorise your insights to features or activities

You can get a lot of insights and data from the user testing you do. You probably don’t want to share all of this with your team and stakeholders. The key is to categorise this information into useful buckets e.g. user sign up, a specific function etc.

Cristina uses a Miro board to display this information in categories and also as a broad overview. Then, as a team, at her company they use dot voting to narrow down to key features to focus on. This is all part of design thinking, an iterative process to understand the user and meet their needs.

Be fearless, be proactive and always be learning

When I asked Cristina what her advice is to anyone job hunting at the moment, she said to seek out the companies that are doing well right now. The companies that have seen an increased demand for their products or services. Also, expand your network within the industry, volunteer for events that might connect you with the right people; and reach out to people. If you want to work in a certain area or industry, connect with people on LinkedIn and don’t ask for a job, ask for advice.

Do it, be proactive and be fearless. You are in the right place and the right moment. You are in a good position, because the tech industry is going to grow. Find your coaches and mentors. And, with your first tech role, look into what personal development is on offer. Remember every expert has been a beginner at one time, you are always learning.

Thank you Cristina for your insights and advice! Find out more about Cristina and her work through her podcast and talk on allWomen’s YouTube channel.

If you are a woman in tech or a supporter of women in tech and would like to be interviewed by allWomen, contact us on ines@allwomen.tech.