YourChoice for Mediation - an Untold PM Story

If you are wondering, the answer is no; I have not achieved the wisdom of a village elder to conduct a mediation.? And if you think this is what mediation is today, perhaps you want to read on.

When two parties can not resolve a dispute by themselves and need a third party today, often they go to court.? It could be time consuming and costly.? Depending on a dispute, an alternative dispute resolution might be a better path.? Meditation is one such mechanism where the mediators help the parties to reach agreements by themselves while staying neutral.? In the USA, mediation is a niche market where many styles of practices exist.

Mediators are trained in order to stay neutral and allow participants to reach the resolution.? They take notes while the participants talk over each other in rapid fire.? They facilitate and guide the participants to work towards mutually acceptable and actionable items, but not making decisions for them.

YourChoice

Enough about mediation in general and let me introduce the product we built for Humanz Mediate.

YourChoice is a web app with goals of assisting mediators during the mediation session while making it easy for the participants to express their desires.

YourChoice is launched but unfortunately it is an internal app for Humanz Mediate. However, you can watch the product pitch below.

Competitive Analysis

Are you surprised that the majority of the mediation sessions are still conducted through pen & paper and in person?? Because of this, it is extremely difficult to evaluate how good a mediator is.? At Humanz Mediate, only virtual meditations are possible, which protect mediators from any physical confrontation.? The session is recorded and notes are typed, therefore it is possible to evaluate the performance of the mediators.? It is systematic that it doesn’t matter what kind of dispute it is, the process is the same for all, which makes it easier for mediators to follow the protocols.? They have a team to help you to navigate this unfamiliar space.

Me in Product Management

I am an immigrant twice over.? My world opened up when we first moved to Toronto, Canada.? English as a second language (ESL) classes resembled mini United Nations.? Instead of spending time in cram schools, I was making money delivery newspapers and working at a fast food restaurant.? The new found independence as well as challenges of being an immigrant (eg. when the phone rang, no one in the household wanted to pick it up as it meant having to speak English) made me mature quickly.

I was able to graduate from the top engineering school in Canada, with some money in my pockets and a year of co-op work experience in Japan.? Life was cherry.

Then I joined a startup with some friends in Virginia.? Unfortunately it didn’t survive.? I went back to Canada and got a master's degree in engineering.? Life was still cherry.

I worked my way to a management position.? However, with the birth of my daughter, everything, literally everything changed.? My razor sharp focus turned into raising a family.? Life was peach.? I love peaches.

We moved to Seattle.? As the children grow up, I keep myself busy with many things.? I volunteer, I own a 19- acre land and manage it.? I taught myself Chinese typing and taught Chinese!

I became a committed life learner.? With many certifications under the belt and while searching for the next thing, I came across PMDojo in one of the career workshops.? Honestly, I had little clue about product management at the time, but Bosky made an impression on me and here I am!

Meet the Team

In PMDojo’s Product Accelerator Program, I was paired up with two diligent ladies, Hannah Olade and Ranjini N. .? Besides the three of us, we work with Joshua Masia - the mentor, Elizabeth M. Tavara Franz - the founder of Humanz Mediate, and Hari Prasad - the developer.? Together, we started by identifying mediation related challenges and ended with the minimal viable product (MVP), a product for a real company!

Background of the problem

Can you be a mediator?? Mediator feels like a superhuman job.? Their clients come disgruntled with a dispute that they are not able to solve.? During the virtual or online mediation sessions, they need to capture the story by:

• Being organized, have multiple windows open
• Type fast, at least 100 words per minutes
• Ask open ended questions for clarification
• Stay neutral, even if the participants have different beliefs
• Stay calm, when people yell over their head
• Ask participants to identify and rate potential resolutions
• Provide summary

As we do a deep dive into the existing practice, we noticed:

• While it is systematic, the entire mediation process is complicated
• Mediators can be overwhelmed
• Finding superhumans who are eager to solve human conflicts is difficult.??

What can we do to make this seamlessly difficult job less of a hustle?? Our target users are open minded, moldable young, freshly out of school individuals who are ready to take on challenges.

Problem Statement

Initially, problem statement read:

The pain point for mediators at Humanz Mediate is the time it takes to create the end report for their participants resulting in potential burnout.

Through user surveys, user interviewers, as well as speaking to the founder of Humanz Mediate, we kept on refining the problem statement as we learned the trade.

Our latest problem statement read,

At , mediators feel overwhelmed during the session and spend a lot of time in breakout sessions capturing, organizing, and combining resolutions which can lead to more human error and inaccuracy.

What a change!? It was too easy to pick a problem instead of spotting a more meaningful problem to solve.

Why Does This Matter?

Humanz Mediate wants to make sure that the service is of quality and value.? Therefore, it is valuable to identify tools that can help mediators to capture the story more effectively, more accurately while making the participants feel at ease with the technology.??

Currently, participants need to be comfortable and the mediators, well, you guessed it, be experts with the word processing software.? The main pain point is the breaks are needed during the sessions to let the participants each rate possible resolutions independently and for the mediators to cluster and combine possible resolutions.

Every single minute during the meditation session counts.? While it is not possible to eliminate breaks, ideally, Humanz Mediate wants to minimize the time spent on breaks and give the participants the best experience possible.

Design Process

How might we… reduce the time required for each breakout session??

We made sure to conduct a competitive analysis and gained some understanding on how other mediator companies solve the problem.? It confirmed with what we already knew from user surveys and user interviews, that most of the mediators today rely on pen and paper for notetaking, even if they are comfortable with technology.? This is because there is no standard body to oversee and validate the effectiveness of mediation.? Most mediators are in small practice or do it voluntarily.? Each sticks with what works best for him/her.

One of our early ideas came out of the lightning demo was to allow participants drag and drop ideas in buckets instead of having to highlight potential resolutions in the word processing software.

Bucketing possible solutions are intuitive, effective and can be fun.? However, when there are many possible resolutions, the board becomes cluttered and combining participants’ preference could be a pain.

We ended up adopting a better way or we thought of presenting possible resolutions.? We? borrowed the idea from a day-to-day calendar.? There is a page with a message or a joke for each day and one would flip to read the message or joke everyday.? FlipMe was born!?

Possible resolutions are fed into FlipMe.? A link is created for the participants.? As the participants click through to input their selection, the mediators can monitor the progress in the background.? This is effective, there is little room for error and it takes the guesswork out for the mediators.

At this point, you must be wondering that you thought the MVP product name was YourChoice.? You are absolutely right.? The team had to make the last minute change due to time and coding limitations.? Flipping through each possible resolution one at a time could not be implemented.? However, displaying a cluster of them is feasible and honestly, a good idea!? YourChoice it is.

Wireframes and User Flow

Utilizing Balsamiq + Invision allowed us to quickly produce low fidelity wireframes and conduct user testing.? We were able to incorporate the feedback from the user testing and made modifications after each iteration.

Mediator View

Participant View

North Star for MVP Release

Here are the three north star metrics which guide us to define what success looks like for our MVP - YourChoice.? It took a few iterations to come up with something that’s quantifiable and aligns with business goals.

1. Acceptance:? Results from participant satisfaction survey
2. Effectiveness: How long it takes to make a selection for an idea
3. Adoption:? # of sessions created vs # of sessions completed

Use Cases

We are aware that by asking mediators to use spreadsheets instead of word processing documents would already be an improvement from what they do today.? For YourChoice to be a level up from the spreadsheets, the ease of use for the participants would be key.

For MVP Release:

• Ability for participant to select their choice with one click for each possible resolution
• Ability for participant to save and come back at a later day to complete the exercise
• Ability for mediators to import file that contains possible resolutions
• Ability for mediator to track participant’s progress
• Ability for mediators to export file that contains all the answers from the participants

For Future Consideration:

• Option to add possible resolutions during the selection
• Once the combined result is exported, sort and identify resolutions that are agreeable with both parties

User Stories

We focused on a happy path where core functionalities would be tested and used.? Trello was the project management tool of choice.? We created a kanban board to communicate and keep track of progress with the developer.

Kanban board in Trello

Communicating with Hari the developer on what’s possible and not possible was interesting.? Negotiations went back & forth.? Luckily, we had some software background so I hope he didn’t feel frustrated!? A bonus feature which was given to us was that when the link is ready for the participants, the mediators have a choice to click a mail button and emails with the link will be sent.? Wonderful!

Due to the software and time constraints, while I am very impressed with the MVP, few compromises were necessary throughout the development besides the one already mentioned.? Here are other examples.

• Instead of parsing through word processing files, .bubble, the no-code solution the developer used, only supports .csv for import.??
• The layout of the export file is not as intuitive as in the spreadsheet, in that participants’ choices are not populated across the columns.

Getting Feedback from Beta Launch

We chose a private and closed beta launch as Humanz Mediate is in stealth mode.? Besides, let’s not fool ourselves.? YourChoice is designed for a particular style of meditation practice.? It is so niche that asking the general public to sign up for beta testing makes no sense.

Key Outcomes

The key stakeholders were able to go through the entire app with some guidance.? They really appreciated:

• Ability to add more than two participants.
• Ability to send participants email with the link.
• Autosave feature.??
• Ability to track participant’s progress.
• Ability for participants to go back and forth on the possible resolutions.

Areas where further improvement can be made are:

• Change name from FlipMe to YourChoice.
• Add the company logo and use company color.
• Add navigation buttons at the bottom of participants survey
• Provide more fields in the export file so grouping can be done easier.
• Add more navigation functionality, so the users can go to different pages directly.
• Ability to include new possible resolutions as they come up during the session.

With little time left, we asked Hari to only tackle easy fixes, such as name change.

How did YourChoice measure up to our three north star matrices?? In terms of effectiveness, YourChoice definitely scored high as it reduces the number of clicks for users to select a response from 3+ down to 1.? In terms of adoption, we had to guide the mediators on how to create cases, how to add or delete participants and how to import surveys and export responses.? Afterward, the mediators were able to create cases and run YourChoice by themselves.? The mediators are already brainstorming features for the next release, so we are hopeful that YourChoice will be used by all mediators at Humanz Mediate.? Finally, it is the most difficult to evaluate how we score on user friendliness and acceptance.? This is because all the beta users were mediators, and while we could role play to be participants, we all knew the process all too well.? However, I am confident the real participants will find YourChoice easy to navigate.

Product Roadmap

There are many moving pieces.? The virtual mediation industry is young and evolving.? The mediation process might change.? There are promising technologies that could be used to help with the mediation session such as transcription and analyzing faces.

“Now” is the MVP and is done.??

“Next” contains the features that came out of the lightning demo mentioned in the Design Process as well as the future considerations under Use Cases.??

“Later” contains moonshot ideas that are heavily technology dependent.

My Individual Leanings So Far

Product manager is a generalist

There is not a typical product management role.? Product managers have different tools under their belts and use them when they fit the job.? Knowing a bit about everything enables easier conversations.? Having curiosity to explore, persistence to dig deeper, and ability to summarize and communicate with the stakeholders and developers are few traits of good product managers.

Understand the problem before trying to solve it

It was quite interesting that we ended up spending more time identifying, refining the problem statement than having Hari, the developer working on the app.? It was not a waste of time.? Every iteration we went through, we understood the users, stakeholders, and the problem better.? While not actively working on a solution, the ideas started looming in the background.

Embrace iterative process

Just how many times?!? It’s rare if not impossible to come up with a perfect solution for a complex problem in one go.? During this exercise I saw the beauty of iteration, which allowed for feedback to be incorporated as part of the solution and the end result is that YourChoice is useful and aligns with stakeholder expectation.

Don’t assume.? Ask

One thing I learned from the mediators is to ask open ended questions and don’t assume even if you think the answer is obvious.? What an important life skill!

Diversity is a good thing

I enjoyed watching presentations from the fellows and was delighted with meaningful feedback from the mentors.? Across different time zones, different cultures, different paths in life, it is only natural to have different perspectives and skills amongst the fellows.? Remember to be respectful while working through differences takes real effort, intention and sometimes requires a change of a mindset.

Conclusion

Product Accelerator Program at PMDojo made me unexpectedly busy and accountable.? Past online certifications I could take my sweet time; there was no teammates and mentors nudging and no presentations!? If you jump on the bandwagon, be prepared and be committed.? You can easily spend 15 hours a week on the program.? But it is fair, you get what you put into it.

Would I recommend the PMDojo Accelerator?? Yes.? It provides a comprehensive curriculum all the way from the beginning with user engagement to the inception of an MVP.? With the industry track, you are matched with a real startup and the final solution is meaningful.? Frankly, I could be biased as I have not taken other product management courses elsewhere before.? Program does its job of assimilating the real environment.? So yes, we went through the good, the bad and the ugly.

I would like to thank Bosky Mukherjee for establishing PMDojo, with the intention to help anyone who might? be interested in product management but doesn’t have a path to get there.

I would like to thank Joshua Masia , for mentoring the team and enduring weird questions like, “while tools can be learned, how do I determine if I have the personal traits to be a product manager?” I wanted to know if there is any trait of mine that instantly disqualifies me!

I would like to thank Elizabeth M. Tavara Franz , for explaining the mediation process ten thousand times to us. She is fierceless and she is motivated.

Lastly, I would like to thank my teammates Hannah Olade and Ranjini N. .? They are studious and always available.? Ranjini takes care of the scheduling and other operational requirements.? Hannanh is great with words and is the glue for our team.

You have my gratitude if you want to assist me in continuing this journey in product management.? For opportunities, consider connecting with me on LinkedIn.