Data Science In Real Life - Course

One of my development goals for Q4 2016 was to understand how data science happens in real life. I took a few days during the holidays to complete a course on this topic taught by researchers at the Johns Hopkins University. Unlike the other courses in the Executive Data Science specialization, this one was not always on topic. It did have very useful insights into what are the things that could go wrong and what are the pitfalls one can avoid. This year I applied the lessons learned from these courses to the data science projects I managed at Castlight. This knowledge contributed in a meaningful way to the success of such projects. The Executive Data Science specialization is a good one for product managers who want to work with data scientists.

Product Design Of Everyday Things - Wine Glass Hanger

The basic design of the wine glass rack.

This week I took a break from thinking about designing data products to think about designing some day to day products. We have a lot of wine glasses at home that get used only during parties. So I decided to make a wooden wine glass rack for the pantry  from some left over wood from an earlier project. The first step was to make a prototype to verify the basic design.  The second step was to check how many glasses can a single rack hold. The third step was to build it and test the mounting and visual appeal. The fourth step was to install it in the pantry.

The principles of product design do not change much irrespective of the end product. Have a clear goal, build a prototype to verify the design of the minimum viable product, test the production version by simulating the final deployment and finally, deploy the product and learn from the experience. Improve if you can.

This one was designed and built in a few hours.

Testing capacity. Will one rack hold 3 glasses?

Trial Installation in the garage to check how it looks when mounted with all glasses.

Final installation in the pantry.