Monday, 23 August 2021

Is imagination the beginning of Innovation?

“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last, you create what you will.” – George Bernard Shaw. 

In this blog, I would like to bring your imagination, to an innovation that will shape the health industry in the future, bringing new value to many health-conscious consumers. 

First, let me ask you what does “being healthy” mean to you? Most of us would say that, being healthy means, to never fall sick. In light of the current outbreak of the coronavirus disease, many of us would have wished, that the minute the virus was detected, a better use of technology in the medical field should have been there, to stop the spread of the virus, and to find a cure for the people. Since the hope for many people is to stay healthy, it is common for people to consume generic vitamins to keep themselves healthy. However, there is no accurate way of telling whether the vitamins we consume, are working as it should. After all, how can we as individuals, rely on generic recommended dosage intake of vitamins, when each person’s DNA is unique, and the absorption rate, and reactions to these pills may differ slightly between each person. 

If you have the desire to say healthy, and wished that you are able to do something before you even fall sick, let me introduce you to HEALTH-f-IT. HEALTH-f-IT, an imaginary personalized designer super pill, that will monitor your blood, and body cells, as well as preparing a concoction of the required vitamins, minerals, and anti-oxidants in the exact dosage, that is specially made for you to consume, before an unhealthy body cell, even gets to spread, and cause any damage to your health. Would you want it?

Thursday, 25 June 2020

Product Roadmap

What Is a Product Roadmap?
It is a product document that defines the vision for the product, containing a breakdown of the feature list of what we are building that is spread across sprints to ensure the development team has the capacity to develop the features and the QA team has the capacity to test the features that are being built.

Product Roadmap

What approach to use in defining the roadmap?
Different product team approach their roadmaps differently. Some common best practices are:
Value proposition vs. effort - the feature that gives the maximum value proposition while requiring the least amount of effort, is planned first.
Feature heavy roadmaps are built when there is a high level of clarity on the vision for the product.
Time sensitive roadmaps are generally built to meet a time sensitive goal that is generally critical to business operations.

Understanding business pain points

Whether your role is a Product Manager or a Business Analyst, the role requires the person to have a full understanding of the user’s problems or pain points, before they can propose the right solution (product).

Understanding business pain points
There are 3 key levels of analysis that can help us fully understand a problem:

  1. The Business-Level: Discuss with the business and the operations team to understand about their current business and operations process flow and what are they trying to achieve and why (business goals). Create a business / operations process flow diagram (a visual model).

Important: If the user reference a solution as a pain point, ask them why they need that solution. Keep up this process until you get to the root cause of their pain points.

  1. The Engineering-Level: Discuss with the engineering or system support team to understand the engineering components that relates to the business workflows.

  1. The Information-Level: Discuss with the business and the data team to understand the current state of how and what data and information are stored, maintained, data modeling techniques and what are they trying to achieve next and why.

Once we understand the current state, we can:
  1. Identify multiple possible solutions.
  2. Prioritize potential solutions.
  3. Make a decision.

Friday, 20 March 2020

A day in my life as a Product Manager

As a Product Manager, I am expected to juggle a wide range of activities, from developing the Product Vision and Strategy, to creating and validating the user Personas through research, and surveys, so that I can understand the user's pain points, and motivations.

This will include conducting a strategic review, preparing the business analysis report, and recommending the strategic initiatives on what Product or product features the organization will need to build, the budgets required, and the benefits it could bring to the business.

The next step is to define the Product, and write detailed product requirements, user stories, and acceptance criteria. I will researched on competitors' UX, and work with the UIUX design team, to ensure the product designs and wire-frames will serve the intended purpose of the product. The product user interface will have to be intuitive for the users.

The product releases will be delivered using the agile methodology, where I will prioritize, and make engineering trade-off decisions, and maintain the Product Backlog. I will attend the Daily stand-ups, providing clarity to the Engineering teams, on what needs to be delivered, and why it needs to be delivered in Sprint Planning, and Sprint Grooming.

It's about setting the success metrics, driving, and aligning cross-functional teams to collaborate, and to deliver great digital products to meet the set success metrics.

During Sprint demos, as a Product Manager, I will have to have an eye for detail, to test, and to see if a Product feature has been delivered as what has been defined. Product Managers are the champions for the users.

At Sprint Retro, it is time for everyone to share their experiences on what worked well, what could be improved, and what the team will commit to make things better in the next Sprint. It is all about make improvements, and making iterations to build and deliver better products.

As a leader in Product Management, I took the initiative be a Digital Transformational leader, where I will keep an eye on the latest Technology trends, and tools, to share my knowledge, and introduce the relevant tools to the teams, to encourage the usage of data to get actionable insights for better decision making, and to encourage everyone to have a "Product" mindset.

In short, my job as a Product Manager is the job of a mini CEO, minus the grand title and all the perks.


What does a Product Manager Do? by Daphne Tee Chui May


You can connect with me on my LinkedIn.

Delivering Award Winning Digital Products

As a Product Manager, we have to love what we do. We need to champion the users' needs, and have a commitment to excellence across every aspect of our work. As a result, I am proud to have won a myriad of internationally recognized awards over the years.

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Daphne Tee Chui May winning the 3rd place in the Euro ITV Grand Challenge 2013

Winner of EuroITV Grand Challenge 2013 - 3rd Place (Como, Italy)

In 2012, I lead the Digital Media Specialist team in Content Group in Astro to design and develop a Sales portal solution (Astro Self Service Portal Channel 200) for our Customer Group Division. It involves meticulous design planning for the User Interface/User Experience (UI/UX). The design for this portal won the 3rd Placing in the EuroITV 2013 Grand Challenge. The Astro Self Service Portal allows the customers to browse a catalogue, preview a channel before subscribing, perform (self-service) upgrades of TV packages and be able to watch the subscribed packages or TV Channels immediately, among others.

EuroITV 2013 Grand Challenge Competition honours the Creators, Developers and Designers of interactive video content, applications and services that enhance the television and video viewing experience for consumers worldwide. The event was held in Como, Italy. The winners are selected by a panel of international jury of interactive media experts from Europe. The judging criteria for the award is based on the following areas:
• Innovativeness
• Commercial potential
• Entertainment value and/or usefulness and/or artistic merit and creative implementation
• The usability and user experience of interactive and context-aware functions and content

The competition, co-chaired by Prof. Robert Strezbowski (Germany) and Prof. Milena Szafir (Brazil) states, that this year “the projects contributed with complex commercial and professional solutions.


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Daphne Tee Chui May winning the Best Innovative Technology Award, High Speed Customer Service Award, Online Customer Service Award for ideation and delivering a Self-Service Digital Product (Web and TV application) 

Customer Relationship Excellence Awards by Asia Pacific Customer Service Consortium:

Best Innovative Technology of the Year 2012

High Speed Customer Service of the Year 2012

Online Customer Service of the Year 2012

I lead the team to develop the innovative solution and the user interface and user experience (UI/UX) for the Astro Self Service Portal (channel 200) where it allows the customers to check their current subscriptions and to allow them to upgrade their subscriptions and gained access to their newly subscribed Channels / Content instantly. The Astro Self Service Portal is one of the hallmarks of service innovation and has turned normal TV screen to a primary touch point to deliver enhanced service experience, 24x7 service convenience where speed and simplicity are crucial for a Great customer service experience. Astro Customer Group division have won 3 Customer Relationship Excellence Awards in 2012 for the submission of this Product innovation.

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Daphne Tee Chui May receiving awards at Euro ITV Grand Challenge 2011 in Portugal


Winner of Euro ITV Grand Challenge 2011 - 3rd Place June 2011 (Lisbon, Portugal)

EuroITV 2011 Grand Challenge Competition recognizes creators, developers and designers of interactive video content, applications and services that enhance the television and video viewing experience for consumers worldwide. The EuroITV 2011 was held in Lisbon, Portugal. 

I won this award for the Astro First TV Portal. I came up with the interactive solution and the UI/UX (user interface and user experience) for Astro. The Astro First TV Portal allows the TV audience to access a TV portal to browse the content catalogue, place an order via SMS and to be able to watch the Movie instantly on TV. Astro First became a Game Changer on how PPV movies are delivered to the customers.

Astro First is the first ever service in Malaysia that brings the cinema experience right into your home. With Astro First Movie Portal on Astro Channel 480, the window between the cinema and Pay TV has been shortened where the customers will get access to the latest local cinema titles (as early as 2 weeks after the cinema debut) in Malaysia, available for viewing on TV via TV Portal and SMS ordering.

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Daphne Tee Chui May, winner of the Interactive TV Solution 2019 Awards by IMS Research (US)

Winner of Interactive TV Solution in 2009 TV Innovation Awards by IMS Research (Los Angeles, US)

TV Innovation Awards are one of the premier endorsements of innovation in television and recognize the most forward- thinking companies creating products and services that are changing the way people watch television. There were more than 100 entries received from Asia, Europe and US and it was judged by an independent panel of 14 industry experts. The Interactive TV Solution is an award category that recognizes advanced applications and solutions that enable a two-way interactive experience using some form of back channel. This can be between the viewer and either the TV program itself or an interactive application using the TV as the portal to interact the content provider. This will include TV shows where the viewer can influence the content being shown, interactive advertising, intuitive program guides, shopping, betting, gaming, etc. 

This is the first time Astro has submitted an entry for the TV Innovation Awards and so it is a big achievement for all of us at Astro to hear that we have been judged as winners especially among other global companies such as BSkyB, Samsung and Mitsubishi – who were all nominees in other categories. Winning this award is a great honour to me. I felt so excited that my SMS-to-TV Chat Solution (Astro@15) for Astro Malaysia was given this International recognition by IMS Research.

Product Manager, a leader to create new business value

What do I do?

I build relationships, representing customers' unmet needs, creates community, champions the Digital transformation, and creating powerful storytelling through Digital products. I am a Product Manager.

Regardless of your job title, race, or age, everyone can be a leader. We can channel our energy to become a Leader of Change, or a Champion for Digital Transformation, and bring sustainable growth for the business. The power of change lies within oneself and the energy can be spread across to many.


As a leader, we should have the courage to lead a team, to try new ways of doing things, to constantly adapt, innovate, and to create great digital products that will bring new value for the customers, and for the business....and we make sure the team stays motivated and have fun along the way.


To read more about my CV, click on the link below:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/daphne-tee-chui-may/


Daphne Tee Chui May with team members
Daphne Tee Chui May with team members in a workshop