Notes on the startup of the oldest programmers: full-text search, data mining, and recommendation engine applications 43

Product design seminar
The product design seminar is scheduled to be held at half past nine A.M.. Wu Yan worked overtime at night, so today he came a little late. At the time of his arrival, there were nearly 8.4 yuan, and Zhang xinyan, the company's front-end, had arrived.
"Wu Zong Zao !" Zhang xinyan said hello, but the tone does not seem as natural as before.
Indeed, since Wang Wenbin's arrival, Wu Yan does feel that all employees have changed their attitudes in microseconds. as a client, this feeling is really uncomfortable, it must be the same way to treat others.
Wu Yan opened his notebook and began to familiarize himself with the product manager Bible book. Although the product manager is not a real management position, however, the challenges they face are not small, but they contribute a lot to the enterprise. Sometimes they can even play a decisive role, because Internet product managers usually determine the general direction of the enterprise, others, such as R & D, marketing, sales, and operation, are carried out under the guidance of this general direction. If the general direction is wrong, the final result may fail even if other aspects are more efficient.
"Wu Zong! You come so early every day !" Zhao Qigang came to the office, his seat was opposite Wu Yan, and said hello to Wu Yan. Wu Yan moved out of his original office, and without knowing it, Zhao Qigang's name for Wu Yan has changed from you to you.
"Yes! Stay far away, and leave early to ensure you are not late !" Wu Yan replied.
"By the way, we have another meeting today. We are all ready !" Wu Yan asked with no confidence.
"Everything is ready !" Zhao Qigang said with treasure, "I'll call the projector first !"
As Zhao Qigang said, he picked up his notebook and walked into the meeting room.
The meeting was attended by Wu Yan, Wang Wenbin, Liang xiujuan, and Zhao Qigang. The meeting was held on time at half past nine.
Zhao Qigang spoke at the meeting: "Hello, everyone! Today, I will share with you some questions about product design. The content I am talking about today is divided into three parts: The first part is the existing problems of the product, the second part is the solution I have proposed, and the third part is the task allocation, of course, the third part should be decided by leaders."
"Let me first talk about some problems in the current product," Zhao Qigang said while opening the PPT. "The problems in the current product can be divided into two categories, one is the ease of use of products. As far as I know, the R & D department is working to solve these problems. Therefore, the other is the product design problems."
"I have already introduced that Internet products should not be built up with pure functions, but should be built on the basis of basic functions to build a variety of operational products, features that are sticky to users, such as points, grades, and rankings. To better design these systems, we must first understand our target customers, only by fully analyzing potential users can we design better Internet products." Zhao Qigang's PPT briefly lists the main points of his speech, and then cooperates with him to explain his views.
"Let's talk about the improvement plan. From the situation I introduced just now, we are not missing some or some features, but re-designing features, to do this, you must first analyze the requirements. Requirement analysis can be roughly divided into the following steps: user research, that is, to find our target customers, followed by requirement collection, and then requirement analysis. Here we should note that we should listen to the users, but we don't have to do exactly what the user says. For example, if you ask the user what he needs before building a car in Ford, the user will say that I want a faster horse, however, Ford can seize the essence of the problem that users want to run faster and launch a car. This fast-moving alternative product better meets users' needs, demand analysis also needs to extract the deep and real needs of users from the scattered and superficial needs of users. The next step is to classify the requirements, set the priority of demand implementation based on the characteristics and importance of the requirements, and finally organize product R & D work according to the requirements ." Zhao Qigang seems to have prepared a lot and said the first thing is right.
"Next I will focus on Requirement collection, which can be roughly divided into the following five steps: specifying the target, selecting the collection method, developing the collection plan, executing the collection, and sorting the data. The most important thing is to select a collection method. The requirement collection method can be divided into two categories: Qualitative and Quantitative. It can also be designed to enable users to communicate with and enable users in two forms. Specifically, there are four main methods: user interviews, surveys, availability tests, and data analysis call a group of users to ask questions and answer questions. The questionnaire is a series of questions that we design and then send to users through websites, emails, and other methods, which are answered by users. Usability testing is to come up with a prototype of the product, ask the user to try it out, and then draw a conclusion by analyzing the user experience. Data analysis is to analyze our operation data and find something regular ." Zhao Qigang analyzed it one by one, and it seems very theoretical. It is obviously a great effort.
Wang Wenbin was very familiar with these contents and nodded while listening. Liang xiujuan seems not interested. She apparently wants to hear more specific things than these theoretical things, but Zhao Qigang is not very familiar with the system, it is indeed difficult for him to propose a more specific solution.
"So I suggest that we make enough budget for demand collection ." Zhao Qigang came to his first conclusion.
After listening to Zhao Qigang, Wang Wenbin nodded and said, "Yes, I agree with Qi Gang. I used to have a user interview every quarter when I was in yibu.com, at the same time, entrust a third party to conduct a questionnaire."
Zhao Qigang listened to Wang Wenbin's affirmation and showed a proud look on his face. Then he said, "Yes, I have the same idea as Wang Zong !"
Liang xiujuan frowned at the moment and asked, "What budget do you think it takes to collect requirements ?"
Zhao Qigang took over the topic and said: "If we use a combination of user interviews and questionnaires, to ensure the representativeness of user samples, I estimate that we need a budget of about 50 thousand, this includes the cost of hiring third-party personnel."
"We are just doing a simple investigation. Is that necessary ?" Liang xiujuan asked.
"Well, both questionnaires and user interviews require a lot of preliminary preparation. For example, we send a paper questionnaire, there are pre-printing, manual distribution, recycling, entry, statistics, and so on. If we have insufficient manpower, we also need to hire students and other personnel, so the cost is quite high, when I was in yimei.com, this routine survey had a budget of over 100,000 yuan each time." Wang Wenbin answered.
"However, from the perspective of our financial budget, we still cannot get this budget ." Liang xiujuan said with certainty.
The problem seems to be deadlocked. On the one hand, demand collection is required, and on the other hand, there is no budget to support it.
Wu said at this moment: "I have a suggestion ."
When we heard that Wu Yan had a solution to this problem, they turned their heads to Wu Yan.
Wu Yan said slowly with the eyes of everyone: "For the user interview, I am still the last opinion. We can use our staff, the employees who work in our compound started to investigate. Although this is slightly less representative, they are part of our target customers and the company in this courtyard is quite complicated, there are thousands of people, and I think it is representative."
Liang xiujuan nodded and said, "Mr. Wu's suggestion is better, so that we can do this without a budget, and the effect will not be very bad ."
Wu Yan continued: "As for the questionnaire, I think we can do it on our website in the initial stage. We can highlight the link to the questionnaire in the upper left corner of the webpage, at the same time, we can make a questionnaire task for users to complete. This will attract more users to participate ."
"Wu Zong, If you design a questionnaire by yourself, you need to solve many problems, such as problem sorting and feedback. This part of the workload is not small, but our current R & D department is heavily loaded, I can't find any human resources to do this!" Wang Wenbin reminded me.
Obviously, Wang Wenbin hopes to increase the visibility of the stalls in the industry. Although it may not have the best effect for the products, it can also increase the visibility of the products in the industry for individuals, from his standpoint, it is absolutely worth doing. Therefore, Wang Wenbin took advantage of his role in charge of the R & D department and raised a challenge to Wu Yan.
Wu Yan also prepared for the problem in advance, so he said: "I have also considered this problem. In this case, we must first give positive feedback to participating users, at the same time, users are allowed to view the statistics of current feedback. Users should also be allowed to comment, vote, or score specific suggestions. At the same time, in our background, we need to classify and manage user feedback. First, we need to identify whether it is a functional suggestion or a BUG. If it is a functional requirement, we need to go to the requirement collection process, if it is a BUG, you also need to identify whether it is a new BUG or an existing BUG, and then arrange relevant personnel to handle it according to the severity of the BUG. There are also some possible complaint information, currently, we do not have a dedicated customer service department. The operation department is responsible for this. There may also be some help for functions, which is also the responsibility of the Operations Department ."
Wu gave a sigh of relief and said, "As for the development of this part of the function, I know that the R & D department is currently facing a shortage of human resources. I will find a solution myself ."
After listening to Wu's words, Wang Wenbin had to say: "Since Wu has a way to solve this problem, I also feel that I can follow the Wu's proposal to collect demands. Let's continue with it !"
Zhao Qigang turned to the next PPT and said, "in terms of product functions, I suggest adding the following features: user points, digital levels, and badges, the specific format is similar to Twitter."
Then, Zhao Qigang displayed the user information on Twitter on the PPT.
"You can take a look at the specific points rules and the Conversion Relationship between points and grades. Let's see if you have any comments !" Zhao Qigang turned to the next PPT, which lists the number of points corresponding to the user's blog, comments, votes, scores, and other operations. At the same time, the score level can be upgraded to the next level.
Looking at this PPT, Wu Yan said: "the basic content of this PPT is very good. These are what is missing in the current product. However, there are many factors to consider when designing your reputation system. I 'd like to discuss it with you ."
As a recommendation shopping website, user reputation is a very important aspect. It directly determines whether the user will accept the recommendation and make a purchase decision, therefore, Wu Yan made a more in-depth research on this issue. Wu Yan had a lot of suggestions for improving Zhao Qigang's PPT. By taking this opportunity, Wu Yan prepared to talk about it.
"When designing a website Reputation System, the first thing to consider is the competitive nature of the website. Generally, websites that are more competitive tend to adopt digital reputation systems, such as credit points and digital levels, A cooperative website tends to adopt a reputation system named primarily. Qi Gang suggested a digital reputation system here, which is obviously more suitable for competitive websites. The core function of our website is recommendation and shopping. We can also think that collective wisdom is working. Therefore, in this process, the characteristics of cooperation must be greater than those of competition, therefore, the name-based level may be more suitable. Although we may have a user credit system in the background, we may not be able to display it on the user interface. Our user levels can be identified by bronze, silver, gold, diamond and other names. In addition, for the credit system, I think it is unreasonable for the user to give points for each simple task. This may encourage the user to generate some junk content. Therefore, for a simple task, we should start to reward points several times, in the future, it will be better not to reward users. This will encourage users to try new features, but not to encourage users to generate junk content."
After talking about so many words in one breath, Wu Yan couldn't help but stop and breathe, and then said, "of course, our website also has a strong competitive edge, it is between products of the same type or with an alternative relationship, so we can add points, numbers, top 10 and top to the product."
Wu Yan said this, So Zhao Qigang couldn't help but give a nod.
Wang Wenbin also said, "Mr. Wu makes a lot of sense. Qi Gang, you can discuss this part with Mr. Wu to form a more reasonable content, then let's discuss it again."
Wu Yan's learning content over the past few days has finally not been in vain, and it has come in handy. Wu Yan can't help but feel proud to think of it here.
Zhao Qigang then flipped the PPT to the next page and said, "to make users feel that our website is very popular, we should increase the website dynamics and friends dynamics ."
Wu said at this moment: "website dynamics are very important for users, especially those who return to the website. This suggestion is very good. However, the functions supporting this function also need to be put on the agenda, that is, the privacy of user behavior. Users should be allowed to set whether their own behavior can be made public or only made public among friends, only visible to you."
"Yes, Mr. Wu's suggestion is very good. For example, if I buy adult products on the website, I don't want others to know ." Wang Wenbin is attached.
At this time, Wu Yan and Zhao Qigang both laughed. Only Liang xiujuan had no facial expression. Wang Wenbin also realized that Liang xiujuan was still there. What he had said was inappropriate, and his face was embarrassed.
Zhao Qigang turned the PPT to the last page and concluded: "This is my preliminary idea about the current product design. Of course, there are still many things to be improved, the following leaders can discuss specific plan issues."
At this time, Wu Yan made his first speech: "I think in terms of product functions, due to the nature of our website, users may need some instant messaging functions, therefore, I think it is necessary to add the online user status function. Specifically, users can publish online status, display the current online status of specific users, display historical online status information of specific customers, and allow users to subscribe to the online status of other users, allows users to filter out the online status of other users. We can not only provide offline private lines, but also provide real IM functions ."
"However, implementing IM on the web page will consume a lot of server resources ." Zhao Qigang said.
"This depends on your implementation method. If you use the web page refresh mechanism, it is undoubtedly the most expensive server resources. AJAX is better, but it also consumes server resources. However, if we adopt the Comet method, that is, a Web push technology, which is supported in Tomcat 7 and Glassfish, the resource occupation problem does not exist and can achieve better real-time performance than the previous two. In addition, it would be better to use WebSocket in HTML5 ." Speaking of technical issues, Wu Yan is always confident.
"I don't think it's worth it. When our hair is white, we won't be able to use it. However, you can try the Comet technology you mentioned. If we were dissatisfied with Ntalk, some technicians mentioned NTalk. What is the principle? Can you explain it ?" Wang Wenbin asked.
"We all know that when we request a webpage, the server usually sends the webpage content to the browser at one time, and then closes the connection between the browser and the server. However, the Comet technology is different. When you request a webpage, the webpage content is sent without sending the ending mark, so that the browser determines that the webpage is not over, so the connection to the server will not be closed, in this case, if a message is sent to the browser on the server side, it can be sent directly through this connection, and the content sent in the past is usually a piece of Javascript code, then the browser will execute this code, real-time interaction is achieved in terms of results." Wu Yan did not use Comet in the actual project, but he tried to develop some small examples before. Therefore, he knows this technology well.
"The explanation is clear, but I cannot understand it. Do you know about Zhang shaozhi ?" Wang Wenbin asked.
"This is a standard technology that they should understand ." Wu Yan replied.
"Let them have a chance to give it a try !" Wang Wenbin made his own conclusion.
At the end of the meeting, Wang Wenbin made a concluding speech: "Today's meeting is very good. Qi Gang sorted out the product functions and proposed many improvement plans, mr. Wu also put forward a lot of valuable comments. After reading this article, I will discuss it with Mr. Wu and complete your documents. The next step will be to go to the R & D department for development. Well, today's meeting is here. Let's just go out first, and several of us will discuss other issues ."
Zhao Qigang stood up and told everyone goodbye. He picked up his notebook, walked out of the meeting room and closed the door.
Wang Wenbin said at this moment: "The Product Design Discussion has come to an end. I want to discuss the organizational structure adjustment issues with the two companies ."
Finally, Wang Wenbin clearly felt that he was difficult to show his skills and wanted to adjust his organizational structure.
Wang Wenbin went on to say: "I think there are only market and operation departments, and many functions are difficult to allocate. For example, whether the sales department is responsible for the marketing department or the operation department, this will lead to mutual competition. Therefore, I suggest adding a sales department and a customer service department. In addition, the Operation Department should focus on the data analysis function. What do you think ?"
Liang xiujuan said: "This is a good suggestion, but now the 0.5 million hit by Zhao in the first phase is almost over. I promise to only hit 0.3 million in the second phase, and then increase labor costs, i'm afraid there are some difficulties."
Wang Wenbin nodded and said, "Understanding, some departments can be temporarily held by existing employees. However, I think the sales department should be independent in any way. Only by strengthening the sales force can we have a positive cash flow, which is an essential investment ."
Liang xiujuan nodded and said, "Well, who is responsible for the sales department ?"
Wang Wenbin continued: "I am responsible for the sales department for the time being, but I also need help. I suggest adding a sales department manager position. For specific candidates, my suggestion is Qian an Jiang, manager of the sales department of yimei.com. He has a strong sales capability. Many customers of yimei.com talked about it."
Wu Yan gave Liang xiujuan a glance. Liang xiujuan thought for a moment and nodded. "Well, it's okay. It's just that we are still very difficult in terms of salary, it may not be too satisfactory."
Wang Wenbin said: "In this regard, I will communicate with him. In principle, we can use a low base salary and a high commission. If the performance is good, the income will naturally be high. What do you think ?"
"In this case, I have no problem here !" Liang xiujuan replied cheerfully.
In this way, the product design will end.
At this meeting, Wu Yan basically achieved his goal and elaborated on his understanding of product design in detail. Even Wang Wenbin admitted that Wu Yan's viewpoint in this regard was desirable, it seems that the first step in the transformation of the product manager is still successful. At this time, Wu Yan is full of confidence in the role of the product manager.
If the only weakness of this meeting is the question raised by Wang Wenbin about organizational structure adjustment, it is clear that Wang Wenbin has expanded his influence by introducing people from yibu.com, in the future, Wang Wenbin will continue to observe what he will do. However, from the recent performance, Wang Wenbin seems to be a person who wants to do a good job, not a person who specializes in company politics. I hope my opinion is correct.
As a legacy of this Meeting, Wu Yan began to design and implement the website's user feedback system and returned to the long-overdue system development work. Wu Yan felt very comfortable. However, Wu Yan knows that this is only his sideline and is now focusing on Internet product managers. Therefore, he reads the product manager's books every morning and associates his theories with the current system in the afternoon, and write down your own experience, only at night to develop this user feedback system.
A week later, Wu had a certain understanding of the product manager position. Qian an Jiang, the sales department manager recommended by Wang Wenbin, also joined the company.
But now another new problem has emerged. Zhao Haibo often needs some website operation data. However, Sun Zhengdong was a manager and was not assisted by any technical personnel, it is difficult to put forward the data from the system. In the early stage of development, Wu Yan only developed the basic functions and had little knowledge about these operational requirements and did not consider them at all, therefore, it is imperative to make up the short board of products in terms of operation, so a product operation meeting will be held again.
Coming soon: Product Operation