Article: Our Origins, Research and Development - An Extended Take
by Harry Chang • 11 December 2023
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In this article, Harry shares his perspective on the rebirth of ‘NUS Product Club’, joining our club’s other six co-founders in validating the importance of building a product community in NUS, as well as the events that led to the successful launch of our activities over our first semester.
Introduction
Introduction
2023 has been a very eventful year for me. As probably the fastest year I’ve experienced by far, I remember the start of the year as though it was merely weeks ago, and many things have changed ever since. Entering this year with the mindset of living at a slower pace after almost 3 years of university, I never expected to be at the forefront of student life once again, especially with our club growing much faster than imagined. As I reminisce how it all began, sometimes I wonder what things would be like if I did not reach out to this opportunity…
How I chanced upon this opportunity
How I chanced upon this opportunity
After overloading myself with many school commitments in my past few semesters, I remember having a lot of free time back in the first half of the year, when I was only taking three modules, while spending most of my time idling and doing nothing at home besides barely following my classes. While it felt relieving to feel a change in pace for once, I was sometimes bothered when I did not feel engaged with any activity unlike my peers, who were constantly on the academic or internship grind.
Nonetheless, as I was browsing through Telegram one day in April, I happened to open SMU Product Club’s Telegram group, reading its latest updates. While reading through the channel, I randomly toggled the search bar and entered “nusproductclub”, wondering if such an entity existed. To my surprise, a public Telegram chat appeared, and after joining the group, I scrolled up the history of the chat out of boredom out of curiosity, and happened to chance upon the following message:
As I read that particular message, I wondered to myself: “Is this worth exploring?”
After my past experiences in many student life activities, I was honestly exhausted and wanted to take a step back. However, after reading through the message again, I felt that for some reason, it was hard to ignore - the idea of reviving an old initiative for the greater good was appealing to me, especially given that I had abruptly stepped down from the commitments in my previous semester to take a personal break. The thought of redemption constantly lingered in my mind, and given that I knew that I had more to give, I reached out to the sender of the message to find out more:
My initial interactions with the other co-founders
My initial interactions with the other co-founders
After setting up the call as above, I was interviewed by Kayleigh and Darice, two of the co-founders of our club. As I continued my conversation with them after introducing myself and my motivations behind joining this opportunity, I could sense their passion for this initiative, given their past experiences and interest in product management. At that moment, I felt that our interests were aligned, as we all agreed that we wanted to resolve the long-standing issue of how such a community was not established in our school community much earlier.
Days after the call, I was onboarded by Kayleigh on the origins of the club - how it was an initiative by Wayne Wee, to maintain a network full of working product professionals after returning from his stint at Silicon Valley under the NUS Overseas Colleges (NOC) programme a few years back. Given that Kayleigh was also exploring her interest in product as a freshman back then, she reached out to many people, including Wayne, Darice and the other co-founders, as well as other clubs such as SMU Product Club and The Product Loft for general advice on kickstarting this initiative.
About a week after my first call with Kayleigh and Darice, I got to meet most of the other co-founders in person at the Trust Bank Office - where we got to meet Jason Teo, Head of Product Management at Trust Bank. Although this was a last minute invite for me, I nonetheless made the time to attend the meeting, as I was excited to be a part of this discussion that involved highly-driven individuals! As it was my first interaction with everyone else involved, I sat in mostly listening to the others discuss with Jason on the development of our various educational programmes, which would later be packaged together and introduced as PM1101E: Exposure to Product Management.
Initial photo with the Founding Team and Jason at the Trust Bank office!
(21 April 2023)
Validating our mission and vision using our research
Validating our mission and vision using our research
After our initial discussion with Jason, we conducted our own survey amongst NUS students, as we wanted to prove to ourselves that what we were working towards had a true purpose.
Based on the responses shown above, it was unanimously agreed that the majority of our respondents did not feel that there were sufficient resources required to learn more about product management. This was despite the fact that many students were aware of its existence, as well as their general interest level in the field. On top of this, the students indicated their preference for a mixture of interactive and educational sessions as well, providing a balance of both hands-on and informative experiences in terms of interest. Given that they also preferred to commit 1-2 hours a week on such educational material, we therefore used this information from our survey to plan out our weekly sessions for PM1101E.
As such, with the establishment of our initial Organising Committee of 24 members in June, we hence moved forward with planning out the activities for our first semester, and the rest was history.
Conclusion
Conclusion
While I only joined the picture much later than the other co-founders, I would say that the journey of our Founding Team has come a long way over the past nine months. Since the very first meeting between Kayleigh, Darice and Jane back in March, the common drive to give back to our student community has been very heartening, as the process of onboarding more of such like-minded and driven individuals has only pushed everyone and this cause for the better. On behalf of our Founding Team, we are proud of what we have achieved over this short period of time - and look forward to our next semester of activities ahead!
In our second semester, NUS Product Club will be launching its very own podcast series - of which an episode will feature some of our club’s co-founders, as they share their personal motivations behind starting this new club. Should you be interested in such content, do follow our socials for our latest updates!
About the Author
#7: Harry Chang
#7: Harry Chang
Given his prior experiences in multiple data science and analytics internships, Harry is seeking to explore his career options beyond the conventional data analyst role, including product management and HR analytics. Beyond his academics, Harry has also contributed vibrantly to student life activities, including his previous leadership roles as President of NUS Statistics and Data Science Society, as well as Deputy Head of Finance in Google Developer Student Clubs NUS. Concurrently, he actively contributes blog articles and infographics as a Research & Strategy Executive at NUS Human Capital Society. He is also a (UI/UX) Design Manager in NUS Fintech Society. As our club’s President, Harry oversees the efforts of our Partnerships and Publicity Teams, establishing a strong foundation of our club’s outreach and marketing strategies in the long run.
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