Narrative

Increasing market share in the U.S. and Canada through holistic business and market analyses to drive product development

Project Background

As part of my MBA program's master's thesis, students had to form a team of five to consult an international business and provide feasible and viable product recommendations. My teammates were professionals in engineering, science, finance, and operations. 

We were paired with Narrative, a New Zealand-based startup that speeds up, improves, and simplifies the professional photographer’s workflow with smart and easy to use software tools. Their business goal was to increase market share in the U.S. and Canada. 

Project Type: Product Consulting

My Roles: Product Manager, Project Manager, Researcher, Designer, Client Liaison

Duration: 7 months

Student Team and Narrative’s Executives at UCLA

Product Overview:
Select

How it works…

User imports their photos

Select is an image selection software powered by AI. It streamlines the process of culling images using advanced features such as eye and focus assessments, image assessments, a close-up panel, and face zoom.

After selecting the desired images, users can directly send the files to their editing program. Whether you have a few hundred or thousands of images from a session, Select can significantly reduce the time spent selecting them.

User selects desired photos with the help of facial recognition algorithms

User exports selected photos to a photo editing software

Market Sizing Analysis

Research

We analyzed the photography SaaS market size to understand Select's Total Addressable Market (TAM), Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM), and Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM). This helps pinpoint the product's limitations and is crucial for a product-led company.

We conducted a bottom-up analysis using databases and market reports to determine the TAM, SAM, and SOM. Our research shows that the SOM, which is the current product, can be used by 22,000 wedding photographers on Mac. To reach the SAM of 356,000 users, the company must build a Windows version and develop unique features for portrait photographers. However, due to resource constraints, Narrative was unable to build a Windows version and requested we focus on developing unique features for portrait photographers.

We did not consider achieving the TAM because it was not a feasible option for the company due to resource constraints.

User and Market Research

Our next question was - which type of portrait photographer should we focus on? Portrait photography is loosely defined as photos containing human subjects, such as newborn babies, families, sports, and graduation ceremonies. However, each of these types of photography requires a unique workflow. To identify the optimal segment, we conducted user and market research. This helped us gain a better understanding of the subtle but significant differences in workflow, allowing us to make a more informed decision about which segment to pursue.

Survey: We used Qualtrics to source 150+ survey respondents who met our criteria. The survey results revealed the users' "Job to be Done," and provided us with the necessary quantitative data that allowed us to perform a conjoint and pricing analysis to identify the most valuable product features and the users' willingness-to-pay.

Sports photographers have a strong demand for finding players in their game photos

Interviews: Our team documented a total of 127 virtual/in-person interviews with users, industry professionals, subject matter experts, and competitors to gather product feedback and discover opportunities. I personally conducted 27 interviews and trained my teammates on best practices of conducting user interviews. Our interviewees were sourced across the United States and Canada to align with Narrative's business objectives.

Portrait photographers that shoot high volumes of photos are likely to use and pay for a product like Select

3C’s Framework

To first familiarize ourselves with the SaaS photography industry, we apply the 3C's, a strategy framework, to analyze the product's current internal and external environment. This analysis helps us gain a better understanding of the industry and the factors that may impact the product's success.

Company (Product)

“Augmented culling” is used to balance full automation and photographer creativity

Edge computing is applied to minimize photo processing load time

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Only available on MacOS
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Competition

Customers

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Wedding photographers
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Small photography studios
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How might we save users' time when they are searching for an individual player through their photo library?

Next, we brainstormed over 40 potential solutions to the problem. We then categorized, prioritized, and voted on these solutions based on Narrative's limited engineering resources and their impact on the sports photographer's workflow. Our team chose a searchable function that allows photographers to filter their photos by typing in a player's name as the solution.

Ideation

Solution Brainstorm

User Persona

Our research indicated that sports photographers have an unmet need - the ability to quickly find players in their game photos. With this user segment as our target, we built this user persona to help us understand their typical responsibilities, goals, and challenges.

Wireframe

Sketch

We then proceeded to sketch the concept and vote on the best sketch. Through this process, one of our highest priorities was to match Select's highly intuitive user interface.

Over the course of two weeks, we built and iterated the following wireframe with feedback from sports photographers.

User is displayed thumbnails of all photos containing the searched player. User selects a photo.

User is displayed a full size view of the selected photo

Finally, during a one hour in-person session with Q&A, we presented and delivered our research, analyses, and product recommendations to five UCLA faculty advisors and Narrative's CEO, COO, and Head of Product.

User enters the name of a player in the search bar

My Key Takeaways

Understanding user workflows is crucial in the early stages of product development
Our early research and interviews focused on learning about the workflows of professional photographers, which vary depending on their specialty (e.g. wedding, landscape, product, animals, etc...). By gaining this understanding, we were able to make hypotheses about which customer segments would be most valuable, feasible, and viable, then conduct further research to test our assumptions.

Overcommunication is key
Communication was a crucial element in the success of our project due to the various stakeholders involved and my teammates' diverse backgrounds in finance, science, engineering, and operations within different industries. As the only team member with product development experience, it was important to explain every step of the process to my teammates. Additionally, while Narrative was our client, we were graded by UCLA faculty advisors, whose criteria for evaluating our performance were not always aligned with the client's expectations. To overcome this challenge, I set up and led weekly/bi-weekly meetings and communicated regularly with our stakeholders across multiple platforms such as Teams, text, and Slack.

Market data is inherently noisy
Analyzing market data to determine the optimal customer segment is challenging because the data can be unreliable due to the subjective nature of the photography industry. For example, commercial photography may include the subcategory of fashion, while portrait photography may also feature fashion due to the human subject included in the photos. Our team debated over the nuances of these definitions, but it was essential to focus on the bigger picture. Although the data could not provide us with 100% confidence that sports photography was the ideal segment to target, it did give us enough evidence and reasoning to further explore this segment.