2024 / Product Research, Management & Enhancement Recommendations
Role:
Co-Product Manager / Scrum Master
2024 (2 months)
- Conducted in-depth product research
- Sprint Planning & Agile Practices
- Feature Scoping & Prioritization
- Requirements Gathering & Documentation (PRDs, Specs)
- User Story & Acceptance Criteria Writing
- Created and designed presentation on Canva.com
- Worked with another graduate student
Tools:
Canva / Google Docs / The Internet
About the Project
Sony Interactive Entertainment’s PlayStation platform is one of the most popular gaming ecosystems globally, offering thousands of titles—but falling short when it comes to leveraging gameplay data for personalized recommendations. After completing a game, players currently see limited or irrelevant suggestions, which disrupts the user journey and affects both engagement and revenue potential.
Our challenge: How might we improve the game discovery experience for PlayStation users after completing a game?
To address this, our team proposed a simple but impactful feature—an improved post-game recommendation interface that activates during a natural pause in gameplay (the credits screen). The MVP aimed to recommend titles based on common criteria such as genre, price range, gameplay style, and user reviews. This concept laid the groundwork for a smarter, more engaging game discovery system that could evolve into something more data-driven over time.
This is an academic project and simulation for the Master of Digital Experience Innovation (MDEI) program at the University of Waterloo Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business, owned and designed by a pair of graduate students.
Behind-the-scenes
This was a product management project where we worked as a product team, paired with a group of developers from the same program who were responsible for building our feature. I served as the Scrum Master, and our work spanned ideation, scope definition, and sprint execution.
We ran two sprints over four weeks, defining our backlog, selecting key deliverables for MVP, and holding agile ceremonies like sprint planning, daily check-ins, and sprint reviews. Our team scoped and wrote detailed user stories, acceptance criteria, and a shared Definition of Done, including metrics for click-through rate and behavior tracking.
One unique part of this project was how we framed both business and player personas: “Sony” as the internal stakeholder (focused on conversion) and “Gaby the Gamer” as the end-user (focused on play and discovery).
This helped us balance functionality with engagement. We also facilitated a final stakeholder presentation to “pitch” our MVP and walk through both the front-end experience and backend logic in an accessible way.
Results
Our team successfully delivered a functional MVP of a post-game recommendation feature for PlayStation. Over two sprints, we collaborated with a paired development team, acting as product managers and Scrum leaders. We defined the problem, created a product backlog, and scoped user stories aligned with business value.
- Designed and scoped a post-game recommendation UI modeled after Netflix-style suggestions, triggered during end-of-game credits.
- Collaborated closely with devs to build a working algorithm for game recommendations based on genre, price, and gameplay history.
- Established success metrics like an 8% click-through target, and defined trackers for user interaction (saves, add-to-cart, exit rates).
- Facilitated agile ceremonies including sprint planning, daily scrums, and stakeholder reviews.
- Ultimately, we pitched our feature to the course instructor and stakeholders, demonstrating both the UI prototype and system logic as a functioning MVP.
Note: While this was an academic simulation, the project mirrored real-world cross-functional product delivery—including documentation, stakeholder alignment, tradeoff decisions, and retrospectives. We left with working code, key learnings around estimation and scope, and a solid foundation for further iteration.
Gallery
KSY, MDEI | YOUR FULL-STACK PRODUCT SPECIALIST 