Atlassian - PM Intern Case Study FY’24

Bulusu Saisameer Krishna | PCOM ID: 145 | IIM Lucknow

Introduction:
Keep Notes (Google Keep) android application is one of the applications that I have used the most for
taking quick notes. One standout feature in this is its simple and intuitive UI. It’s clean and minimalist design
makes it incredibly easy for users to create and maintain notes, lists, and reminders in an organized way.

Area of Improvement:
User journey of a student using the text formatting feature:

Open the app & Create a Start typing the Select the text Select the color of
login. new note or text using the formatting the font, font style
to-do-list. keyboard. button “A” and font size.

One area for improvement in the application could be expanding its text formatting options in terms of
text size, font as well as the color of the text. The recent updates in the application included using different
levels of text sizes (ex: H1, H2) and using bold or italics or underlined format. However, supporting the
text color, different fonts (Ex: Garamond, Arial, Times new Roman etc.) could make it a more versatile
note taking and organization tool.
This improvement would cater to a wider range of users, from those who want a basic note-taking
application to those who require more advanced formatting for complex notes and documents. The target
customers for these improvements includes:
1. Students: Students often need to take quick and structured notes and organize research findings.
Enhanced text formatting would help them in creating and managing academic content and visualizing
it better.
2. Professionals: Professionals who rely on note taking for their work, such as project managers and
researchers, would benefit from advanced text formatting options for creating more detailed and
organized to-do-lists, and documents.
To gather and evaluate feedback on this feature improvement, the following steps can be implemented:
1. Beta Testing and A/B testing
2. Reviews and comments in Google Play Store can be monitored for feedback and suggestions on the
proposed feature. Also, feedback can be gathered from the people at key technology events conducted
by Google by launching the beta version at the same event.

Metrics:
Feature Adoption Rate could be used as a North Star metric for the proposed feature. This metric
measures how actively users are using the advanced text formatting features within the application.
Feature Adoption Rate = % of users who accessed and utilized the features at least once.
This metric is crucial because it directly indicates that users find the text formatting options valuable,
enhancing their experience with the app.
Mockups:

Roadmap:
Creating a roadmap for the next 6 months Keep Notes would involve the following phased approach.
1. Define Objectives and Priorities: It involves the product manager who decides what is required to
be achieved through the improvement of the feature in the application.
2. User Research and Needs Assessment: It involves the marketing team and product manager. They
gather information on the pain points encountered by the users and how to address them.
3. Feature Prioritization and Planning: This step involves the product manager, UX designers, and
developers. This answers which text formatting options are most requested by users and what is the
development timeline for each feature.
4. Roadmap Planning: This step involves the product manager, the development & testing team. This
answers what are the incremental releases and major milestones spanned across the 6-month period.
5. Agile Backlog creation and Prioritization: This step involves the product manager, the development
team, and the testing team. This step answers what are the specific tasks required for the end-to-
end development of the feature and what is the order of priority of the development.

Criteria for Prioritizing Backlog:

The criterion for prioritizing the backlog involves the following parameters – potential reach to the user,
Impact provided to the user and the confidence of impact, business value created, technical feasibility in
implementation, and effort required in implementation.

Business Impact:
Enhanced formatting features can increase user engagement by making Keep Notes a more versatile and
valuable tool for users, which can lead to increased adoption, expanding Google Keep's user base. While
Google Keep itself may not display ads, the data collected from user interactions with the app can be used
to refine and improve the effectiveness of Google's advertising services, leading to increased ad revenue.