Chief Product Officer / India
A useful feature still needed a workable journey
- Product colleagues
- 26
- Research, product definition and development through three leads
- Retail shops
- 17
- A Panaji-headquartered travel-goods enterprise
- Annual product-function expense
- ₹6.2 crore
- ₹2.3 crore development programme stated separately
Decisions & consequences
01Reopening the backpack brief after I overvalued empty weight
In 2019 I supported a backpack prototype whose empty weight had fallen from 900 grams to 700 grams. The comparison was easy to explain, and I allowed it to dominate the product brief before we had adequately examined the loaded experience. The commercial team wanted to preserve the lighter proposition for the planned range review. I had given that direction senior support, so revisiting it would require more than asking the designers for a small refinement.
Nima Delqavri led an exploratory exercise with thirty adult participants using the same agreed contents in both versions. Sixteen preferred the heavier version and fourteen the lighter one. Their accounts concerned the strap arrangement and the way the load sat as well as the object’s empty weight. These were preferences in the observed task, not a representative estimate, a medical finding or a certification of either product. The result nevertheless challenged the assumption I had used to make lower weight the leading benefit.
I approved ₹46 lakh over ten weeks to revisit three combinations of material and carrying arrangement. Quality and specialist reviewers retained responsibility for the relevant performance and safety work. The product team did not use preference counts to bypass those reviews. We retained the lower-weight route as one option while examining whether the overall proposition could describe the trade-off more honestly. The additional work displaced other planned development and delayed a final range commitment.
The decision did not prove that heavier bags are better, nor did it establish a sales uplift from the redesign. It corrected the priority I had imposed before the use evidence was ready. I told the commercial team why the original comparison had been too narrow and kept the study’s limits in the account. The lasting change was to ask what experience a specification is meant to improve before treating the specification itself as evidence that the improvement has occurred. A small, understandable number remains useful; it should not carry a claim larger than the task it actually measures.
Moving the rain cover out of the packing sequence
A 2023 travel-bag prototype stored its rain cover beneath the main contents. In the studio, the cover could be folded neatly into that position before the rest of the bag was packed. The arrangement preserved a clean exterior and used an otherwise awkward internal space. It also assumed that access during a journey would resemble the orderly packing sequence demonstrated at the table.
In an observed exercise with twenty-four adult participants, eighteen unpacked some main contents to reach the cover and six reached it without doing so. We did not stage hazardous weather or use the exercise to certify weather resistance. The task concerned access. Nima’s account showed how the location of a useful item could make it inconvenient at the moment it was needed. Adding a sentence to the instructions would explain the sequence but would not remove the work the layout required.
The design team proposed an exterior access pocket. Sourcing and manufacturing colleagues identified consequences for construction and cost, while quality colleagues retained performance review. I approved ₹62 lakh over fourteen weeks to compare two access arrangements and revise the assembly proposal. The programme retained unresolved quality work as a condition before release; a successful access demonstration was not permission to claim every other requirement had been met. We also examined what the revised pocket displaced so the improvement was not described as free capacity.
The commercial sponsor accepted a later decision rather than preserve the original launch presentation. I did not attach an invented reduction in returns or claim that every traveller would prefer the same layout. The result was a product brief that treated reaching the cover as part of the journey, with a funded design route and explicit remaining reviews. It changed the question from whether an item fitted inside the bag to whether the person could obtain it when needed. That distinction now shapes how I review features whose usefulness depends on a sequence the demonstration can make look easier than ordinary use.
Narrowing a buckle promise to the combinations service could support
In 2025 we reviewed a proposal to describe a travel-bag range as having readily replaceable buckles. The original parts could be detached, which made the claim plausible at first glance. But the service account covered several product generations and replacement components with similar appearances. A detachable part did not establish that the available replacement matched the customer’s actual product or that the service route could identify it reliably.
The review listed forty-eight proposed product-and-part combinations. Twenty-nine had a verified match under the defined review, eleven needed further examination and eight had no supported replacement in the proposed offer. Those were combinations, not forty-eight customer repairs. Quality and service colleagues retained the relevant acceptance decisions. We did not instruct customers to try a visually similar component or present the review as a universal repair certification.
I approved ₹57 lakh over twelve weeks to document supported matches, improve product-generation identification and define the customer handover with service and sourcing. We narrowed the published offer to the twenty-nine supported combinations while keeping the other nineteen outside it. Stock availability remained a separate operating question: a verified match did not promise immediate supply. The programme also retained a review of continuing component support so the range team could see the obligation created when it introduced another variation.
The commercial team lost a simpler, broader claim and had to explain a more bounded service proposition. I accepted that cost because an attractive modular description could otherwise create work the customer and service staff would discover later. We did not report avoided waste or a financial saving that the evidence did not measure. The change connected a design feature with the compatibility, identification and supply arrangements required to make it useful after purchase. It also made clear that product leadership remains accountable for the promises implied by a feature even when another team performs the eventual repair.