Mat Time Feature Analysis — Product Requirements Deep Dive
How I think about features — from user needs through acceptance testing.
This project pulls back the curtain on how I approach feature design. It's a detailed requirements document for one feature within the BJJ Training Journal — the Mat Time training session tracker — and it demonstrates the analytical rigor behind what might otherwise look like a simple feature.
The document walks through the full product thinking process: identifying target users and their characteristics, mapping needs to a solution, analyzing indirect competition, defining a freemium monetization boundary, writing user stories with formal acceptance criteria and acceptance tests, building a risk management plan, creating wireframes from low-fidelity sketches through final UI, and producing video prototypes.
What makes this relevant to AI engineering isn't the domain — it's the methodology. Every AI product I evaluate or build goes through the same discipline: Who is the user? What do they actually need? Where does the technology create value versus where does it create friction? How do you test that the thing works the way you intended?
Most AI engineers don't produce requirements documentation like this. Most don't think in terms of user stories, acceptance criteria, or risk mitigation at the feature level. This approach is grounded in formal product management training — I completed the University of Alberta's Software Product Management Specialization, covering requirements engineering, agile planning, and software metrics. That discipline is what separates AI tools that actually get used from AI tools that get demoed once and abandoned.