DEV Community: Reema Singh

I Built the Product After Watching Someone Do It the Hard Way

Reema Singh — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 05:32:21 +0000

I was sitting beside a teammate when I noticed they were doing something in four steps that should have taken one. I asked why. They said, “That's just how we've always done it.” That sentence is dangerous. I watched the process from beginning to end and realized half of the work existed because two systems didn't talk to each other properly. I couldn't fix the systems immediately, so I built a small workaround in Greta. It wasn't elegant. It just gave the team one place to do the task instead of jumping between tools. The first person to use it finished in less than half the time. They looked at the screen and said, “Wait, that's it?” Exactly. The task had never been difficult. We'd just built a process around the difficulty. Sometimes building a small tool is less about creating something new and more about exposing how unnecessary the old process was.

I Built the First Version Before Anyone Could Tell Me It Was a Bad Idea

Reema Singh — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 05:31:51 +0000

I had learned to hate the sentence, “That won't work.” Not because people were always wrong, but because sometimes they were making a decision about an idea they hadn't actually seen. So this time I didn't ask anyone. I took the concept into Greta and built a rough version over the weekend. Monday morning, I showed it to the team. One person immediately said it was a terrible idea. Another person said it was interesting. A third person started using it without saying anything. That was much more useful than the opinions we'd have had before the prototype existed. We ended up killing most of the original concept, but keeping one part that people actually understood. I wasn't trying to prove everyone wrong. I just wanted to replace “I think” with “look.” Sometimes that's all a prototype needs to do.

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I Built a Product From the Way Someone Actually Worked

Reema Singh — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 05:30:56 +0000

We had designed a workflow based on how we thought customers worked. Then I watched one customer use it. They ignored half the features and created their own little routine around the rest. It was completely different from our carefully designed flow. So I rebuilt the core experience in Greta around what they actually did. It looked almost too simple. There were fewer options, fewer screens, and almost no configuration. We showed it to another customer and they understood it immediately. That was uncomfortable because it meant our original design had been solving a problem we had invented ourselves. We had optimized the workflow we imagined instead of the workflow people actually used. Watching someone work is sometimes more valuable than asking them what they want. People explain what they think they should do. Their mouse usually tells you what they really do.

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I Built a Product Because I Was Tired of Saying “I'll Do It Later”

Reema Singh — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 05:28:00 +0000

The task wasn't difficult. That's why I kept postponing it. Every few days I'd tell myself I'd build a proper solution later. Then I'd manually do the same thing again. One evening, I finally got annoyed enough to stop postponing it. I opened Greta and built a tiny version just for myself. It didn't have an account system or settings or anything that made it look like a “real” product. It just handled the annoying task. I used it for a week. Then I added one improvement. Then another. Eventually, someone saw me using it and asked what it was. I sent them the link. That's how the thing started spreading. There was no launch day. No announcement. No grand plan. It was just a personal shortcut that slowly became useful to other people. Sometimes you don't need a product strategy to start. You need to get annoyed enough to stop doing something manually.

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I Built a Customer Portal Before the Customer Asked for One

Reema Singh — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 05:27:17 +0000

The customer was still sending us information through email. Every update meant another thread, another attachment, another person copying something into our internal system. During a call, I mentioned that we could probably make the process easier. They said, “Honestly, email is fine.” I wasn't convinced. So I built a small portal prototype in Greta anyway. It wasn't meant to replace anything yet. I just wanted to see what the process could look like. When I showed it to them, they were quiet for a second. Then they asked, “Could our customers use this too?” That wasn't the question I'd expected. We had started by trying to remove one annoying email exchange and ended up talking about an entirely different customer experience. The portal wasn't the product. It was just a way of making the conversation more specific.

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I Built the Prototype While Waiting for Someone to Join the Meeting

Reema Singh — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 09:48:06 +0000

I had fifteen minutes to kill.

The meeting hadn't started yet, and I was staring at an idea I'd been thinking about for weeks.

Normally, I'd have opened another tab and forgotten about it.

Instead, I opened Greta.

I started describing the idea and built the basic flow.

It wasn't pretty.

I didn't care.

I just wanted to see it.

By the time the meeting started, I had something I could click through.

I almost didn't show anyone.

Then someone asked what I'd been working on.

So I shared my screen.

The conversation immediately became more useful.

Someone pointed out a step that made no sense.

Someone else suggested removing another one.

We changed the prototype while talking.

Twenty minutes later, the original idea looked completely different.

And honestly, much better.

That's when I stopped thinking of prototypes as something you make after you've figured everything out.

Sometimes the prototype is how you figure it out.

The meeting was supposed to start with us talking about the idea.

Instead, we ended up improving something that already existed.

I'll take that trade any day.

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My Client Said “No” to the Product I Thought They Wanted

Reema Singh — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 09:46:20 +0000

I thought I had nailed the brief.

The client had explained what they wanted, I understood it, and I built a prototype in Greta.

Then I showed it to them.

They stared at it for a few seconds.

“No.”

Not “Can we change this?”

Not “Maybe.”

Just no.

It was awkward.

So I asked what was wrong.

The answer surprised me.

They didn't actually want the thing I'd built.

They wanted the result that came after it.

I'd focused on the process because that's how they had described it.

They cared about the outcome.

So I rebuilt the experience around that.

The second version was smaller.

There were fewer screens and fewer steps.

The client immediately understood it.

That conversation probably saved me weeks.

If I'd gone straight into a full build, I might have spent a month creating exactly what they didn't want.

Building the prototype in Greta gave us permission to be wrong early.

And being wrong early is surprisingly useful.

It's much cheaper than being right about the wrong thing.

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I Built Something My Manager Said Would Take Three Months

Reema Singh — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 09:44:16 +0000

I wasn't trying to prove anyone wrong.

Honestly.

I just wanted to see whether it was actually as complicated as everyone thought.

The project had been sitting in the backlog for months.

The estimate was roughly three months.

So I opened Greta and started with the basic workflow.

The first version wasn't production-ready.

Obviously.

But it worked well enough to demonstrate what the finished experience could look like.

When I showed it to my manager, the conversation changed immediately.

We discovered that half the requested functionality wasn't actually necessary.

Some of the “complex” parts were just assumptions we'd been carrying around.

We still needed proper engineering work for the real product.

But the prototype changed the scope completely.

It wasn't a three-month project anymore.

It was a much smaller problem.

That was the real win.

Greta didn't magically turn a complicated production system into a button.

It helped us figure out what actually needed to be built.

Sometimes the fastest way to reduce a project is to build enough of it to see what you don't need.

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I Built an App Because My Spreadsheet Finally Betrayed Me

Reema Singh — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 09:42:41 +0000

The spreadsheet had been working for years.

I trusted it.

Then one morning, something broke.

Nobody knew why.

One formula was wrong, one value was missing, and suddenly three people were trying to figure out which version was correct.

That was my breaking point.

I decided to stop patching the spreadsheet.

I took the workflow and moved the useful parts into a simple prototype in Greta.

The first version wasn't some fancy SaaS.

It was basically the spreadsheet turned into an actual workflow.

People could enter information, see what was pending, and update the status without touching formulas.

The weirdest part was how much simpler everything felt.

The spreadsheet had been flexible.

It had also been asking humans to remember too much.

The app could handle those rules for us.

I still use spreadsheets.

I'm not declaring war on Excel.

But I've started asking a different question when a spreadsheet becomes too complicated:

“Are we actually managing data, or are we building software badly inside a spreadsheet?”

Sometimes the answer is uncomfortable

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I Built a Fake Product Before I Built the Real One

Reema Singh — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 09:38:54 +0000

I didn't have the backend.

I didn't have the database.

I didn't even know exactly how the final architecture would work.

But I wanted to test the experience.

So I built a prototype in Greta that looked and behaved like the product was real.

I wanted to see whether people understood it.

The first few tests were useful immediately.

People knew what to click.

They understood the main idea.

But almost everyone got confused at the same step.

That was exactly what I needed to discover.

I wasn't testing whether the backend worked.

I was testing whether the product made sense.

Once I understood the experience, I had a much clearer idea of what the real system would need to support.

That saved me from building technical infrastructure around a confusing user flow.

Sometimes you don't need to build the engine to find out whether people want to drive the car.

You just need something convincing enough to let them sit in it.

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I Turned a 10-Minute Complaint Into a Working Prototype

Reema Singh — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 09:36:44 +0000

Someone spent ten minutes complaining to me about a process.

I listened.

Then I asked one question:

“What would you want instead?”

They described a simple workflow.

I thought about it for a while.

Then I opened Greta.

I built a rough version of what they'd described.

Not because I knew it was a business.

I just wanted to see whether the solution made sense.

The next day, I showed it to them.

Their reaction was completely different from the conversation we'd had.

Instead of complaining about the old process, they started pointing at the prototype.

“Can this happen automatically?”

“Can this person see this?”

“What if we do this first?”

Suddenly, we were designing something.

The complaint had become a product conversation.

That's probably one of my favorite things about building this way.

You don't have to wait until an idea is polished enough to deserve attention.

Sometimes you can just make the idea visible.

Once people can see it, they usually have much better things to say.

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I Built Something in Greta That I Was Almost Afraid to Show Anyone

Reema Singh — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 01:42:30 +0000

The idea was unusual enough that I kept finding reasons not to build it. What if nobody understood it? What if it looked ridiculous? What if I spent time on something that went nowhere? Eventually, I decided that the uncertainty was becoming more expensive than the experiment. I used Greta to build a simple version, focusing on the one interaction that made the idea different. I didn't create a huge roadmap or spend weeks polishing every screen. I just wanted something concrete enough to show another person. The first reaction wasn't what I expected. They didn't laugh at the idea or dismiss it. They asked how one part worked and suggested a completely different use case. That conversation opened a direction I hadn't considered. It didn't guarantee the product would succeed, but it made the next step clearer. I kept refining the prototype and asking better questions. The biggest obstacle hadn't been technical difficulty. It had been my fear of discovering that the idea wasn't as good as it sounded in my head. Greta made the first experiment small enough to attempt. And once I had something to show, uncertainty became a problem I could work with instead of a reason to do nothing.

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