Designers should Empower Product Managers [UX Case Study]
This article is part of a series on UX Case Studies based on my experiences.
I came to product management from UX Design. Having been on both sides of the fence puts me in a place to offer a unique perspective.
The Challenge of Collaboration between Designers & PMs
Successful products are not easy to bring to the world. Typically, the Product Manager has the overarching responsibility for the complete product and lifecycle, including all stakeholders. The designers (Product Designers, UX Designer, UI Designer, Industrial Designers) have a more scoped realm of responsibility — to ideate and specify a solution that works for the user.
Depending on the industry, product and company size, the lines can get blurred. I’ve seen companies whose Product Managers define the user experience and do their own user research. I’ve seen companies whose Designers are involved with product market positioning and business decisions.
Whatever the case, these functions have to work together. Designers and Product Managers have different orientation and focus. For example, say a product is effective, efficient, and satisfying to users. But it’s way over budget, is bleeding money, not generating revenue and not on track to. The designer may be quite satisfied with her work — everyone loves the product, it’s intuitive and delightful, has rave reviews. The product manager will not at all be happy with the product’s success, since it missed all of its business objectives, and may have to be discontinued. This is not to say designers don’t or shouldn’t care about business objectives or dev. costs — they should! It’s not to say that Product Managers don’t or shouldn’t care about design and usability objectives — they must! My point here is the focus, mindset and priorities of each role may differ. The distances between the roles can grow into rifts, which can lead to tensions and frustrations. Yet, some tension may be productive, if it’s part of healthy collaboration.
So what can designers do to better work with Product Managers?
Empower the Product Managers with Design!
- Encourage PMs to make wireframes & mockups. Less mature designers may feel defensive about their roles, and fear: ‘if the PM is doing design work, then what is my job at this company?’ More veteran designers know that there is a lot of room at the table. Wireframes and mockups are effectively ways to communicate ideas, and can be used as starting points for ideation. If you can get a PM to do some visual work — in whatever medium she wants, even pencil on paper, whiteboard, powerpoint, design tool, whatever — then you will only benefit as a designer. You will be able to better understand the vision of the PM. You can improve her design, and discuss the details, like why this should component should actually be a dropdown and not a radio button. And if the PM has a knockout design that doesn’t require any additional work for the designers — then awesome! The designer has one less task. Product managers are sometimes reluctant to do any visual design work. ‘I’m not good at drawing’, I’ve heard, or ‘it will take me much longer’. Excuses, excuses. They’ll thank you once they’ve left their comfort zone. Make sure to be supportive when they show you their work, because they are trusting you, making themselves vulnerable to you. Earn that trust and respect their gesture.
- Designers should teach PMs how to use design tools. In my role as designer I’ve set some learning sessions to show PM colleagues how to use a design tool. Some were very excited. Most didn’t follow through and properly use it. But the ones who do — it makes collaboration much easier. The PMs themselves can make changes, or at least show me more easily what they want changed.
- Share design articles and resources. Send links to interesting design reads, or resources that might be helpful. Like once we were working on Confirmation Dialogs, so I shared some articles with relevant PM so we could have a more informed discussion. To do this, a designer will have to admit that she is human, and does not know everything. She is still the expert in design. This can be hard for designers, since hierarchically the PM traditionally makes the final product decisions. So designers can mistakenly think that if they admit to not knowing something, they will lose all authority in the eyes of the PM.
- Invite Product Managers to research and discovery activities. Product Managers tend to like such activities, and find them very informative. This kind of thing bridges the gap between design and product thinking, and brings product managers into the world of design. It only helps for collaboration and understanding.
- Recommend courses. There are a ton of free online courses where Product Managers can learn more about design. Encourage them, as it will only make your collaboration more productive and take it up a level.
- Explain the rationale for design decisions. Designers should bring product managers into their world of design decisions. Until they learn more about it, product managers do not appreciate all the thought that goes into a design decision. If you have a juicy use case, find a good opportunity to tell them about it. They will appreciate design work more.
- Lend them a book. I’ve lent design books to PMs. They are surprisingly interested, and then we can discuss the book after. Leads to fruitful collaboration.
- Ask their opinion about a design. This is misleading simple. Sometimes Product Managers want to be involved in design processes! Invite them to be involved. What is more important than their opinion, is why they have that opinion. This is where the work happens, and where the magic happens. Then you reveal the massive mountain beneath the iceberg breaching the water’s surface — you get into design principles, considerations, and all the complex beauty that goes into good design.
Recap
It can feel threatening for designers to empower product managers. But it will lead to more respect not less, and better collaboration. I have found that the more Product Managers (and other roles in the organization for that matter!) are thinking about design, the stronger the role of design in the organization.
Thank you for reading!
About this Series
This article is part of a series on UX Case Studies based on my experiences.
About The Author
I’m a UX Designer turned Product Manager, with experience in startups, freelance, and international B2B companies. Writing helps me reflect & continuously learn. Connect with me on Twitter.