Product Managers are Not Required to Design, But Learning Design is Part of The Job
Design skills can be valuable for Product Managers (PMs) to allow them to understand, communicate with the design team, and effectively contribute to the design process.
I have been scrutinizing and reflecting for a long time, on what a product manager should do and need. When I start to learn about product management, it seems PMs do a lot of things related to data, research, user experience, and dealing with other teams such as design, engineering, etc. There are so many things that need to be done by them. Then, I keep wondering where I start to understand the scope of work of the Product Manager.
Since a Product Manager emphasized user experience, I start to understand user experience through design, other than immersing myself in a self-project with design and I came to realize that as a PM, it is not necessary to be proficient in design, but it is beneficial to have a basic understanding of it. PMs should have some design intuition, be able to give useful feedback, and understand how design elements such as color and type contribute to the user experience. It is also important for PMs to know some design techniques, such as wireframing, information architecture, and object mapping, and to include designers in their workflow. Understanding design can help PMs effectively communicate the company’s goals to designers and support the development of a high-quality user experience.
Product management and UX design both strive to understand user needs, create valuable experiences, and continuously innovate products. Many product managers have backgrounds in UX design, as learning UX techniques and adopting a UX mindset can greatly benefit their work and influence the adoption of UX within their organization.
Product Managers play a crucial role in establishing the strategy and roadmap for a company’s products and leading cross-functional teams in the design, development, and launch of the products. They work with various departments, including design, engineering, sales, marketing, etc, to understand customer needs and create solutions that improve the customer experience. Product managers also act as the voice of the product, prioritize customer problems, and manage stakeholder expectations. They measure the success of their products and make necessary changes if goals are not being met.
PMs need design intuition to become more aligned with designers.
To have the right mindset to learn about design, we need to try to put ourselves in the designers’ shoes. it is important to seek out and consider feedback from product managers. However, it is more valuable to receive input that identifies specific problems to solve, rather than simply being told what to do. To give useful design feedback and improve our design intuition, try observing design reviews, analyzing favorite apps and websites to understand what makes them effective, and asking ourselves questions about the design work your team is doing. It is also helpful to maintain a beginner’s mind and continue learning about design principles. By doing these things, we can sharpen our design intuition and contribute more effectively to the design process.
The leadership of product teams is a shared responsibility between product managers, engineering leads, and UX designers. It is crucial for product managers and UX designers to communicate and collaborate to research customer needs and envision solutions. Product Managers should have a strong understanding of UX design principles and be able to provide effective feedback to designers, while designers should work with product managers and engineers to consider practical customer needs and technical limitations in order to design the best experience within constraints.
UX and product management are closely aligned, as both involve conducting customer research to identify problems and find solutions. UX has always been an essential aspect of product development, but it has become increasingly emphasized in product design. The development process has shifted from an inside-out perspective, where the product was developed in-house and then unveiled to customers, to an outside-in approach that involves more engagement with clients during the research and design phase. This shift has resulted in a focus on meeting customer needs rather than aiming to “wow” them, which is less exciting but helps to minimize the need for a redo.
These are some of the resources that I used when I start to learn about UI/UX Design:
- Laws of UX
- Principles of User Interface Design
- Principles of Product Design
- 32 User Interface Elements For UI Designers
Collaboration PM & Designer will help to achieve the company’s goals
It is difficult for product managers to perform their role effectively without incorporating UX into their work, both in terms of mindset and techniques. The importance of adopting a customer-centric perspective and getting the entire development team to focus on creating a positive user experience. In addition, the uses UX to understand customer pain points and ensure that he is solving the right problems in a way that will help users. The impacts of UX on key metrics such as user growth, customer satisfaction, and retention, and highlights the importance of working closely with UX designers on a daily basis to develop and evaluate new features.
On the other hand, one way for product managers to support designers is to help them understand the company’s goals and how their designs can contribute to achieving these goals. This is especially useful for junior PMs. Instead of providing specific design feedback, such as suggesting changes to type size or UI elements, PMs can offer feedback based on the company’s priorities, such as identifying opportunities to upsell or highlighting information that is not necessary for meeting business goals. It is important for PMs to be genuinely interested in the designers’ work, but they should not try to do the work for them. The goal is to empower designers to come up with good ideas on their own, and PMs should only provide feedback when it is requested.
PMs need to start learning UX
UX is crucial for those starting a career in product management. It’s essential to at least have a basic understanding and learn from UX. The importance of being able to “speak the language” of UX and collaborating with UX designers at every stage of the product management process. Starting with a customer-centric perspective and thinking about the problem-solving process before designing screens. He believes that it is impossible to effectively develop software applications without considering UX.
There might be some cases where it can be beneficial for product managers to have a basic understanding of design techniques, due to limiting resources whether the product manager should fill the role or the existing designer’s team working on another crucial project, or the product manager has to improve the design by communicating through visual communication will be more effective than a written specification.
These are the tool that is very useful to help PM:
Figma: Figma is a popular cloud-based design tool that is similar to Sketch and allows for easy collaboration through a web-based platform or app. It is user-friendly and can be quickly adopted by those new to design. Figma become popular not only for designers but also PM.
Whimsical: Whimsical is a unified suite of collaboration tools. With Whimsical, you can create mind maps, flowcharts, wireframes, projects, docs, and more. Move ideas forward faster with visual communication.
Draw.io: Draw.io is a good choice for creating flowcharts, user flows, and information architecture, and it has the added benefit of allowing multiple users to work on the same document and see changes in real time using Google Drive. It also offers a free offline version.
If we and our designer both have expertise in a particular technique, consider collaborating on it to explore more options and utilize both of your skill sets. This will allow us to utilize both of our brainpower to improve the work better.
Integrating Designers into Product Managers workflow
As a product manager, it’s important to prioritize facilitation and collaboration to bring all of the team together. This means actively involving our team in problem-solving and decision-making processes, even if it feels slower in the short term. By including more minds and diverse perspectives, we will generate better ideas and more feasible solutions. Additionally, our team will be more likely to trust and respect us if we show interest in their work and invite them into our process. Remember successful PMs excel at making connections between different values and areas of expertise, rather than just being technically proficient. One good source I found from The Facilitator’s Handbook: 24 Design Sprint Tips.
As a Product Manager, it is important to continually learn and improve our understanding of design in order to effectively contribute to the company’s goals. To do so, focus on mastering the fundamentals and involving our team in our process. Remember that learning and growth are ongoing endeavors in this field.
