Product manager and designer are Captain America and Iron Man in their respective domains; and there are bound to be clashes.
How do product managers and designers work together?
In a software product, product managers study the pain points of the target users. They then define what the product comprises, and how it will solve the users’ problems.
This can be expressed as user stories and/or functional requirements, organised in lists and sketches.
Most of the product’s value is delivered to the users via the interface, especially when it comes to consumer products.
If you are making purchases on an e-commerce app, the platform’s variety of good and services, ease of search and comparison, smooth checkout, and secure payment are experienced by you via your interaction with the app.
This interaction, as well as the look and feel of the product, is created by designers.
It is not a creative process in isolation. In fact, the design needs to transform the value proposition and product features into something tangible that users can see, touch, and feel.
And as a result, product managers and designers need to work hand in hand.
Where do clashes come from?
The main source of disagreement is the ambiguity in what makes a good product design. In theory, a good design is one that is intuitive to users, allowing them to solve their pain points like how the product is intended for.
In practice, this definition has much room for judgement calls.
“This looks confusing. I don’t know where to focus my attention on.”
“If we add this call to action here, it is not intuitive to me.”
“Confusing” and “not intuitive” are subjective comments, which come from the commenters imagining themselves as the users. This can turn into a battle of opinions, which will wound someone’s pride.
Can clashes be avoided?
Product managers and designers do not always have to maintain perfect harmony.
It is the so-called civil war that needs to be avoided.
Constructive discussions ensure the team covers all bases in their thinking, and catalyse even more creative ideas.
The best way to avoid a battle of opinions is to elaborate on your evaluation with the following guidelines.
Desired user behaviours
Express your opinion on the basis of whether the designed interaction helps the users achieve the desired behaviours.
If the product intends for the users to book a taxi ride, does the interaction designed eventually leads to users successfully/ unsuccessfully booking a ride?
Are there any impediments along the way that might make the users fail to accomplish this action?
Design principles
Reply on design principles to add rigour to your analysis. When designers and product managers explain their thinking process using design principles, the team share a common language.
An example of a design principle is, at every step of the interaction with the product, do users know where they are, and what actions they can do next?
If users are supposed to key in their destination for a taxi ride, a prominent text box will suggest to users that they can type the address in.
Are there design conventions that users have been trained to expect? For instance, buttons are meant to be clicked; arrows are meant to navigate.
For an in-depth discussion on design principles, read The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman.
Competitors’ references
If the successful competitors in your market design their products in a certain way, their design choices can be good benchmarks since the users have been familiar with them.
One important note is if you can, study the product design of your direct competitors, who are also designing for the same target users.
Let’s say you want to launch an e-commerce app in Indonesia. Take a closer look at Shopee Indonesia, Lazada Indonesia, and Tokopedia.
You can reference Taobao from China and Amazon in the US, but be mindful that their target users’ behaviours and preferences are different from yours.
Input from users
User interviews, survey results, and app store’s comments are reliable sources of information to substantiate your view.
Let’s put the theory into practice
Suppose your team is building a messaging app that allows users to instantly message one another, and you are evaluating the following draft.
This draft might have been provided by a product manager who is trying to illustrate his/her vision of the user flow. It might also have been provided by a designer as a design idea.
We all know that there is something not quite right about this design.
Instead of a list of conversations that we typically see in a messaging app, conversations are displayed in tabs.
From one glance, it is hard to see which messages are from the sender, and which messages are from the receiver.
But pause here for a minute, and think about how you can give feedback using the guidelines above before reading the samples below.
Referencing desired user behaviour:
If the user has more than 20 conversations , it will be hard for him/her to have a consolidated view of all the conversations. The user will also have to scroll for a long time to get to the last conversation.
Referencing design principles:
It takes users lots of conscious effort to identify which messages were sent by them and which were not. There is no visual indication that differentiates the two sides of the conversation.
Referencing competitors’ reference:
Messaging apps have been around for a long time, and most users have been trained to expect a list of all conversations with the most recent one being at the top. Would breaking away from the convention forces users to learn and adopt a new behaviour just for our app?
There is a bottom line
There needs to be a tie breaker. Decide in advance on who has the final say if the designers and the product managers cannot come to an agreement.
The rule of thumb is whoever is more accountable to the product’s profit and loss and/or customer experience satisfaction score takes the final call.
The bottom line is product managers have to collaborate with many different roles including designers.
It is not about whose opinion matters more.
It is about asking the right questions and finding the answers to create a great product together as a team, like how the Avengers assemble to save the world.
