UX Design Tips for Product Managers

We all know a Product Manager who we would consider to be more design-oriented than others. But unlike some skills which may seem more tangible, it can be somewhat difficult to dissect what allows a PM to have this trait.

According to my manager, I have a "strong design sense". Regardless of if he was just trying to make me feel good or not, I appreciate the quote and inspiration for this article. Below are my basic tips for improving your UX design skills.

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But First, What is UX Design?

I want to clarify what I mean by UX design, since it is a phrase that is used loosely. When I talk about UX design, I use it as an umbrella term to represent all the design disciplines underneath it. This article does a good job of summing those up as follows:

Design Research: talking to users to discover their pain points and solutions that solve them. Sets the foundation for all other aspects of UX design.

Example: User interviews

Information Architecture (IA): the underlying structure of data within a product that make it easy for users to build a clear mental model of how the product works.

Example: A state transition diagram or decision tree

Interaction Design (IX): the visual manifestation of the data models laid out by the IA, which allows users to seamlessly accomplish their desired tasks.

Example: A wireframe diagram

Visual Design (VD): the emotion behind the IX. The visual design conveys the brand and makes accomplishing the experience feel rewarding.

Example: A completed Sketch or Figma file

Get Your 'Why' Right

I don't care how elegant your product looks, if you don't solve a real user pain point or need, you will not be able to deliver a good user experience. Most of us have seen the picture below of Amazon's first landing page. A naive Product Manager would say this is a poor user experience. I'd argue that it's still a better UX than many products that I see today.

Contrast that to everyone's favorite Silicon Valley punching bag the 'Juicero'. This company was famous for raising $120 million dollars to build a beautiful $400 juice machine... that nobody actually wanted.

Juicero's first product had a 100x better Visual Design than Amazon's first product, but they messed up their design research so badly that they actually delivered a terrible overall user experience and went bankrupt. Meanwhile, Amazon is a trillion dollar company.

Know Your Design Systems

If you work at a large tech company, then chances are that the founders got the key aspects of the user experience right. As your product or platform begins to scale, the other aspects of the user experience become increasingly important. Specifically, the IA and VD aspects of the UX become very tough to manage, because you can't design in a vacuum.

As a Product Manager, you need to take the time to familiarize yourself with the design systems at your company. These systems exist so that the platform feels unified and users can seamlessly transition between different parts of the app.

Back in the day, LinkedIn was notorious for feeling like an app that was designed by a bunch of separate teams. Today, thanks to our focus on design systems and ecosystem thinking, it feels much more natural when you jump to different parts of our platform.

Think Like a Real User

One area a lot of Product Managers get wrong about UX design, is that they design for themselves and not for the end user. As PMs, we have much more familiarity with the product than just about anyone else. This can lead to pitfalls, such as designing overly complicated interfaces or solving the wrong problem.

There are two ways in which to combat this issue: 1. talk to users often and 2. become a real user yourself.

Step 1 is straightforward. Work with your research team to line up interviews, and if you don't have one, just reach out to users directly. Most people would be ecstatic to have the ear of the product manager for 30 min.

However, in order to become a real user yourself, you need to fully commit and take on a persona that may not be yours naturally.

For example, I didn't have a compelling reason to be a Page admin on LinkedIn. I don't own my own business since I work for large tech company. But then I found a reason when I created a Page for the book I'm publishing.

I joked to my team that I learned more about the Pages admin experience in 1 day than I did in the entire previous year. I was only half-kidding.

Have Strong Design Partners

And for the ultimate UX design cheat code for Product Managers:

Make sure you surround yourself with strong design partners!

Seriously though, nothing else matters as a Product Manager if your UX design partners are not solid. Find talented people and get out of their way.

Shout-out to George Hayes and Kristine Yuen.

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