P-Camp Silicon Valley | Unconference for Product Managers | March 2008
architects and user researchers - also feel they “own”
Product Managers & User the user experience. They plan, design, architect,
evaluate, and sometimes implement, the “look and
Experience Professionals: feel” of products and web-sites, and make decisions
Responsibilities, Overlaps, about feature choices and overall product direction.
Increasingly, they want to set strategy - and
Issues – Who Owns What? companies are supporting this direction by moving the
UX function up the management chain – in some
Overview cases to C-level positions. Below, we discussed in
more detail UX professionals and what they do.
In one of the sessions at P-Camp, an unconference for
Product Managers, we explored the User Experience
What is the “User Experience”?
(UX), and the relationships between Product
Management (PM) and UX professionals. Beyond UI. Companies often use the term “user
experience” (UX) to mean “user interface” (UI) – the
PM. According to our group of session attendees -
user-accessible portion of a product. But, from the
PMs are often held responsible for success or failure
customer point of view, all contacts they have with a
of products. PMs gather critical information, set
company’s product and services, including box design,
strategy, assign tasks and do everything possible to
product features, performance and employee contacts
ensure successful products and feel that they “own” all
(such as customer support) – are part of their
aspects of the user experience. After all, they feel the
experience. We brainstormed 8 possible elements of
brunt of failures and are promoted based on
the user experience, beyond the UI/webpage, and
successes. This area is vital.
realized there are likely more. See Figure 1.
UX. User Experience professionals – such as
interaction designers, visual designers, information
Figure 1. TheUser Experience - from the Customer Viewpoint - Goes Beyond the UI / Webpage.
UX Interactions over Time. To illustrate the breadth of the possible interactions a typical customer might
of the user experience, and to help us see products have with a single product over time. See Figure 2.
from a customer viewpoint, we brainstormed some (This chart is not exhaustive).
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P-Camp Silicon Valley | Unconference for Product Managers | March 2008
Figure 2. Some of the Many Possible Customer Interactions with One Product Over Time. A Contrast Between What
Customers Perceive as the UX and What Companies Often Consider as the UX.
Some of these elements we brainstormed are within easily seen to contribute to the UI (such as visual
a company’s control (such as the Box design, UI designer), others are very important for the overall
UX, but whose contribution might not be so obvious
features and invoices), while others are not (such as
“buzz” on the internet in places like Facebook or at first (such as user researcher or information
formal reviews). We found many important architect).
interactions beyond the UI (see the column related
If this is not confusing enough, the field is new
to Use).
enough that names, job titles and job descriptions
From the customer perspective, each of these vary widely. And they seem to change about every
interactions contributes to their understanding, use, two years. In a separate session at the P-Camp, we
enjoyment, and likelihood to continue using a generated a list of 8 UX professions (6 core and 2
product (and buying upgrades or related products) related), along with likely training and outputs. (For
and, combined, create a single experience – the more details on the session in which this was
user experience. discussed, see the notes for Extreme Usability by
Nancy Frishberg, Meghan Ede, Daniela Busse at
https://barcamp.pbwiki.com/Extreme+Usability
What is a User Experience Professional?
+at+P-Camp08). See Table 1, below.
UX professional is often used to mean only UI
designer. A UI designer is a person who creates the There are a number of good definitions of UX skills
user interface (UI), the user accessible and visible on the internet. For one example, see a definition
portions of a product, such as screens / webpages. provided by Jared Spool (See: http://www.uie.com/
While this seems straightforward enough, even articles/assessing_ux_teams/). Other people will
simple UIs usually require several different skill sets, have different definitions, but generally most UX
such as visual design, technical writing and professionals will list at least three core areas.
interaction design, so UI designer can actually mean
For the over-worked PM, especially in smaller firms
quite different things.
or start-ups, it would seem unreasonable to dedicate
As we’ve seen, user experience goes beyond the UI. 6-8 precious positions to fill all of these areas. For
Thus, UX professionals cover a broad range of this reason, most people out-source some aspect of
different professions, each with a different skill set, the UX design. Many times, a smaller firm attempts
training, and very different outputs. While some are to get an “all-in-one” professional, but keep in mind
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P-Camp Silicon Valley | Unconference for Product Managers | March 2008
that most UX professionals are really only masters in often these skills turn up in-house, such as a
ONE of these areas, sometimes two, very rarely programmer who’d rather be doing prototyping or a
three. As a bonus, many UX professionals may also sales engineer who has a degree in Comparative
be quite good in some non-UX fields as well, such Literature and has already written several user
as project management, so consider the whole guides).
package.
For the PM who is attempting to do all of this without
Another approach is to hire someone who help, the best thing to keep in mind is that the UX
understands what is needed (but doesn’t claim to do goes beyond the UI and to keep an eye out for
it all) who can then do some of the UX work and possible sources of help or expertise, wherever they
oversee a combination of out-sourcing and finding turn up .
hidden talent in existing staff (it is surprising how
Table 1. An Overview of UX Professions - with Likely Backgrounds and Likely Outputs.
Netflix, Facebook), but even in that realm, products
The Customer ≠ The User may bought by one person to be used by other people,
Products are sold to customers. In many cases, such as family members. Think about computer games:
companies consider customers to be the users, but usually the parent is the customer, but the child is the
this may not be true. To keep these straight – user.
customers pay for the product, users use the product.
For Enterprise products, the situation can be even more
(Okay, there are edge cases, like free products, just
complicated. The product may be bought by a clerk or
replace pay with obtain).
purchaser, upon the decision of an executive, with the
For consumer products, the customer often is the approval of a finance person, under the supervision of
user (think television, cell phones, toasters, TiVo, the IT department, to be used by an individual
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P-Camp Silicon Valley | Unconference for Product Managers | March 2008
contributor (IC), who, likely is not even known to all • “PMs own the business process” [of which UX is
the other people in the purchase chain. This IC learns just a part]
how to use the product from the internal training team • “My ass is on the line if <insert any aspect of the
(who had to learn the product and create a class product> fails”
about it) and uses it to produce material for a
• PM is sometimes also the Project Manager (and
manager and other teams. If we consider the whole of
any other role that may be unfilled)
the user experience, many different people within the
Enterprise use different aspects of the product and its • PM drives change, oversees process
services, but there isn’t a single user, and almost • Business goals – may be spread over the country,
none of the varied users can be considered the and may be different for different regions
customer.
Interactions between PMs and UX professionals
Some interactions are clearly with the customer –
such as sales pitches. But some are not so clear. In this session, many of the PMs seemed surprised at
Consider the following activities, which are often the range of UX professionals and the areas in which
considered to be with users, but are really with UX professionals considered themselves owners. At
customers: a focus group in which preferences, some companies, there may be no UX professionals or
perceptions or pricing are discussed; a site visit in a limited number covering a sub-set of the UX skills,
which everyone sits in a conference room and leaving the PM to cover everything left undone.
discusses a list of feature requests, “blue-ribbon
Even PMs from companies known to have relatively
panels” where execs are wined and dined and their
large UX departments, seemed to be doing a lot of
opinions sought, satisfaction surveys sent to product
activities that the UX professionals might consider
purchasers. These are important activities, but just
within their domain and responsibility, or, alternatively,
don’t deal with users.
the PMs found the UX work to be less relevant to the
On the other hand, the following activities are product design and direction than the PM contribution.
generally with users: a site visit spent observing
PM comments:
people use your product in real-time to accomplish
work, usability studies in which people who regularly • PM = Source of expertise of what user wants
use the product are asked to complete realistic tasks,
• PM is held responsible, but “someone else does
quick on-line surveys that ask if the help you just read
the work [on the UI]”
solved your problem, product logs.
• UX focuses on users – sometimes these may not
One of the overlaps between PMs and UX be the core market
professionals seems to be in the realm of who
• UI group sometimes designs according to principles
represents, understands, and speaks on behalf of
which may not reflect biz goals
users. UX professionals generally consider
• User stories & User goals – PMs can write
themselves to be concerned with users (and may
present themselves as user advocates), but not • In an agile environment, or with short development
necessarily with customers. PMs in this session cycles, the PM may need to work with UX outside
the regular dev cycle, how to deal with the
described themselves as being responsible for both
following?:
users and customers. There is clearly overlap here.
• Ethnographic studies
PMs and UX • How to speed it [UX activities] up?
The following points were generated in discussion • How to determine what should be long-range vs.
during the session, which was composed mostly of immediate
active (and often over-worked) PMs.
• PM – hard to keep track of all of the UX skills
• IA should be a resource to PMs
Role of PMs in relation to UX
• The creative group may need to parallel the PM
The PMs in the group stressed how they felt
group
responsible, and were often held accountable, for all
aspects of product design and creation, including UX. • PMs decide what users to speak with
• PMs would prefer that UI designers speak directly
In their words:
with engineering and not go through the PM – both
• PM is “ultimately responsible for ALL of it” (that is, to speed up the process and to allow the PM to
UX and anything else that ensures a quality stay out of potential conflicts
product gets created and out the door)
• “PM defines what, UI person decides how”
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P-Camp Silicon Valley | Unconference for Product Managers | March 2008
It seems that the original question – “Who owns what?”
• Sometimes management changes the product
– is the wrong question. So long as we discuss
through the UI
ownership, both PM and UX professionals are likely to
insist they are the true owners of the UI – because the
PM Learnings About UX – in this session
UI is the most evident proof of their work. And probably
As a result of this session, some PMs felt they had
no-one will want to take ownership of the full user
learned the following about UX:
experience (as explored in Figure 1 and Error!
• It would be good and useful to observe user input Reference source not found.), because it covers too
sessions much.
• Going into the field provides perspectives on I propose a different question. How about this for a
actual use (as opposed to focus groups or follow-on session topic:
customer visits – where people often list their
How to create a company that puts user
wants but offer no possibility of seeing the
experience at its core, where everyone
product in use)
(including PMs and UX professionals, but
• Time-motion studies can be valuable
not limited to them) owns it and contributes
• Customers are not always users to it in a coordinated and measurable
fashion?
The Final Word This of course means that the company will need to
One possible summary of this session with PMs have some pretty clear definitions of user and user
might be– “I didn’t know UX professionals did that!” experience and what a contribution means and how to
This spookily matches a statement I’ve heard many both coordinate and measure the contributions.
UX professionals voice about PMs – “but they just
If PMs in this session are typical (and there’s every
don’t understand what we do!” (which may very well
reason to believe they are), then the first step along this
hide a different issue: “but I just don’t know what a
path – having a clear definition of users (as different
PM does”). I suspect this lack of knowledge, on both
from customers) and user experience, may be a big
parts, is leading to incredible missed opportunities.
one.
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