A talk about the evolution of product management and user experience design and how teams can work together to leverage the best of all talents to uncover hidden pain and opportunities for both strategy of a product/service direction as well as incremental improvements.

1. PRODUCT MANAGEMENT +
UX
ARIEL SNAPP

2. About Me
• Global enterprise, remote disbursed teams
• 18 UX / UI practitioners varying level of skill
and expertise
• UX Director/Manager
• UX Leads, UX Strategists, UX Research,
Analytic and Insight
• UX Design, UI Design, UI Front End
Engineering
• Mother
• Leader
• Manager
• Designer
• Strategist
• Marketer
• Synthesizer
• Artist
• Innovator
• Writer
About My Team

3. Topics
Product Manager and User Experience:
Definition and Application to Job Roles
Feedback study: themes and quotes
What makes great teams?
UX as a Mindset: Being User Focused
Q&A

4. WHAT IS UX?!!
!
WHAT IS PRODUCT
MANAGEMENT?

5. User Experience (UX),
noun –
User Experience is the practice that informs the
design of a system’s user interface. This
encompasses all aspects of an end-user’s
interaction with the company, its services, and its
products.
A user interface is not User Experience. User
Experience focuses on the study of, and improving
how a user interacts with a system’s user
interface.

6. “User experience is the changing feelings that a
user gets when using a device, service or system.”
- Christian Kraft

7. Product Management
“to discover a product that is valuable,
usable and feasible.”
– Marty Cagan

8. PRODUCT MANAGER +
USER EXPERIENCE ROLES

9. Source: Nick Kellingly

10. INFORMAL STUDY:
UNDERSTANDING THE PRODUCT
MANAGER & UX/UI RELATIONSHIP
Respondents across Product Leader, Product Manager, Product
Owner, UX/UI for differing product lines in HR Software

11. Do you feel that UX is the
responsibility of an individual or an
organization?
Summary: Overwhelming response was both.
“UX is much more all-encompassing that people
realize. Our interactions are guided by our
experiences and needs, especially when interacting
with computers/software/products. It’s the
responsibility of an organization to understand the
need for UX strategies and individuals to pull and
digest UX data. Similar to culture in organizations,
UX thinking should be pervasive throughout many
areas.”

12. How has UX affected your
work as a product manager?
Summary: Critical difference in perception of what UX is and how
someone has worked with differing people with different UX/UI skill sets
significantly influenced the answers.
While UI/UX and Agile do not always play nicely together, product
managers acknowledge the need for data to drive decisions.
“By learning from my UX
colleagues, I became obsessed
with user-centric design. I was
able to sharpen my skillset by
learning how to leverage design
thinking principles into my work,
because I wanted to able to think
in the same way as a UX
practitioner.”
“UX gave a name to the ways I perceive the
world and how I could manage the
intersection of literal backlog features and
human reactions.”
“Without a solid backlog of
refined tickets, UX becomes
the bottleneck.”

13. What 1-3 things (behavior, process or tools)
could a product manager adopt that would
help them better support UX and UI
practitioners?
Summary: Education and immersion in user experience
practices, processes and hands on “doing” UX yourself or in
partnership with specialists.
“Understanding the “why” it
is so important. And until
you have some practical
experience of incorporating
the user research, it may not
seem obvious that the value
it brings.”
“I find that some PMs tend to let
their own history/knowledge
dictate all of their perspective –
which can be pretty ill-informed.”
“Become informed; educate yourself
about human-centric approaches.
Learn more about the process,
customer empathy, ideation, testing,
prototyping and ensuring you are
solving the right problem.”

14. What 1-3 things could a
UX / UI practitioner adopt that would help
them work better with product managers?
Summary: If UX is too “heavy”, it can disrupt development planning to the point where
both the research and the design are not adding the necessary value.
UXers need to really, deeply learn the domain or the will not be successful at solving
root issues.
UXers need to have great relationship and communication skills.
“I would like to see the UX
team work on building
relationships and
demonstrating the value of
UX insights in everything
they do.”
“For me, TIME is
everything. Low-fidelity
wireframe is perfect for
conceptualizing.”

15. Think of the best working relationship you
have/have had with a UX or UI practitioner.
What made that partnership work well?
Summary: Mutual respect, communication, collaboration,
curiosity and real listening skills are the key to a good
working relationship with UX and Product Managers.
“Constant communication, lots of collaboration, lots of
iterative design approaches, lots of research done in
partnership.”

16. Think of the worst working relationship you
have/have had with a UX or UI practitioner.
What made that partnership not successful?
Summary: Drop egos at the door, people. Opinions are just
that, let it go. Crucial conversations are part of being in
business, get it out on the table and move on.
“Egos.”
“I’ve been exposed to challenging
relationships and it’s clear to me that
some ego tends to get in the way
from the business, technical, and UX
sides – collaboration is missing in
those cases.”

17. WHAT MAKES GREAT
TEAMS?

18. What makes a great team?
Focused on team and outcomes not individual
glory
Ability to adjust and adapt communication style to
fit team dynamics
Balance of personalities with ninja skills / native
genius

20. GETTING IN THE UX MINDSET

21. “UX thinking should be pervasive
throughout many areas.”
Empathetic Investigators. Everyone’s needs are different, I’m not
going to assume I know everything from the onset without discovering:
What makes certain people tick?
What are their biggest unsolved or poorly solved pains?
Always a Beginner. I challenge assumptions by being open to
possibilities and discovering something that might be hidden beneath
the surface.
Story tellers. Story is what connects people and allows for shared
understanding. Most UX methods are based around discovery and
story telling to better highlight opportunities for business and world
improvement.

22. “UX thinking should be pervasive
throughout many areas.”
Value Detachment. I am willing to detach from the outcome and be proven
wrong. My ideas are just that.
Opportunity Obsessed. Even though its natural for humans to get a “high”
from solving problems, UXers love to spend lots of time discovering
problems and their counterpart: opportunities.
Adaptable, Change Lovers. UXers tend to challenge the status quo and
adapt to ever emerging trends. They are comfortable with the discomfort of
not knowing all the answers up front. They trust the process of discovery
and iteration.

23. FROM
TO
Diversity
of Thought
Singular "
Point Of View
Shared
Knowledge
Embodied
Knowledge
Unifying
Storyteller
Super
Hero
Validated, Iterative
Design
Intuitive
Design
Collective
Individual
A marriage of lean, user-centered and agile philosophies