Main takeaways: - Understanding the basic UX design process - Establishing shared mental models and processes for engagement - Practical tips for PMs to craft great products collaboratively with UX designers

1. Smooth Collaboration With UX
Designers by Zalando Sr PM
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6. Hi, I’m Sujeet
Thanks for joining

7. JOURNEY SO FAR..
Voonik Technologies
Product Manager - Promotions
India
Kadence International
Customer Behavior Analyst
Middle East
Blibli.com
Director Marketplace Product
Indonesia
Zalando
Senior PM, - Category Exp.
Germany

8. A PM’s guide to
Smooth Collaboration with Product Designers
A WEBINAR BY : SUJEET JOSE

9. OUR TWIN PURPOSES
Ensure Organizational and
Product Objectives are achieved
Maintain Team Morale and
Motivation
Collaborative mindset
needed between the three
legs of process – Product,
Design, Tech
So, Why
is this webinar
necessary
again??

10. PM AND UX DESIGNER
UX designers are from
Product Managers are from
&
Metrics
Stakeholder Management
Business objectives
Process setting
Customer Experience
Remarkable overall user journey
Appealing visual design
Consistency

11. This webinar is to provide practical tips on:
How can we collaborate to create kick-ass products?
UX designers are from
Product Managers are from
PRODUCT
‘Technology is relatively easy, it’s people that are hard’

12. Discover
the
customer
journey
Define
the right
problems to
solve
Design
& select the
right
solution
Deliver
and launch
the solution
Launch and get the
feedback
DESIGN THE RIGHT THING DESIGN THE THING RIGHT
A TYPICAL PRODUCT DESIGN FLOW

13. Product Strategy + Team set-up + Team processes + Team Culture
REALITY
Discover
Project 1
Define
Project 2
Design
Project 3
Deliver
Project 4
Stage of the product + Competitor offerings + Market interest
Business Strategy + Company Structure + Company Culture

14. Exploring each stage in detail

15. DESIGN
PRODUCT
Define a rough scope of
requirement
DISCOVER PHASE : ROLE DISTRIBUTION
Identify know information about the
business use case/Customer
problems/Business opportunity and
communicate clearly
Identify all relevant stakeholders.
Secure project buy-ins
Identify needed user related
knowledge areas
Create research brief
Identify correct competitors for evaluation
Create a basic game-plan of the project along with
engineering team
• Research briefs
• Research/Survey Report
• Workshop entries
Key Deliverables:
• Customer Journey maps
• Empathy Maps
• Competitor mapping

16. PROCESS
DISCOVER PHASE : TIPS FOR PMs
§ Keep an open mind about
requirements and do not
pre-judge or assume
customer needs/opinions
§ Ensure biases such as
Hippo, technology
limitations, industry
restrictions are kept away
from the initial discovery
process
§ Pay attention to the initial
framing of problem- not too
limited and not too open for
interpretation
§ Prioritize Discovery
research before validation
research
§ Set realistic expectations
about timelines, resources
etc. with management
§ Consider mechanisms such
as Guerilla research,
targeting selected (extreme)
personas for research etc. to
save time.
§ Understand that discovery
is a continuous process and
not all insights will be
generated in the first round
of research.
§ Use visual mediums like
story-maps, empathy-maps
or knowledge-maps force to
get more concrete, more
specific and aid in creating a
shared understanding.
ATTITUDE

18. DESIGN
PRODUCT
Create and communicate vision of success
and relation to key KPIs
Identify all relevant tech, non-tech
stakeholders
Provide transparency about prioritization,
objectives, constraints, approvals needed
upfront
Define the scope and rough timelines of
the project along with project manager
based on the knowledge in hand
• Press Release
• Concept paper
• PRD
Key Deliverables:
Support to create vision
Clarify and reclarify the vision and scope
Involve and communicate to all relevant
teams such as Visual designers when
needed
DEFINE PHASE : ROLE DISTRIBUTION

19. PROCESS
DEFINE PHASE : TIPS FOR PMs
• Create a clear ( and slightly
unwavering) definition of
customer problem and how
it will affect our business
north-star
• Look at short term medium
term and long-term vision of
the product. Create a metric
to be optimized through the
feature and stick to it.
• Remember to get upper
management buy-in at this
stage of the process
§ Consider the end-to-end
journey and drawing parallels
with physical worlds really help
here
§ Utilize customer language to
communicate vision to UX
designers*
§ Mention obvious constraints
on our side while defining the
problem – money, expected
scale, technological risk,
security risks etc.
§ Prioritize if there are more
than two objectives for the
same project
ATTITUDE

20. DESIGN
PRODUCT
DESIGN PHASE : ROLE DISTRIBUTION
Provide helpful inputs in meetings such as
ideation workshops, design reviews etc.
Assist in evaluating between competing
designs based on input from customer
experience knowledge or business
knowledge
Help to obtain alignment from relevant
stakeholders when needed
• Low Fidelity designs
• High Fidelity designs
• Design review sign-offs
Key Deliverables:
Design and coordinate the process of
design including organizing and facilitating
necessary meetings such as alignment
sessions, workshops etc.
Create Conceptual design, information
architecture, interaction design, visual
design and copy ( including translations)
Keep the product ( and management)
informed about the key decisions being
made – Preferably displaying progress from
low fidelity to high fidelity prototyping
• Prototypes
• Concept testing research results

21. JACK DORSEY’s 2005 FIRST WIREFRAME OF TWITTER

22. HEIRARCHY OF DESIGN
Source: Dan Olsen

23. PROCESS
DESIGN PHASE : TIPS FOR PMs
§ Be a part of providing the safe
space for creativity to foster
§ Avoid limiting ideas in the
initial phase of the design
process as initial exploration
would be wild and move in
different directions
§ Gate scope gently at the later
stages while selecting the
right ideas, if needed. Use
objective criteria such as
metrics, principles, key
objectives for doing so
§ Know and use the key
terminologies used by
designers to be involved in
the process as much as
possible.
§ Accommodate for processes like
Design testing, Visual Design,
copywriting, translations while
deciding on timelines
§ Engage in discussions with UX
designers and engineers to
effectively phase out the
remarkable experiences
envisioned by UX designers as per
technical capacities.
§ Understand the stage of design
review currently on-going
(early/mid/late) and provide
feedback accordingly.
§ Obtain stakeholder buy-ins on
the vision & features by hosting
workshops or product seminars
ATTITUDE

24. CASE STUDY: PRODUCT DETAIL PAGE

25. PRODUCT DETAIL PAGE: SCROLLED

26. CASE STUDY
User Persona
Company & Product
is a European fashion ecommerce players with over 4000 brands
and 42 million active customers in 17 markets.
Outfits program is a program to recommend useful outfits/combination of outfits
based on an AI powered recommendation tool
“It’s frustrating to
combine different outfits
into a coherent style that
I can pull off, look fitting
to an occasion, and have
a good price.”
“I don’t shop so much but
whenever I shop, I feel
confused on what to buy.
Would be great if Zalando could
make outfit suggestions based
on my previous orders and my
wish-list.”
Confused Sally
Our customers struggle to combine
clothes that they already own or like with
new items, into meaningful outfits.
Problem statement

27. Information Architecture
Conceptual model An easy journey for the customer to discover
and keep engaging with new styles. The styles
should create trust and be relevant to the
customer. Need to allow customers to wish-
list soon to give relevant recommendations.
Business Objective : High Basket value & High CVR
Entity Attributes
Designer
Followers, Description, Photo Visits,
count, buys , designs etc.
Designs
Wishlists , Visits, source, Partial
buys, Buys
Items
Part of many designs, wishlist ,Size
, Tags, Sale notif, Buys,Visits
Source of visits, Reviews ratings
Size
Stock, Price, Notify Me’s
Pages
Designer page
Design page, Category
page, brand page, Listing
page, Tag page
Recommendations page
Product Detail page
CASE STUDY

28. A TO Z : KEY DRIVERS OF DESIGN
A:
Atomic Design Theory
Accessibility
Affordances
B:
Balance
C:
Consistency
Customer consent
Cognitive Load
Constraints
D:
Discoverability
Design Aesthetic
E:
Ethnographic User study
Empathy maps
Error Prevention & Recovery
F:
Familiarity
Functional Minimalism
Feedback
Fitts’ Law
G:
Gutenberg Diagram
Gestalt Principle
H:
Human Centred design
Heuristic audit
Hierarchy of information
Hook Canvas
I:
Interaction Design
Inductive reasoning
J:
Journey mapping
K: L:
Localization
Learnability and Patterns
M:
Micro interactions
Mood Boards
Mappings
N:
Navigation elements
O: P:
Persona & Archetypes
Prototyping
Platform architecture
Q: R:
Readability
Remote user testing
Recognition Rather than Recall
Rule of thirds
S:
Story Boards/Experience maps
Signifiers
T:
Trust and control
U:
User acceptance testing ( UAT )
V:
Visual Clarity
Visual Design
W:
Wireframing
Widows & orphans
X:
Xplorability
Y:
Yardstick mapping ( competitor
benchmarking)
Z:
Z- and F-Pattern Layouts

29. DESIGN
PRODUCT
DELIVER PHASE : ROLE DISTRIBUTION
Ensure precise communication of
requirements to tech is done
Verify all edge cases of design and copy is
ready for the tech to proceed for
development
Confirm sufficient and effective channels
of communication exist between tech and
design teams for clarifying doubts
• Finalized working solution/prototype
• Demo results
• Launch strategy
Key Deliverables:
Communicate and clarify design
requirements accurately when needed
Testing the final developed design and
comparing it with the Figma or sketch
design provided
Notify the updated design system
components to the UX tool promptly
• Marketing materials

30. PROCESS
ATTITUDE
DELIVER PHASE : TIPS FOR PMs
§ Appreciate and give credit to
the UX designers for their hard
work
§ Protect UX designers from
unnecessary criticism if the
feature does not work as
planned
§ Involve interested tech team
members along with tech lead in
the ideation sessions
§ Ensure that the opinion of front-end
tech team is voiced in a free space
with the designers
§ Provide access to staging
environment to design team and
create a phased testing plan
including designers.
§ Align expectations with difficult
stakeholders before the demo
§ Share marketing materials with
design team as there might be
inconsistency between some of the
design and the materials.

31. Bonus tips for smooth collaboration with
designers

32. CULTURE
§ Assist in propagating the belief that good UX is
everybody’s baby and not only UX designer’s
responsibility.
§ Question. Test. But have a basic trust on designer gut.
§ In case of disagreements, dig for root assumptions & re-
look at the basic product principles . Discuss with
mutual respect on any topic citing relevant data.
§ Foster the attitude of learning from each other,
understanding different points of view, and reaching
solutions together – both on a strategic and on a tactic
level
§ Design is multi-disciplinary and ambiguous field but has
impact on the entire organizations. Ensure your key
business stakeholders understand the role, dynamics
and mechanics of UX to obtain sharp feedback.

33. STRUCTURE & PROCESSES
§ Involve designers ( and engineering
lead) early in process including for
creating product strategy, prioritization
and early business discussions. Keep
the association and role -based
differentiation blurry.
§ Allocate time for your design debts
§ Empower team to decide fast, keeping
the fundamental principles of the
product intact
§ In case of disagreements, dig for root
assumptions & re-look at the basic
product principles . Discuss with mutual
respect on any topic citing relevant
data.
§ Communicate that the process of
development is reasonably flexible.
Evolve the process based on feedback,
best practices, type of project etc.

34. PEOPLE
§ Nurture young designers in team and encourage them
with positive validations. (Designers have imposter
syndrome and confidence crisis sometimes also. )
§ Understand that different designers have different
strengths, seniority and preference of work. Assist in
matching the right strengths to right problems.
§ Present the optimum amount of data to generate interest
and underline decision making depending on the bent of
mind of the designer you are dealing with.
§ Allow for disagreements, but don't let them get personal
since We are not defined only by our work
§ Don’t compete: complement
§ Have Fun - Together!

35. Thank you
32

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