Design is [Product] Strategy
Why I was told “You’re not a Designer, you’re a Product Strategist!” and I was not offended
The intersections of Product Management and Product Design/UX Design have always been discussed, so, old news. As a previous note regarding what you’ll read next, I must warn you that I don’t believe in titles, nor role labels. I believe one will have to do a lot of mix matched things throughout their journeys, change, adapt, improve, reinvent. Nevertheless, it always works best, for any company or project, when we have clearly defined boundaries between practices.
As you know by now (and if you don’t, I kindly invite you to read my previous posts 🤗), I have been working in the Usability/UX/Service Design areas since 2008 and since 2010 mostly for Telecommunications or Customer eXperience companies. I, therefore, am professionally “born and raised” in complex, fast paced, engineering led environments with strong focus on deliverables. From waterfall to agile (to waterfall again? — another post, for another time), from very large companies (thousands of people) to small businesses (dozens), with more or with less design maturity, I worked with 0 to 1 startups, and also pre and post acquisition ones. Not to brag, nor to complain, just to give you a mental picture of the diversity and complexity of challenges I already faced, for you to be able to walk on my shoes along this post.
Not so long ago, I participated in a three days Innovation event. I had the opportunity to expand my network and meet some really interesting people, from all kinds of backgrounds and with all types of stories to tell. It was the type of event that really made me come home energised.
On the first day, I randomly got stuck with a group of people that previously knew each other — I usually avoid those kinds of groups, because they tend to disregard outsiders, but surprisingly it was not the case. Well, it happens that these people were going to start a company and they used the event to “prospect” some possible hires for their new company. Only I came to learn that far after the event ended. So, let me tell you what happened in a very summarised way, regarding the type of fun we had together:
- I love what I do, so I talk a lot about it. The same on their side.
- They were engineers and product people and we engaged quite automatically in several innovation-led, growth-led, business, design and product related topics.
- I tend to have strong opinions based on my experience. I think design serves the users but also needs to support businesses to make money and I believe I have a pretty fair idea on how to make both things work.
- It was fun, we were a group that worked amazingly well together, built some interesting things, I thought they were bright (and hoped they felt the same about me), we exchanged contacts, went home and carried on with our lives.
Until, a month later, one of them randomly messaged saying he was coming to my city and wished to have lunch.
Over lunch, he told me they started a company and they wanted to invite me to an informal Head of Design interview, with some partners and other stakeholders. I asked for some details and agreed to check it out.
I prepared some slides about past experiences and how I would kick-off and scale design, while adding value to the business they were building. Here are some of the approaches I highlighted during the interview:
- No silos: tactical design perfectly paired with product, engineering and strategic design perfectly paired with business, marketing, sales, partners and support teams in order to have a 360º approach to the product.
- Macro vision: have a clear long term idea regarding the services and jobs to be done regarding our customer/user and service visualised as a system mood board that showed how users will use/feel/talk about the product/service and the problems/needs it solves.
- Micro execution: learn everything, in detail, about those problems/needs and define the findings with such clarity that teams can and deliver valuable contributions everyday.
- Continuous evolution: small problem definitions, small product discoveries, small actionable insights that turn into small valuable increments, focused on impact although connected to the long term design vision.
- Measure everything: research by default, fight bias, define the right product and experience metrics and automate data collection. Most important: make use of that data and understand where to focus your resources and by all means avoid being based on assumptions.
- Start simple, yet prepare to scale: prepare design foundations with a design system, UX writing and inclusive accessibility guidelines, libraries management, canvas sizes, defined rules, tokens and hand-off guidelines, etc. Make the process simple in order for it to be adopted fast and adapted over time, in line with product growth.
- Build a culture of experimentation: iteration over perfection and learning over fear of failure. Have designers be the spark for innovation, have them embedded into teams working on short term needs, but save some time for them to experiment new concepts, improve old ideas, explore new scenarios and collect insights from users.
And so on and so forth. For every topic, I showed how the role of design contributed to the outcomes, as a business strategy, with several use cases from my experience illustrating them. As I grew into working with executives I learned that they have limitations in understanding tangibility of “designer language”. Therefore, I avoid specific words, terms or concepts that may trigger the flying money icon (💸) into the minds of the stakeholders, but if you pay attention to what I describe, you will see that I mean things like a research first approach, a user centric mindset, customer focused vision, a true design at the core of the business strategy.
I was convinced that I clearly explained how, as their first Head of Design, I would enable value creation since day one — I got a lot of smart questions during the interview, I enjoyed the vibes of the people in the room, and I was confident I would be a fit.
A couple of days later, I heard back from them, we scheduled a final interview and I was was quite surprised when the conversation went like this:
Them — “We enjoyed your presentation so much, you covered a lot of topics we are concerned with and showed clear value on every slide, [...bla bla bla…], therefore we wish to offer you a position.”
Me — silently yeying 🎉 🙌
Them — “We just don’t think you are a fit for the Design role, we wish to hire you as the Head of Product Strategy.”
Me — silent OMG, WHAT? pokerface 😶😰
Them — “We think you made a great presentation, and we also consider it was more in line with what we expect for a more strategic role regarding the product.”
[conversations about the offer and questions on my end followed, finishing with me going home to think about it]
I felt empty. I felt an impostor. I felt panic:
I was not a designer anymore? Does the fact that I always look to add value to the business, transformed me? Did the fact of being in a management position made me change my career path? Did the fact that I believe in product trios, made me not think like a designer? Did the fact that I like to know about technology made me lose my designer mindset? Should I never speak about business value or strategy in order to still be considered a designer? How the h*ll did this happen? I don’t know what my role and my career is anymore!
Then it hit me (and I worried a bit more): do companies really understand how to work with Design and what is its potential?
A very simplified example, but very easy to understand, is that it is the Design that shapes the outcome: lovable product vs. hated product. You can have all the product strategy of the world, but if design is not at its core, users will find better solutions for their problems. As users, we do it all the time! “Argh, I hate this app! Going to find another one that does the same, but it’s easier to use!”
In the end, although I loved the people and believed in the product, I decided to not accept that role, not because I would have another title while doing the same job: I was not offended about the framing they made about my role and the title they would give me. I was not offended, at all, because, as a designer, I had senior stakeholders considering my path, my mindset, my approach, relevant regarding the Product Strategy point of view. I declined it, thou, because I acknowledged that this newly formed company was already failing to understand that:
Design is [Product, Service, Brand, Business, etc.] Strategy
..and I would expect bright executives to understand that is (also!) the role of Design to actively contribute to it, by default, collaborating, in an intersectional way, with Product, Marketing, Sales, Business, Engineering, Support, and others, in order to maximize the potential of a successful business — meaning: making user’s happy, more recommendations, reach more people, selling more, making more money, happy users, less support or easy self-service troubleshooting, saving more money.
Not just to hire designers and scale a tactical design practice to produce fancy-wow-tchanan-eye-candy screens that serve the already predefined features, contained in the fixed half-year product roadmap, that some brilliant product strategist come up with, but adds zero actual value to the business. 🙂
Note from the author: Design is not better than any practice, we should stop that old fight about overlapping tasks and roles with Product or Marketing, or whatever. This text is not about that, nor about the value of Design as a practice. It is about a systems thinking approach, looking at the broader picture! We need to start collaborating more: having all practices in the same room, at the same time, will certainly make everyone work better, drive a successful business and, in the end, we will all be happier — and happy people create better, produce more, go the extra mile. Happy people believe!… and beliefs move mountains.
