The Role of the Product Leader.
The programmer, designer, and business manager are talking about the steps to take on the upcoming release of the app. The designer is ranting all about user-centered experiences, dark UX patterns they should avoid, and the stuff users have asked for and will love. The software engineer is scratching her head and does not understand why smooth scrolling animations are splattered all over the place; there is already so much to do with responsiveness, complying with Android and iOS platform standards, and device compatibility; besides, she is not ready for another night shift; she likes the coffee, but still. The higher-up stakeholders swoop in and make it worse with new must-have features; this should be in there, or nothing is shipping out.
This scenario results in miscommunication and a lack of understanding on the team, and the product suffers, resulting in three possible outcomes:
- A product that is user-friendly and feasible but high-cost to the company.
- A product that is not user-friendly but feasible and benefits the business.
- A product that is user-friendly and beneficial to the stakeholders but not feasible.
Either way, someone has something to lose from any of these scenarios. If the users do not win with the product, they will not use it. If the current and available technology cannot do it, there will be nothing to release. If the business does not win, it will shift its focus elsewhere. It ends the same; a product that does not help anyone in the long run.
Like the Tower of Babel, a lack of good communication can be disastrous for a product. Developers, engineers, and businesses need to understand each other.
So who is the Product Designer/Leader?
The product designer helps these factions collaborate. He is skilled in at least one of the following and knowledgeable in the other two; this gives him a better standpoint from which to view the system.
Product designers come from various backgrounds, but most are UX designers, software engineers, marketers, or business managers. They are skilled in their field but what pulls them in the middle is realizing the product can make an impact if you follow a vision. The UX designer wants to understand his designs in code, the software developer wants to learn UI design to build apps with a graphic user interface (GUI) instead of a command line interface (CLI), and the business stakeholder wants to understand just enough design and code to understand why the team cannot implement a particular feature. The product designer is not necessarily a jack of all trades in the three areas; his role in all this is to help these areas work well together. He understands code but may not code, and even if he did, he is not part of the dev team(unless he is passionate about coding or wants to know every line of code).
Roles of the Product Designer
A product designer has his feet in UX, tech, and business. This role is broad and includes the following:
Usability
As the product designer, you understand the users and their stories. You think like the UI/UX designer, conducting workshops, plotting user journeys, empathizing with their needs, and making the user experience as simple and user-friendly as possible. But you do more than what UI/UX entails. You consider how every detail in the design system will work for the company. You wonder if a component is also usable in the entire ecosystem, especially if there is more than one product.
Technology
Designers have brought forth an idea. Now, can the developers do it? Is there another way to build it? Is it better as a Progressive Web App or a native app? The product designer understands the technology stack used to engineer the product. No, he is not (necessarily) a full-stack developer or a systems expert; in the role of product design, you need to know just enough about the field to make informed decisions, like why the team must switch to cross-platform instead of native for the mobile version, or why a NoSQL database is the best alternative for the back-end infrastructure and not SQL.
Business
Thankfully now the design and development team agree on what to build. But the stakeholders will ask: “Can we afford to do this? How does this help us? What is the return on investment in the long run? Why should we not do this now? What are the long-term and short-term results? Is it ready to be released, or should we push the deadline further and give more time to the developers to figure it out?”
The product designer makes it easier for stakeholders to understand technical decisions that help the business.
Why do we need a Product Designer in the organization?
Impact
The product designer focuses on doing what is necessary to help the company move as fast as possible. He shares industry insights with the development team and the stakeholders to clarify priorities and remove what is not.
Communication
The product designer helps the rest of the team communicate better. He works like an interpreter, simplifying development concepts to the stakeholders and business terms to the development team.
Vision
Someone has to keep the rest of the team focused on the vision behind the product, and the product leader is the ideal person for the job. His role allows him to direct the team effort ton the goal that brings them to work together.
Better Collaboration
When the design, engineering, and business teams understand each other, it leads to better collaboration; whenever there is a change in UX features, you can involve the developers and stakeholders in the decision.
What you should avoid
One of the reasons for being a product designer is to be the messenger between development and the business, but when you are more conversant in one side, say, the UX field, you are more inclined towards products that focus more on the user, no matter the business costs, or if you are from the business side, you care more about a product with a high return on investment more than what is feasible. You can avoid this by bringing the focus back to the collaboration between the team and what the users need.
Which is more important?
A product more concerned with the user experience but does not make money for the company will fail in the long run. A business-focused product will work for the company but also fail eventually. And users certainly will not ask if you built the product with a particular engineering stack before they buy it, like going to the App Store and there’s this Good to Know section, listing the programming language, back-end details, and so on. Who knows, maybe one user is afraid of Python?
No, the most important thing of the three is the product itself, and it won’t work if they don’t work together.
Conclusion
Product design is concerned with solving complex systems and how they are related to each other. If you know enough about the business, UX, and technology, it is easier to understand the collective effort needed to make a great product; you will be able to make it user-focused but feasible with the available technology and also valuable to the business.
Sometimes the teams will not agree at the end of the meeting. As the product leader, you will have to help make the tough calls on how to proceed. The stakeholders will get the final say, but there is a way for everyone to win from this, and it is up to you as the product leader to know what it is and where to find it.
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Hi everyone,
I’m about to start a series on product design, where I will share my process of working on a mobile app from scratch. It will include the idea, product strategy, design, and code. I’m still figuring it out, but if that sounds interesting, let me know in the comments.
Thanks for reading.
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