Product Hero #3 — Demian Borba

“It’s me against me, I can always do a little bit better than before”

Hello Product guys!

First (and critical) question: Did you captured any Pokémon? :)

Before introduce the Product Hero #3, just remembering that you can see the others here:

@arthurklose: https://goo.gl/SjSr88

Thiago Diniz: https://goo.gl/xfSSmA

Filipi Neves: https://goo.gl/PqTHDt

And the Product Hero for this week is…

Demian Borba!

met Demian during my “sabbatical” time in San Francisco. Before that, I heard about him a lot of times. Also took a lot of tips for my first travel to San Francisco and always when we have time, talked about Product Management, Innovation, Design, UX.

PS: Have you seen him posted about innovative approaches using Design Thinking? Click here to read.

He graduated in Industrial Design and, five years later, in Computer Science, both in Brazil. Also took classes at UCSD and Stanford, always focusing on business and innovation. He had more than 11 years experience in interactive agencies, worked with development and design, also owned his company ( ActionCreations ) for two years in San Diego, worked for companies like BlackBerry and Braintree/PayPal and now, he is a Product Manager for Adobe XD in San Francisco. Also he’s husband, father, and surfer.

Demian said that his goal in life is never stop learning and never stop improving. “It’s me against me; I can always do a little bit better than before.”

Demian's secret formula: Effort + learning = success

How do you explain your job to ‘normal’ people (like grandmother..)

Grandma, I talk to a lot of people! Even if I think I know the answer, I listen and ask “why”, lots of “whys”. All to later come up with what they need, but they don’t know they need it yet.

What’s your morning routine at work as a Product Manager?

It’s very easy to be “reactive” and sink in the email and meeting chaos. So what I try to do is to be more “proactive”. To accomplish that, I have armored my calendar with meetings that vary from “Email” to “Creating”. And I always create something during the time I have most of my energy, frequently at 10 am. And I show up every day for it. Even if I’m not inspired, I sit down and create. It pays off big time.

Where do you get your inspiration? (links, books, activities…)

I spend around one hour every weekday going to the office. It’s a good time to reflect and listen to a book. I “read” more by hearing audiobooks, while riding a bike, jogging or even when riding my electric skateboard. Love books about physiology, innovation, how the brain works, human behavior and mindset.

What’s your type of Product Manager?

I’m more a customer advocate than a real backlog-type product manager. At Adobe, I created, and I manage all feedback channels for Adobe XD, such as https://adobexd.uservoice.com and public forums. Then I communicate the feedback back to our teams at Adobe, analyzing which features will have the most impact.

I also manage our private prerelease program and our customer advisory board, a group of 38 people from companies like Facebook, Google, Citi, LinkedIn, and Airbnb. As well as students and developers, representing of our extreme-users.

What was your biggest mistake/fail? And what you learned?

Recently, I think my biggest failure was to assume that our customer advisory board members would come all the way to Adobe for a meeting. I have scheduled a big meeting with beer and food, to talk about our roadmap and vision. It turns out people are busy, and it’s easier if we meet online. I used to fail miserably with email, being reactive, not producing a significant impact; that was when I changed my behavior to be more proactive and create more, saying no a lot more.

No to meetings, no to tasks that would just take valuable time away from my actions. On a daily basis, we are learning a lot from our users. Having this open approach to feedback, we test prototypes all the time to fail early, and adapt early. In summary, we fail a lot, but we learn and change a lot.

Your tips to anyone who wants to be a Product Manager

Be yourself, armor your calendar to be proactive instead of reactive, focus on qualitative research and never, never assume you know your users. Go there and talk to them, frequently. Also, for every new major feature, build a simple prototype and test with your best users.

Who is your favorite superhero?

Kelly Slater, a real superhero. He is over 40 years old and still wins and does magical things. It’s all about improving, working hard to beat yourself from yesterday. Work hard and learn hard.

Tell something about you that you like to share (or not)

For me, what is important in life is being healthy and being a constant learner. Some people aim for huge roles or expensive things. In the end, they are just things. So I try super hard to stay close to my family, doing simple things, surfing, exercising and enjoying nature.

What is your super power (besides being a product manager)

I think I understand people. Based on all the research I did, and still do, on psychology and brain stuff, it became easier to read behaviors and look for implicit needs.

Your final considerations

Be yourself and always learn, it really pays off in the end.

Thank you, bro!

—

If you want help Demian Borba to improve Adobe XD, tweet to him: @demianborba

Do you want to receive news about product, mobile and innovation?

>> Subscribe here <<