Synergies between User Experience and Product Management
Posted by: Amit Pande, in User Experience, Conferences, Bangalore, Design, High Tech
During my Barcamp conversations with Ashish from Yahoo and Soumya from Aditi, i was stuck by how User Experience (UX) and Product Management (PM) are two groups which have more in common than many other product development related groups.
Both care about products being successful, easy to use, and differentiated in a cluttered technology marketplace. Both use various methods to gather customer and user data and map that data into features, functions, and User Interfaces. Both need to be good at what they do but also good at generally understanding technology, competitors and market trends.
Boxes and Arrows even had an interesting plug on ‘Transitioning from User Experience to Product Management’ - both the authors are ex-UX professionals who now work as product managers. They’ve outlined some interesting distinctions and overlaps in these two roles.
I think Product Managers and UX professionals/managers can collaborate and find common ground on several areas: Field research methods (dont both groups use interviewing and focus groups as a standard data gathering technique?), wireframing and prototyping, development of product roadmaps (most UX groups are called too late to the table for roadmap discussions), joint customer site visits, and how usability and design labs can be jointly used by PM and UX professionals to conduct user sessions.
I’m thinking of organizing a round table along these lines - perhaps in d-camp space. Feel free to send me any ideas on this…
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April 5th, 2007 at 12:23 am
Hey Amit
Interesting post!! Though there are quite an overlap btn PM and UX, I still see the two roles as very diff.
PMs, at the end of the day are supposed to own the product and also work with sales/support staff. UX is pretty much focussed on market research/usability etc, but yeah its true that these roles have a lot in common and one can easily switch from UX to PM [but dont think reverse is that easy!]
April 9th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
While product & UX teams work on some common process to define PRDs and overall product strategy, both have a different objectives to consider. It’s important for a UX or Design teams to stand different to analyze and question the product and its feature listing keeping user/design/technology possibilities in mind.
UX team needs to be strategic to deliver effortless, engaging and essential experiences inspired by users. Its important for deign teams to observing how users engage with technology, and the process of turning those findings into tangible design enhancements that improve the experience of our products. Also define and articulate the conceptual constructs and aesthetically enhance the experience. Which I guess product teams are not trained for the same, viscera design teams are not trained on business & marketing objectives.
May 9th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
Hi, Amit,
I am a user/design researcher in alibaba from China. In Alibaba, there is also the same problem that both the pM and Ux do simlar work. I think, everyone can innovate and conduct user study, but the focuses are different. PM is responsible for commerical aim and Ux is for user aim. And because of the overlap of the two roles, the conlifts almost cannot avoid. I think it is a great challenge of uX to guide the design direction to user aim.
June 4th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
I am a Product Manager at Honeywell, Bangalore. I think there is an overlap with Ux with respect to user experience, product functions, performance & usability.
Product management involves three things, viz product concept, financial aspects & srategic road map (sustainability of competitive advantage).
Product conceptualization is about features prioritization, where there is an overlap w r t VOC & usability. Key to product management is in identifying critical success factors for a product & things that drive revinues, costs & profits. Further trade-offs between features/cost to serve/benifits/sustainability of competitive advantage/customer priority change over time is critical. Taking the product life cycle in a direction where customer’s willingness to pay is important.
In my view, Ux & PM have to complement with each other.