Critical Collaborations: UX Design

As a product manager, I want to know how to collaborate with a quality UX Designer, so that I can maximize the output of my product work

I remember when I got brought into the offices for the final rounds of interviews for what would become my first big-deal product job.

I had become used to the seemingly endless rounds of interviews required for a Product Manager role, ready for whoever may be sat in front of me. After about three separate hour-long interviews that day, I was finally moved to a side office for what I was told would be a meeting with the CPO.

Well… the CPO never showed up.

Instead, in walked the Director of User Experience (UX). They asked me about my previous experience working with product design. 

I was completely ready for the question. and had with me a printed-out screen-shot of the UI I had worked to re-design at my previous role. My prior company was small, and at the time did not have any dedicated UX Designers on staff.

This had burned me in the past when interviewing with companies wanting “Experience working with UX”. My solution was simple - I’d show a real example of how I thought through an interface.

We went through the menu toolbar that I had re-designed. In it I highlight the most relevant and commonly used actions more prominently using a different color. I then ordered the rest of the toolbar from most used to least used. We talked through my logic and some other elements of the design. Seemingly satisfied, the UX Designer thanked me for my time and scurried out.

That meeting must have gone well, as I was offered the role. I'd go on to work with that same Designer, now a tech executive, EXTENSIVELY as we launched a new product into the market.

I had come from a tiny shop where I’d literally photoshop the UI of a new feature for my developers to a full-blown unicorn with a dedicated design team. With this change came a whole education on how scaled design teams operate.

Despite the operational difference between these dramatically different-sized technical organizations - some things remained universal.

Somebody had to care about design, and it was my job to make sure those thoughts got implemented. By embracing design thinking, I was then able to get ahead at every stop in my product journey.

What is UX Design

UX Design is really just a subset of Product Design. It’s for this reason that the Design team typically reports to a product person such as a VP of Product, or a Chief Product Officer.

UX specifically is shorthand for User Experience. I call this out because most associate the role primarily with the User Interface(UI) of a specific software tool.

Wireframing the UI however, is but one element of what a good UX designer.

Experience is the key world here. A good product designer wants to understand every facet of a customer interacting with your company. This includes before ever logging into a portal to input credentials.

What is driving a potential user to need a tool?

What are they hoping to accomplish?

What is their first interaction with your company, before they’re active on the platform?

A good designer is as much a researcher/user psychologist as they are a designer.

It’s why at enough scale, the role UX gets split into UI Designers and User Researching. The UI Designers focus on features. Researchers dive deep into the needs and motivations of either current or prospective users.On the subject of scale…

On the subject of scale…

UX On the Spectrum

When a tech company is in its infancy, a dedicated UX designer is not one of the first hires to be made.

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Programming Break

The rest of this article is for paid subscribers to walk through what’s crtical for you to understand about UX Design at a technology company.

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