1. How PMs and UX Designers Collaborate - A Comprehensive Guide

In this module, we'll explore how Product Managers (PMs) and UX Designers (UX) work together to create valuable products. Both roles are crucial to the success of a product, and their collaboration can determine how well a product meets user needs and business goals.

Introduction: The Role of the UX Designer

In a traditional product development process, many companies follow a pseudo-agile or waterfall approach. This process often starts with top-down ideas, where business cases are built to justify decisions. Stakeholders present requirements, and only after significant planning does the design phase begin, followed by development, testing, and deployment.

In this outdated model, the role of UX is limited, often reduced to just visual design. The UX designer in this process is tasked with creating interfaces and focusing on visual elements like pixel-perfect designs. While visual design is important, this model strips away the true depth of UX, which is about validating solutions with users and mitigating usability risks. This approach leads to suboptimal product outcomes because UX is brought in too late, and its involvement is superficial.

A New Approach to UX

In a modern, user-centered approach, UX is deeply integrated into the entire product lifecycle, especially in the discovery phase. Rather than seeing design as just a service to make things look good, design should be leveraged to discover the right product to build, as Marty Cagan emphasizes in his book Inspired.

This new approach emphasizes that UX is an active participant in product discovery. The discovery phase involves testing ideas, validating assumptions, and figuring out how the product will deliver value. Once a clear understanding of what needs to be built is established, the focus moves to the delivery phase, where the team executes and builds the product.

Discovery vs. Delivery: Time Allocation

In this new model, PMs and UX designers spend the majority of their time—about 80% to 90%—in the discovery phase. This is where they work closely to understand user needs, test hypotheses, and validate solutions before any significant investment in development. Conversely, engineers and tech leads may spend more time in the delivery phase, around 70% to 80%, focusing on building and shipping the product.

However, in many companies today, PMs and UX are still focused more on delivery than discovery. This creates a gap where products might be built without fully understanding if they meet the user's needs.

PM and UX: Best Friends Forever

PMs and UX designers are peers who should work closely together. They are co-owners of the discovery phase and share a common goal: to build products that deliver value to users.

By working together, PMs and UX can bridge the gap between user needs and business goals, creating solutions that work for both.

Core Responsibilities of UX Designers

The UX designer brings a unique set of skills to the table. They are responsible for several key areas, including:

  1. Prototyping and User Testing: Validating the value of ideas through prototypes and gathering feedback from users.
  2. Interaction Design: Creating the user flow and experience, thinking through all edge cases, and designing how users interact with the product.
  3. Information Architecture: Structuring content in a way that makes sense to users, ensuring they can find what they need easily.
  4. Visual Design: Creating the look and feel of the product, ensuring it’s both aesthetically pleasing and functional.
  5. User Research: Conducting research to understand user needs, pain points, and behaviors, ensuring that the product solves the right problems.

Business Goals and Problem Spaces

Every product initiative should start with clear business objectives. These can be defined through tools like OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) or KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Once the desired outcomes are clear, PMs and UX designers can work together to explore opportunities in the problem space.

This involves understanding the key problems the product is trying to solve. Tools like Job to be Done, Design Thinking, Design Sprints, and User Research help teams identify these opportunities and ensure that their solutions address real user needs.

Validating Solutions through Experiments

Once opportunities are identified, it’s time to brainstorm and test solutions. One of the main responsibilities during this phase is to validate solutions with minimal resource investment. UX designers and PMs can collaborate on several types of experiments, including:

The goal of these experiments is to gather feedback and insights before committing to full development.

PM, UX, and Engineers: Working Together

While PMs and UX designers lead the discovery phase, developers and engineers play a crucial role in the delivery phase. This doesn’t mean they are excluded from discovery—far from it. Engineers bring valuable insights into what’s technically feasible, ensuring that ideas generated during discovery are realistic and can be built efficiently.

The collaboration between PMs, UX designers, and engineers is essential for creating a successful product. Once the right product idea is validated, all three roles must work together to build and iterate on the solution.

Conclusion: A Unified Team for Success

For a product to succeed, PMs and UX designers must work closely together throughout the discovery phase. They are the bridge between user needs and business goals, ensuring that the product solves the right problems in a way that delivers value.

Through experimentation, prototyping, and constant validation, they mitigate risks and guide the product from concept to reality. By collaborating effectively, PMs and UX designers ensure that products are not only usable and desirable but also valuable to both users and the business.