Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

A PM State of Mind: Empathy Mapping Your Product Manager, Pt. 1

Gold
Tuesday, December 6, 2022 • Design in Product 2022
Share the love for this talk
A PM State of Mind: Empathy Mapping Your Product Manager, Pt. 1
Speakers: Aditi Ruiz , Christian Crumlish and Farid Sabitov
Link:

Summary

No doubt you’ve heard of empathy mapping– the simple, yet powerful tool often employed by product teams to attain a deeper understanding of what their customers think and feel in order to deliver a better user experience. In this interactive, two-part activity, we’ll put product managers in the place of the customer, mapping the motivators, external and internal influences, and actions that make them tick. By the end of this exercise, you’ll have gained insights into who your PM is, and how you can best connect with them! Note: Part 2 of this activity will take place during the second half of the day.

Key Insights

  • Empathy mapping product managers helps align teams by walking in their shoes and understanding their external pressures.

  • Product managers often struggle with balancing executive goals and competing priorities without formal authority.

  • Framing product managers as pressured caretakers rather than blockers improves team dynamics.

  • Using live collaborative tools like Big Jump and Speak Jam enhances engagement during empathy exercises.

  • Capturing direct quotes for empathy maps—even assumed ones—adds specificity and clarity to personas.

  • Prioritization conflicts frequently arise because everyone wants something on the roadmap without considering trade-offs.

  • Segmenting planned work into exploratory research, validation, and small fixes helps manage risk and resource allocation.

  • Mapping what product managers see, say, do, and feel reveals tensions often invisible to their teams.

  • Incremental affinity mapping after sessions allows synthesis of collective insights for better decision-making.

  • Explicitly acknowledging the difficulty for product managers to influence without authority helps build empathy and collaboration.

Notable Quotes

"It’s important not to seek control but understanding."

"Product managers carry a lot of pressure and accountability without a lot of ability to force people to do anything."

"Everyone is trying to get something onto the roadmap without worrying about the impact on other priorities."

"This work does not fit our product program."

"We can imagine them worrying about managing competing priorities with product strategy execution."

"Capturing quotes directly—even assumed ones—makes empathy mapping more specific."

"During discovery, it’s important to identify which features require exploration versus those that just need validation or small fixes."

"Sometimes the solution is obvious and doesn’t need a lot of user research time."

"Grouping new features into buckets helps teams prepare for different types of product work appropriately."

"Empathizing with product managers is a great first step towards turning understanding into bigger influence for product and design."

Ask the Rosenbot
Meghan Hellstern
The Next 100 Years of Civic Design: How Might We Better Rise to Meet the Challenges of Today and Tomorrow?
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Jill Fruchter
Inconvenient Insights: The Researcher's Role is to Stay Curious
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Saara Kamppari-Miller
Inclusive Design is DesignOps
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Mandy Drew
What Role(s) Can Research Play in Responsible Design?
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Laureen Kattan
Centering Patients and Clinicians in a Complex Government Ecosystem
2023 • Design in Product 2023
Gold
Erin Weigel
Testing and Experimentation Tools
2026 • Advancing Research 2026
Gold
Dave Malouf
The Future of DesignOps
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Denise Jacobs
Interactive Keynote: Social Change by Design
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Kate Towsey
Participant Recruitment and Management Tools
2026 • Advancing Research 2026
Gold
Megan Blocker
Panel: Excellence in Impact
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Indi Young
Paying Better Attention to the Problem with Indi Young
2019 • Advancing Research Community
Onur Kocan
Understanding the Strategy for Civic Design in a Complex City: Istanbul
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Kevin Bethune
Gatekeepers and Servant Leadership
2020 • DesignOps Community
Alla Weinberg
Cross-Functional Relationship Design
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Katie Johnson
Disrupting generative AI products with just-in-time consumer insights
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Satyam Kantamneni
Do You Have an Experience Vision?
2023 • Enterprise Community

More Videos

Maverick Chan

"Cursor is super transparent about what files it creates and how it builds the logic step by step."

Maverick Chan Claire Lin

From Doodle to Demo: AI as Our Storytelling Partner

October 23, 2025

Stefanie Owens

"Designers can help cross-functional teams learn and grow together through building shared understanding and common language."

Stefanie Owens

Optimizing for Outcomes: Transformation Design in Systems at Scale

December 4, 2024

Melinda Belcher

"Flexibility goes both ways: consultants must adapt to the client’s way, but clients must allow consultants to bring new approaches."

Melinda Belcher

Insider preview of Enterprise Experience 2020

May 28, 2020

Sarah Gallimore

"Evan actually spent less than 15 minutes on the essay, and instead of working on homework, he was writing a letter to his significant other back home in Detroit."

Sarah Gallimore

Inspire Progress with Artifacts from the Future

November 18, 2022

Rebecca Topps

"Using recruitment vendors requires very detailed and specific descriptions of accessibility needs for success."

Rebecca Topps

Planning and conducting remote usability studies for accessibility

September 10, 2020

Mansi Gupta

"Snow clearing policies choose to clear roads before pavements, deeply ignoring responsibilities that are likely to fall on women."

Mansi Gupta

Drawing from Feminist Practice to Make Inclusive Design Operational

September 9, 2022

Greg Petroff

"There are 700 software providers selling to two million agents; most didn’t work until they did."

Greg Petroff

Design is the Differentiator: Bringing New Design Innovations to a Very Antiquated and Very Large Industry

June 9, 2021

Chelsey Glasson

"That holiday party in Medina was eye-opening—tech execs talking about vacation homes, and I thought, I want that world."

Chelsey Glasson

Exit Interview #3: Same as It Ever Was: What Leaving Tech Taught Me About Change

December 17, 2025

Allison Sanders

"Celebrating efforts, even when they’re not wins, helps people keep moving forward."

Allison Sanders

Operating with Purpose

January 8, 2024