Summary
We’ve spent a full-day exploring the challenges and opportunities in product/UX collaborations, and looking at those challenges and opportunities not only from a UX perspective, but also from a PM point of view. In this follow-up session, we’ll look back to the morning’s empathy mapping session, and take a beat to reflect those two roles and how they relate to one another.
Key Insights
-
•
Empathy mapping with large groups can reveal nuanced insights into product managers’ daily realities and pressures.
-
•
Product managers often compromise on feature usability to meet hard deadlines, intending to iterate later.
-
•
Cross-functional collaboration challenges for product managers include balancing meetings with execution time.
-
•
Synthesizing user research insights into accessible formats remains a key challenge for boosting product team decision-making.
-
•
Visibility and traceability of work via tools like Jira are essential for coordination between UX and product teams.
-
•
Metrics and impact are high-pressure areas where product managers feel accountability for product success in business terms.
-
•
Empathy must be thoughtful and evidence-based, acknowledging the limitations of sensory metaphors that can exclude some team members.
-
•
The relationship between UX and product managers benefits from ongoing dialogue, trust-building, and shared strategic goals.
-
•
Similar empathy mapping exercises could be extended to engineers and sales teams to foster broader organizational understanding.
-
•
Organizational leadership should facilitate workflows that enable hybrid vigor, helping diverse roles collaborate productively rather than compete.
Notable Quotes
"Product managers are trying to keep up with deadlines but often launch hard-to-use features hoping to make them better later."
"We put product managers at the center to map what they see, say, do, and also think and feel based on our collective experiences."
"It’s really hard for product managers to find time for actually doing the work because of all the meetings."
"Synthesizing user feedback in a way that’s easy for product managers to consume is one of the hot topics right now."
"Empathy mapping uses sensory metaphors but can exclude people with disabilities if we’re not careful."
"We have to ask how confident we are in our empathy—whether it’s evidence-based or just assumptions."
"Product and UX ought to be allies presenting a united front at the table, not competing for supremacy."
"We each bring different skills, temperaments, and interests, so there’s no one perfect relationship model between roles."
"Taking a pause to reflect on what our counterparts are experiencing can help us partner better, rather than react defensively."
"Leadership needs to design workflows that favor hybrid vigor instead of ambiguous relationships that frustrate everyone."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Multipurpose communication means the same insights might be presented differently depending on the audience’s needs and what outcome you want."
Molly FargotsteinMultipurpose Communication & UX Research Marketing
September 12, 2019
"We wanted a living network of knowledge so yesterday’s insight connects to today’s evidence and tomorrow’s learning."
Matt DuignanAtomizing Research: Trend or Trap
March 30, 2020
"The State Department removed burdensome medical requirements, allowing people to self-attest their gender on passports."
Amy Paris Danielle ThierryDelivering Equity: Government Services for All Ages, Languages, Sexual Orientations, and Gender Identities
December 9, 2021
"You’re constantly training people and optimizing protocols even after successful implementation."
Sofia QuinteroBeyond Tools: The Messy Business of Implementing Research Repositories
March 10, 2022
"When we have genuine relationships and we trust each other, it leads to so much goodness."
Dorelle RabinowitzThe Magic Word is Trust
June 15, 2018
"People say no, and it sucks the energy out of the room. Instead, offer three ideas to keep the ball moving."
Greg PetroffDesign is the Differentiator: Bringing New Design Innovations to a Very Antiquated and Very Large Industry
June 9, 2021
"We cannot ignore the ethical implications that come with the power of AI."
Vincent BrathwaiteOpener: Past, Present, and Future—Closing the Racial Divide in Design Teams
October 22, 2020
"If you can draw that picture and tell that story, it just makes it easier for everybody to talk about how it's really going to be used."
Sarah FlamionComplex Problem? Add Clarity by Combining Research and Systems Thinking
March 31, 2020
"Our journey into Wonderland has been wild, wonderful, and requires constant reflection and looking outward for inspiration."
Carla Casariego Sarah SpencerDesignOps in Wonderland
October 24, 2019
