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
"First-do-no-harm actually goes farther than just not causing harm; it involves striving for the best possible outcome."
Mariah HayEthics in Tech Education: Designing to Provide Opportunity for All
June 14, 2018
"If you can get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry at any time."
Billy CarlsonIdeation tips for Product Managers
December 6, 2022
"Sponsor sessions are free for anyone, whether you paid to attend or not, so invite your coworkers, friends, and family."
Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
September 30, 2021
"The internal champion is the ideal choreographer who builds trust, invests in onboarding and bridges the agency and the client teams."
Séamus ByrneAligning Teams with Choreography
January 8, 2024
"We have over a thousand participants from 61 countries, but remember this is only a sliver of the broader service design community."
Marc FonteijnFirst Insights from the 2025 Service Design Salary(+) Report
December 4, 2024
"Most people think that veterans in America automatically get health care. That is not the case."
Marina MartinLives on the Line: The Stakes of UX at the Scale of Government
June 14, 2018
"Invitational language allows participants to be in charge of a part of the interview, making the exchange authentic."
Bilan HashiThe Tension Between Story Collecting and Story Telling in Research
March 10, 2021
"The COP became the beating heart of our project, enabling quick credibility and community excitement."
Alexia Cohen Adriane AckermanIncreasing Health Equity and Improving the Service Experience for Under-Served Latine Communities in Arizona
December 4, 2024
"AI should augment humans, not replace them, especially given societal disparities between deep and fast thinkers."
Christopher NoesselAI of the now: Designing for Agents
July 31, 2024
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
How can research and operations teams collaboratively evaluate new UXR tools for usability and operational fit?
What are Palchinsky’s principles and how do they apply to scaling empathy in research?
How does dscout ensure ethical use of AI in research while maintaining user control and transparency?