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.

Pulse Check: Empathy Mapping Your Product Manager, Pt. 2

Gold
Tuesday, December 6, 2022 • Design in Product 2022
Share the love for this talk
Pulse Check: Empathy Mapping Your Product Manager, Pt. 2
Speakers: Aditi Ruiz , Christian Crumlish and Farid Sabitov
Link:

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."

Ask the Rosenbot
Daniel J. Rosenberg
Designing with and for Artificial Intelligence
2022 • Enterprise Community
Kristen Guth, Ph.D.
Out of the FOG: A Non-traditional Research Approach to Alignment
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Sarah Fathallah
A Typology of Participation in Participatory Research
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Erin Malone
Understanding the past to prepare for the future
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Alla Weinberg
Healing Toxic Stress
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Jon Fukuda
The Big Question about Innovation: A Panel Discussion
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Jane Reid
Self-care in User Research
2020 • Advancing Research Community
Ed Mullen
Designing the Unseen: Enabling Institutions to Build Public Trust
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Sam Ladner
Data Exhaust and Personal Data: Learning from Consumer Products to Enhance Enterprise UX
2016 • Enterprise UX 2016
Gold
Jane Davis
Strategic Shifts and Innovations in User Research: Navigating Challenges and Opportunities
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Fredrik Matheson
First-time users, longtime strategies: Why Parkinson’s Law is making you less effective at work – and how to design a fix.
2016 • Enterprise UX 2016
Gold
Roy Opata Olende
How Zapier Uses ‘All Hands Research’ to Increase Exposure to Users
2020 • Advancing Research Community
Miles Orkin
Creativity and Culture
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
JP Allen
Navigating the UX Tools Landscape
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Verónica Urzúa
The B-side of the Research Impact
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
JD Buckley
COMMUNICATE: Discussion
2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Gold

More Videos

Gina Mendolia

"Once collaboration loops start compounding, they become muscle memory and the structure supports our work."

Gina Mendolia Jasmine Toy

Coordinated collaboration: a Service Design & DesignOps love story

November 19, 2025

Sheryl Cababa

"Freedom dreaming is dreaming about a system that is free from today's oppression."

Sheryl Cababa

Living in the Clouds: Adopting a Systems Thinking Mindset

June 6, 2023

Sarah Brooks

"I was largely wrong about how we thought technology and design would just implement policy."

Sarah Brooks Jennifer Pahlka

Fireside chat with Sarah Brooks and Jen Pahlka

October 21, 2021

Smitha Papolu

"At our sprint meetings three times a week, we discuss if a piece of feedback has already been prioritized or needs attention."

Smitha Papolu Nova Wehman-Brown Melissa Schmidt Adam Menter

Theme 3 Discussion

June 4, 2019

Sylvie Abookire

"If you can’t reach the main person in conflict, build relationship with someone who influences them."

Sylvie Abookire Susan Abookire Caitlyn Nalder

A Civic Designer's Guide to Mindful Conflict Navigation

November 17, 2022

Chris Geison

"Participatory research always seems like something you're either doing or not doing — more often than not, not doing."

Chris Geison

Theme Two Intro

March 28, 2023

Robert Reimann

"Enterprise software mainly serves corporate goals but rarely serves people goals very well within the products."

Robert Reimann

Taming Design Complexity with UX Models

June 8, 2017

Daniel Gloyd

"Jamie Foxx spent 14 hours with his eyes closed to inhabit Ray Charles’ world."

Daniel Gloyd

Designing From the Inside Out: How Method Acting Can Inspire Design Research

February 12, 2026

Jamika Burge

"Turn ethnography inward and learn how your peers and leaders make decisions before you try to use data to influence those decisions."

Jamika Burge

Embracing change: Navigating shifting landscapes with compassion and agency

March 11, 2025