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
"Please keep your questions within the speaker’s thread so we don’t lose track of them in the busy chat."
Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
September 9, 2022
"Most heavy website performance issues come from videos, images, JavaScript, and fonts."
Nick LewisDesigning and building low-carbon websites independently
November 18, 2025
"Empathy with colleagues means knowing what keeps them up at night, not just their job title."
Ryan RumseyBusiness Influence Without Losing Your Soul
January 14, 2021
"It doesn’t matter what the insight is if no one does anything with it."
Chris ChapoData Science and Design: A Tale of Two Tribes
May 13, 2015
"Amazon deploys new code into production into the hands of customers once every second."
Jeff GothelfWho does what by how much?
November 20, 2025
"I’ve become a subversive designer because I’m now considered a product leader using prioritization at the organizational level."
Harry MaxPriority Zero: Some Things are More Equal than Others
June 9, 2016
"We called it 'Come See For Yourself' — kind of like following me home, but slightly less creepy."
Jesse ZolnaInviting the Whole Org to Come See For Yourself
March 30, 2020
"Craft isn't gonna help you feel more fulfilled, influential or powerful. It cannot meet that need."
Jess GrecoClaiming your power: Practical tools for amplifying your unique voice
March 13, 2025
"When I use the word inclusion, I’m usually using it in conjunction with the term inclusive design."
Saara Kamppari-MillerTheme Three Intro
September 9, 2022