UXA2022 Day 2; Christian Crumlish - Product Management for UX People

Would you like to take on a new role as a product manager or product leader, work more effectively with product managers as a UX practitioner in a product-led organization., or reframe your UX design orientation (and reinvent your career!) in terms of digital product design writ large?

User Experience is arguably the best foundation for becoming a Product Manager, but it will only get you part of the way there. So, what are the UX-related skills, complementary technology, and business expertise you’d need to master to succeed as a product manager?

Learn how to leverage your design “superpowers” and user experience training to thrive in a product-centric workplace, achieve better outcomes in terms of product UX, develop more efficient teams, and foster better work environments.

Transcript

1. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Product Management for UX People Closing Keynote UX Australia August 26, 2022
2. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Product Management for UX People or Closing Keynote UX Australia August 26, 2022
3. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Working with Product Managers without Losing Your Mind Closing Keynote UX Australia August 26, 2022
4. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Today • Why is a Product Manager Telling Me What to Do? ◦ empathy map exercise part one • What Makes PMs tick? • Pain Points • Use Your UX Superpowers ◦ empathy map exercise part two • Questions
5. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Why is a product manager telling me what to do?
6. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Why is a Product Manager Telling Me What to Do? 6 What Product? ODI All-Team Huddle May 21, 2020
7. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Why is a Product Manager Telling Me What to Do? 7 What Product? ODI All-Team Huddle May 21, 2020
8. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Why is a Product Manager Telling Me What to Do? 8 What Product? ODI All-Team Huddle May 21, 2020
9. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Why is a Product Manager Telling Me What to Do? 9 What Product? ODI All-Team Huddle May 21, 2020
10. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Why is a Product Manager Telling Me What to Do? 10 What Product? ODI All-Team Huddle May 21, 2020
11. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Why is a Product Manager Telling Me What to Do? 11 What Product? ODI All-Team Huddle May 21, 2020
12. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
13. Christian Crumlish Design in Product empathy map exercise 1
14. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Five minutes of empathy 1. Download Dave Gray’s empathy map canvas PDF (someone may also paste the link into the Zoom chat) 2. Open it in your preferred tool for annotation or an digital canvas app 3. Think about the product manager you interact with the most 4. Review the prompts in each section 5. Write your best understanding of the answers to each question
15. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
16. Christian Crumlish Design in Product What makes product managers tick?
17. Christian Crumlish Design in Product What is a product, anyway?
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23. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Making decisions • Roadmap • Direction • Which features • When to release • What to fix • Have to get used to being wrong a lot
24. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Build Measure Learn build measure learn build measure learn build “Build, measure, learn” is a simple but powerful model that lies at the heart of lean product management, with its bias to action and emphasis on learning and experimentation.
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26. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Cajoling engineers • Product people need first-class technical chops and fluency with the software materials they work on. • This includes comfort with data, science, statistics, and probability. • Product people are experimenters, and use data to find pathways to better customer experiences. • Great product people know how to persuade, cajole, inspire, and lead developers without being their boss. • Product engineers are product people too What Product? ODI All-Team Huddle May 21, 2020
27. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Prioritization and focus • Product management involves constantly choosing among possible directions. • Product people help keep everyone focused and face the challenges that need to be overcome without flinching • Complexity will always find its way into your work so avoid adding any optional complexity. • Rely on product people to help make the most difficult decisions about where to invest your precious resources. • More on this in a bit.
28. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Persuasion and diplomacy • Product people are responsible for the success of teams without the authority to boss those teams around. • This requires collaboration and orchestration skills that accommodate a wide variety of perspectives, skills, experiences, and even jargon. • Product people dedicate a large portion of their energy to communication and overcommunication. • They also need to develop their empathy in order to effectively finesse the forces that pull different team members in multiple directions. What Product? ODI All-Team Huddle May 21, 2020
29. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Designing Products
30. Christian Crumlish Design in Product What design and research bring to the product table • Discovery and exploration of pain points, unmet needs, and opportunities • Creative problem solving methods • User understanding and synthesis • Getting from the whats of data to the whys of your customers • Systems thinking, contextual framing skills and concept modeling • Information architecture and content strategy • Prioritization methods and practices • Art, visualization, communication
31. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Pain Points
32. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Common pain points on product team • It can be a struggle to influence product direction (before it’s too late) • Flow and definition of requirements can be contentious • Design & research work can feel like speaking a different language • Prioritization can be opaque or disjointed • The reality of how product teams work doesn’t always match ideals • Both product management and design & research have unexamined assumptions about each other’s roles • Lack of thorough alignment leads to friction in day-to-day work even when leadership supports cooperation
33. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Use Your Superpowers
34. Christian Crumlish Design in Product UX Superpowers • Creative Problem Solving / Art / Communication • User research / Synthesis / Systems Thinking • IA & Content Strategy • Data: Getting from the What to the Why • Prioritization is in Your Wheelhouse • Contextual Framing
35. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Turf and timing are creative problems • Negotiate • Distinguish involvement from decision • Share your assumptions • Sort out tasks • Visualize workflows together • Capture ambiguities • Escalate when needed • Iterate
36. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Every team is different… Product UX Product-market fit Revenue modeling Data analysis Sprint planning Roadmapping … Branding Visual Design Prototyping Service design Interaction design Usability testing … Research synthesis Stakeholder facilitation Feature prioritization Concept modeling User stories …
37. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Ally on user research and customer understanding • Accept that frames, goals, and questions may differ • Align whenever possible on product discovery and user research plans • Pool all signals and insights • Contribute to synthesis • Help define entire systems • Visualize and model concepts • Develop a shared understanding of customer journeys • Provide useful artifacts to assist PMs in gaining stakeholder buy-in
38. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Capture and model the system in words and pictures • Visualize and model concepts • Contribute IA mastery to the product definition • Define and clarify the content that comprises 80% of the UI and the surrounding concepts
39. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Data gives us the what • Funnel optimization • Growth & retention • Customer satisfaction • Likelihood to recommend
40. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Design research unearths the why
41. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Experiments help explore the how
42. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Prioritization is in the UX Wheelhouse
43. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Prioritization is in the UX Wheelhouse
44. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Prioritization is in the UX Wheelhouse
45. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Prioritization is in the UX Wheelhouse
46. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Prioritization is in the UX Wheelhouse
47. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Prioritization is in the UX Wheelhouse
48. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Prioritization is in the UX Wheelhouse
49. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Optimize the experience of working with you (and your team) • Apply your user research skills to examining the experience your product manager colleagues have working with you ◦ Understand them deeply as users ◦ Figure out what motivates them ◦ Unearth what frightens them • Learn the language they use and how to frame experiences in those terms • Study the results of each effort, learn from them, and actively iterate on process, framing, and communication • Use all your powers to design the experience of collaboration just as you would craft a design for one of your customers
50. Christian Crumlish Design in Product empathy map exercise 2
51. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Empathy update gut-check 1. Get or make a clean copy of the empathy map canvas 2. Prepare to annotate it, as in part one of the exercise 3. Think about the same product manager 4. Review the prompts in each section 5. Once again try to write your best understanding of the answers to each 6. Compare the two maps 7. Make note of any new, different, or changed perceptions you may now have
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53. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Questions?
54. Christian Crumlish Design in Product Thank you!