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
   

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2. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
   Product Management for
   UX People or
   Closing Keynote UX Australia
   August 26, 2022
   

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3. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
   Working with Product Managers
   without Losing Your Mind
   Closing Keynote UX Australia
   August 26, 2022
   

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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
   

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5. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
   Why is a product manager
   telling me what to do?
   

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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
   

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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
   

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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
   

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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
   

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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
    

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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
    

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12. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
    

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13. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
    empathy map exercise 1
    

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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
    

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15. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
    

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16. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
    What makes product managers
    tick?
    

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17. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
    What is a product, anyway?
    

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18. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
    

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19. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
    

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20. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
    

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21. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
    

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22. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
    

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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
    

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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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25. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
    

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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
    

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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.
    

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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
    

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29. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
    Designing Products
    

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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
    

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31. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
    Pain Points
    

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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
    

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33. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
    Use Your Superpowers
    

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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
    

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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
    

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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
    …
    

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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
    

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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
    

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39. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
    Data gives us the what
    ● Funnel optimization
    ● Growth & retention
    ● Customer satisfaction
    ● Likelihood to recommend
    

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40. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
    Design research unearths the why
    

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41. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
    Experiments help
    explore the how
    

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42. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
    Prioritization is in the UX Wheelhouse
    

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43. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
    Prioritization is in the UX Wheelhouse
    

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44. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
    Prioritization is in the UX Wheelhouse
    

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45. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
    Prioritization is in the UX Wheelhouse
    

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46. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
    Prioritization is in the UX Wheelhouse
    

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47. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
    Prioritization is in the UX Wheelhouse
    

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48. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
    Prioritization is in the UX Wheelhouse
    

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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
    

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50. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
    empathy map exercise 2
    

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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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52. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
    

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53. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
    Questions?
    

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54. Christian Crumlish Design in Product
    Thank you!
    

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