Transcript User Experience and Product Management: Two Peas in

User Experience and
Product Management:
Two Peas in the Same Pod?
Jeff Lash
STL>UX 2006
jefflash.com
[email protected]
What is user experience?
What is product management?
UX
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PM
Job Posting #1
“You must enjoy spending time in the market to
understand (customers’) problems”
Product Manager
(sample from PragmaticMarketing.com)
Job Posting #2
“Understanding user wants, needs and
expectations ... Working with the Customer
Insights department to plan, execute and analyze
quantitative and qualitative research ... Defining
user requirements”
Manager, Usability and Information Architecture
(Circuit City)
Job Posting #3
“Lead researching, understanding and passionately
advocating target customer requirements,
defining feature sets, and developing and
communicating product requirements.”
Senior Product Manager
(Adobe)
Job Posting #4
“Define product requirements and plans that meet
the strategic goals of the business. Propose and
lead appropriate project definition activities.
Work with project team members to define
discovery methods to be used, including
competitive audits, user research, user scenarios,
etc.”
Information Architect, Site and Marketing
(Walmart.com)
Job Posting #5
“Specifying market requirements for current and
future products by conducting market research
supported by on-going visits to customers and
non-customers.”
Product Manager
(sample from PragmaticMarketing.com)
Job Posting #6
“Gather user and market insights, analyze product
metrics, articulate requirements, and launch new
features … Define global product requirements,
including writing scope requests, product
requirements documents (PRDs)”
Senior Product Manager
(eBay)
Job Posting #7
“Drive research & customer analysis … run
consumer product advisory groups”
Product Manager
(Yahoo!)
Job Posting #8
“Understanding target audiences’ needs, tasks, and
goals”
User Experience Lead
(Avenue A / Razorfish)
Job Posting #9
“You will be responsible for understanding the
client interaction with the product and their workflow. You will bring this understanding to the
table and work closely with Sales, Marketing,
Product Management and end users to help
enhance the usability of our application.”
Product Manager – Usability
(Gridstone Research)
Job Posting #10
“Work directly with customers to understand their
goals”
Project Manager
(Endeca)
UX
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neither, really
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If product management is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:DVader.jpeg
… then we’re all
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Stormtrooper.jpg
So what’s the difference?
When I describe what I do to people who have not
encountered the term “interaction design”
before, I say first that “I look at users’ needs,
figure out what kind of product best addresses
them, and create a behavior specification for that
product which the development team then uses
as requirements to drive their work.”
Often people say, “In my organization, we call that
a ‘product manager.’”
Source: Where do product managers fit?; Jonathan Korman
http://www.cooper.com/content/insights/newsletters/2004_issue03/Where_do_product_managers_fit.asp
Why the confusion + conflict?
• Resources
– Often the appropriate resources are not available for
research, design, and documentation, so Product
Managers fill the role
• Skills
– Many product manages have (or think they have) the
skills to complete these tasks to some degree
• Control
– Product Managers are ultimately accountable to the
success of the product, while others often are not
– Misplaced accountability can lead to micromanaging
How it should work
• Product Managers
– Responsible for overall success of the product
– Includes requirements and design, but also
marketing, pricing, technical aspects, portfolio, etc.
– “President” of the product
• User Experience Practitioners
– Responsible for ensuring product is designed to meet
users needs and be easy to use
– Objective advocate for user needs and good design
– Member of the product “Cabinet” (along with
Marketing, Sales, Development, etc.)
Source: Putting people together to create new products; Jonathan Korman
http://www.cooper.com/newsletters/2001_09/putting_people_together_to_create_new_products.htm
So why doesn’t that
always work?
Product Managers should:
• Be market-focused
• Conduct research with customers and users
• Create a product and portfolio strategy
• Manage product roadmap and lifecycle
• Create and manage requirements
• Develop a go-to-market plan
• Be more strategic than tactical
Instead, Product Managers often:
• Are internally-focused
• Don’t conduct research themselves (if at all)
• Don’t create a product or portfolio strategy
• Focus on the short-term plan
• Create and manage specifications
• Throw information over the wall to Marketing
• Are more tactical than strategic
User Experience Practitioners should:
• Understand business context
• Clarify roles and responsibilities and drive for
understanding with team members
• Advocate for a user centered process but
understand other factors involved
• Focus on end goals and how deliverables can
help achieve those goals
Instead, UX practitioners often:
• Ignore, do not care about, or are not interested in
business context
• Assume others understand the UX roles,
responsibilities, and deliverables
• Only focus on the “ideal” UCD process and do not
acknowledge other forces at work
• Focus more on deliverables and process than the
end product
How can UX work better with PMs?
• Take the initiative – don’t wait to be asked
• Make strong recommendations
• Help PMs understand decisions they need to
make and help them make them
• Seek to understand the “big picture” – market,
competition, sales process, strategy, etc.
• Don’t divide user needs and business needs -these should be one in the same
• Get them out of the office to meet with users!
• Ask Product Managers, “How can I help you meet
your goals?”
So you want to be a Product
Manager?
CEO
Multiple
Disciplines
Product Manager
Business Analyst
Tactical
Strategic
C-level functional
managers (e.g. CFO, CTO)
Project Manager
UCD Manager
User Researcher
Software Developer
UI Designer
Software Architect
Single
Discipline
What you’ll get to do
• Focus product strategy on customer and end user
needs
• Help ensure user focus throughout entire product
– not just the design, but communications,
policies – the entire “customer experience”
• Work with marketing, sales, and other
stakeholders to effectively communicate unique
benefits of your product
• Have opportunity to provide input on strategies
for other products within the organization
What you’ll have to do
• Attempt to influence and coordinate people over
whom you have no actual (read: org chart) power
• Mediate disputes between stakeholders
• Make and justify tough decisions, which
invariably will upset many key allies
• Communicate with upper management and be
accountable for product decisions
What you won’t get to do
• Pore over the details of a design
• Make recommendations
• Pass the buck
• Blend in to the scenery
• Answer with “It depends…”
Product Management Resources
• Blogs
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Cauvin
Creating Passionate Users
Jeremy Zawodny's blog
Managing Product Development
Michael on High-Tech Product Management & Marketing
Pragmatic Marketing
Requirements Defined
Silicon Valley Product Group
The Product Management View
Tyner Blain
• More reading
– Where do product managers fit?
– http://del.icio.us/tag/productmanagement
• Organizations
– Product Development and Management Association (PDMA)
– Association of International Product Marketing and Product Management
(AIPMM)
Broaden your horizons
Closing thought…
A good product requires a good user
experience. And a good user experience requires
the close collaboration of product management
and design.
Source: Product vs. Design; Silicon Valley Product Group
http://www.svproduct.com/SVPG/BLOG/6D28BD5A-844F-4046-98DD-64CFE7939E5B.html
Questions?
Jeff Lash
STL>UX 2006
jefflash.com
[email protected]