How Can Product Managers and UXers Help Each Other (and Why are Product Folks so Annoying Sometimes)?
Summary
Product managers and UXers do adjacent but different jobs. We'll talk about scope, celebrating successes, and understanding each other better. Stick around to join the conversation and ask Rich your questions during our post-session Q+A, moderated by Christian Crumlish.
Key Insights
-
•
UX teams largely lack direct representation at the executive decision-making table compared to product management.
-
•
Product managers serve as crucial advocates translating UX work into business language executives understand.
-
•
Executives mostly care about outcomes tied to revenue or measurable business impact, not detailed processes.
-
•
Stakeholder demand often exceeds team capacity by 20 to 30 times, forcing product managers to reject most requests.
-
•
Pie charts effectively communicate trade-offs to executives, highlighting resource allocation dilemmas.
-
•
Product managers juggle numerous distractions and interruptions, which can make them appear scattered or annoyed.
-
•
Collaborative research involving product, UX, and engineering fosters shared understanding and stronger team cohesion.
-
•
UX must learn to speak the language of money and metrics to raise visibility and gain budget support.
-
•
Consumer-facing companies tend to prioritize UX more highly than complex enterprise organizations.
-
•
Assuming good intent between product managers, UX, and stakeholders prevents adversarial dynamics and improves collaboration.
Notable Quotes
"If you really want to make things happen, you need to be in the room where it happens."
"UX really doesn’t have a seat at the table yet and that has some implications for us."
"Executives don’t care about process or how we got there, they care about what happened and why it matters."
"Product managers are going to have to say no to roughly 95% of everything that comes in."
"If you want to make one slice bigger you have to make another slice smaller — executives hate the exclusive or concept."
"Product managers learn to attach at the end of every sentence something about money — no money, no attention."
"We try to figure out who needs to be in the room to hear it — research is how we build team cohesion."
"Most product managers are wide, most UX and engineers are deep — that’s just the nature of the roles."
"Assume good intent, start with empathy — we’re all doing hard things we can't do well alone."
"Roadmap amnesia is real — every new thing wipes out weeks of priorities from stakeholders’ minds."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Seeing product managers and designers’ aha moments when they realize how impactful the tool is was great."
Taylor Jennings Joe Nelson Alex KnollRepository Retrospective: Learnings from Introducing a Central Place for UX Research
March 9, 2022
"Anticipation involves preparatory actions to manage uncertainty about future conditions."
Nicole AleongFuture Orientations to Everyday Life: Futures Anthropology as a Methodology
March 26, 2024
"Innovation is not a spice that you sprinkle on and suddenly magical new things come out."
Jeff GothelfInnovation Studios: the Engines of Enterprise Experimentation
May 14, 2015
"Tools are great, but they do not solve all problems; training and understanding the why behind accessibility is essential."
Saara Kamppari-MillerDesignOps for Inclusive Design and Accessibility
May 26, 2022
"If you don’t have the basics taken care of, infinite promotions and ping pong tables are just noise."
Tess DixonC'mon Get Happy
September 29, 2021
"Being intentional about how we spend our time is the purest manifestation of our values and our value."
Liam ThurstonWhy Your Design Team Is Quitting, And How To Fix It
June 10, 2022
"Leadership doesn’t only mean managing; it can be mentoring, product leadership, or technical influence."
Ian SwinsonDesigning and Driving UX Careers
June 8, 2016
"Ratios always start on the premise of spreading people too thin, which is not a great way to get success."
Leisa ReicheltOpening Keynote: Operating in Context
November 7, 2018
"Consistent, gentle support over time creates deeply loyal adopters."
Rachael Greene Alison DavisBuilding a Design Ops Practice that Really Works (Most of the Time)
October 2, 2025