Summary
As designers, we have a core sense of our personal values and the value we bring to our users. Thinking about self promotion and finance can feel at odds with those values, but we do need to make sure our colleagues value our work, and that we're adding to the value of our company. By the end of our time together you should have answers to the question "how can I create more business impact, while still feeling like a designer?"
Key Insights
-
•
Personal values deeply influence collaboration tensions between designers and product managers.
-
•
Explicitly listing and reflecting on what you value, tolerate, or dislike can reveal personal blind spots and tolerance limits.
-
•
Aligning on the definition of who the user is critical, especially in large organizations with different teams prioritizing distinct user segments.
-
•
Qualitative design work gains more traction when paired with quantitative impact metrics like conversion increases.
-
•
Users and customers are often different groups; product decisions must consider both empathetically.
-
•
Giving first to teammates and understanding their values is key to gaining support and achieving promotions.
-
•
Recognizing and respecting others’ go-to techniques and methods in product teams fosters better collaboration and context.
-
•
Sales teams may oversell due to commission-based compensation; strong communication channels reduce overpromising.
-
•
Understanding high-level financial concepts like revenue multiples and board dynamics helps demystify growth pressures on companies.
-
•
Knowing which battles to fight depends on importance and urgency; early-stage issues deserve more attention than last-minute changes.
Notable Quotes
"I wrote a blog post called Can We Talk about the PM Designer Tension almost ten years ago when it was something we weren’t allowed to openly discuss."
"You should figure out what you tolerate that other people don’t, because that defines some of your unique motivations."
"In a big organization, everyone might think they’re talking about the same user, but they really are thinking about completely different groups."
"The most important impact was that this qualitative walkthrough increased conversion to starting a project by 50%—numbers sell better than words."
"There’s always someone else thinking about the customer or buyer, which is often a different person from the user we focus on."
"Give first to your teammates; understand what they value and support them to gain their support in return."
"Sometimes different disciplines bring rigid processes and insist on them, which can cause blind spots in problem solving."
"It’s crucial to build strong relationships across functions, like product folks getting to know data and customer support teams."
"Salespeople might sell features we haven’t built yet because their compensation depends on existing sales."
"When you feel like you’re stuck in a ‘to me’ attitude or feeling persecuted, that’s often the drama triangle at work—take a step back."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"If designers spend more time talking about titles than their work, we’re just gazing into our navels."
Adam Cutler Karen Pascoe Ian Swinson Susan WorthmanDiscussion
June 8, 2016
"Many product managers got their roles because they know the business or subject matter, but they don’t know how to manage product development."
Peter MerholzThe Trials and Tribulations of Directors of UX (Videoconference)
July 13, 2023
"In the automotive industry, most safety standards only became mandatory after governments intervened."
Lisa WelchmanCleaning Up Our Mess: Digital Governance for Designers
June 14, 2018
"Investing in sustainability today will yield dividends for future generations."
Vincent BrathwaiteOpener: Past, Present, and Future—Closing the Racial Divide in Design Teams
October 22, 2020
"The greatest sign of success for a teacher is just to be able to say the children are now working as if I did not exist."
Brenna FallonLearning Over Outcomes
October 24, 2019
"Factory owners manipulated people’s time so much that workers were afraid to carry a watch."
Tricia WangSpatial Collapse: Designing for Emergent Culture
January 8, 2024
"Marital status mattered because car buying decisions often involve family members, not just the individual."
Edgar Anzaldua MorenoUsing Research to Determine Unique Value Proposition
March 11, 2021
"Our brains are terrible at operating only on one type of information, whether object-oriented or context-oriented."
Designing Systems at Scale
November 7, 2018
"Randomization is magic — it evenly distributes confounds so the only difference affecting results is your change."
Erin WeigelGet Your Whole Team Testing to Design for Impact
July 24, 2024
