 It's true. Thank you. Product management might be the most difficult job in any organization. It's filled with ill-defined and often unexpected responsibilities that are foisted on your shoulders every day. So a lot of your success is correlated with your approach to relationships. So I'm going to talk a little bit today about the relationship between product management and design. First, a bit about me. I've been helping to build design teams for the past 20 years for global ad agencies, consumer products, and enterprise SaaS businesses. Today, I'm VP of Design and Acting Head of Product Organization at Medium, where our mission is in part to enable the sharing of wisdom that can only be gained from lived experiences. On most weekends, I try to make it out to one of the 92 branches of the New York Public Library. Yes. It's still one of this nation's most undervalued resources. I don't know how far people have traveled today to get here, or if you're tuning in online, but I highly recommend visiting NYPL online or off. So back to the relationship between product managers and designers. This is not a new topic. There's troves of wisdom that you'll find on platforms like Medium, a bunch of fully formed thoughts, conclusions, great advice from industry leaders, and a lot of respectful voices that are talking about successes that they've had in the past, and a lot of good wisdom, like I said, there. And then there's me. I'm the type of person that prefaces all of my documents with works in progress. I feel like it just sets the expectation for the mess that you're going to find below. So today, let's just assume that what we're going to be talking today about is thoughts in progress. Things that I'm thinking about as I think about successes and spectacular failures working with product managers. So here's my theory. Like all relationships, it always helps to understand yourself and understand your partner and what you're bringing to the relationship. But as it relates to design and product management, I think it's most important to think about this along two vectors. So one is how you tend to show up in your role on the spectrum introversion and introversion. And the next vector is your experience with research. So let's dive into introversion and extroversion. So I think even Carl Jung, who introduced these terms to us in the early 1900s, didn't think that people felt squarely into one category or the other. This is a spectrum. It's a continuum. It's how you end up showing up your behaviors, patterns that you end up exhibiting in your particular role. So that's what I'm going to be talking about. And let's talk about this in a quadrant analysis, shall we? Over here on the y-axis, you'll see yourself as a PM and how you tend to show up in your particular role on the spectrum of introversion and extroversion. And on the x-axis, how your design partner tends to show up in their particular role. So let's start with assuming that you and your design partner tend to behave more in introverted ways. And this is interesting because I talked a lot about these ill-defined and unexpected responsibilities that fall on your shoulders. A lot of that is based on the premise that you come to work every day exhibiting extroverted behaviors. And that might not be the case. So I think if you and your design partner tend to be more extroverted, one of the first things you should do is think about expanding that circle. This might start with engaging with your engineering partners. But I'm thinking even beyond that, start engaging some of your product marketing partners, people in success, people that might be in your sales organization to help with some of those tasks that fall squarely on the product manager for some reason. A lot of those things like leading group discussions or facilitating workshops, that sort of thing. So definitely expand that circle and spread out that responsibility. And then don't be afraid and don't be ashamed of being a good note taker. I feel like half my colleagues think that's the only thing that I do. If you tend to think in writing, if you tend to be more reflective about your thinking, there's no reason why you and your design partner can't make best in class internal documentation. And this is going to have outsized value for your organization. So don't be ashamed of it. Take notes. OK, so let's move on to just assuming that maybe your design partner shows up with a little bit more extroverted behaviors. What might you do there? So we talked about responsibilities. I think that naturally lends themselves to being somebody that you can pass the mic to. It's nice to share the spotlight. I know the spotlight usually falls on product managers, but it's nice to share that spotlight occasionally and hear from voices outside of that particular role. So you have a built-in partner here that you can pass the mic to. And then another responsibility that I didn't talk about that product managers sometimes unfairly get saddled with is the idea of building teams, team building, having team bonding activities. And if this happens to be something that's in your design partner's wheelhouse, this could be a natural activity that they'd want to jump on and provide thoughts around. So that's what I would definitely encourage you to do if that happens to be the particular situation that you find yourself in. But let's say the roles are reversed. And you actually show up to your role exhibiting more extroverted behaviors than your design partner. There's a lot of responsibilities that end up falling on designers, too, that assume a lot about how they show up to their particular roles. Speaking up in groups, talking about things in certain settings that might not be entirely comfortable. So one recommendation would be to meet them where they're at. This might end up being commenting or finding sticky notes in Figma or your design platform of choice. Finding asynchronous platforms or your chat messaging systems like Slack to have asynchronous communications or find out where they're most engaged. Meet them where they're at. That will go a long way in helping to build that muscle within your partnership to make sure that everybody's communicating more broadly. And while you're doing that, you're going to start to learn a lot. You're going to learn a lot about the questions that are most important to designers and some things that might not come up in those group meetings that you're kind of expecting or you're wondering if they're thinking that at all. So you're going to start learning these questions. Questions like, is there more research that we could be doing to bolster our assumptions, to mitigate risk? Is what we're building, can it be componentized, added to a design system, and used elsewhere in the product? Are we adding to UX debt? Is there something that we could do to address that? These are the types of questions that you could start to lead. But then over time, it could start to be distributed across the team and questions that people ask no matter what their function is. And that's a benefit to the entire organization. All right, now let's move on to the case that both you and your designer, design partner, show up to the organization exhibiting more extroverted behaviors. What might you do there? Then all these responsibilities that I talked about, you have a built-in tag team partner. And this shows up in a lot of different ways, especially in company presentations. One way that this usually shows up is a product manager might set the business context for something or talk about a problem statement and the designer might walk through a solution or demo a prototype. But these roles aren't locked in either, right? You can spread this out across roles, across each other's roles, so that, again, spreading that spotlight benefits everyone in the organization. And then I would also recommend just getting out of the company, celebrating the success, talking about this outside of your organization. Not only is this great for your company, but this is great for your personal brand too. So get it up to product con. Talk about your relationship with your design partner and how wonderful it's been for your product development in general. Just get outside of the organization. So in general, when evaluating your relationship, considering the spectrum of introversion and extroversion can really help to build that trust between product managers and designers, but also ultimately it could lead to a stronger or more functioning team. So let's talk a little bit about research. When I talk about research, I have a fairly broad definition of research. I'm not just including things that most people think about when they think about like UX research, right? I'm thinking about things you probably take part in before you met your design partner. Things like understanding your competitive landscape, opportunity sizing, digging into your usage metrics, and then being roped into conversations with customers as most product managers end up being roped into. These are all research things as well. These are research activities. And I'm combining that with your traditional UX research. So things like study design, ethnographic studies, usability testing, and facilitating co-creation workshops. These are all research activities. So when I talk about coming to your particular role with research experience, that's what I'm talking about. So again, let's start with assuming that you have very little research experience. Maybe this is your first role as a product manager or you work in an organization that's super siloed and you've never been expected to do a lot of research on your own. Maybe this case might be the same for your design partner. So what might happen then? I'd say the first thing is that there's not a lot of learning that you're gonna have to do. So why not start a book club? So all these books that you're reading by Teresa Torres or Steve Krug, why don't you exchange notes with your design partner? Share insights that you're learning as you're reading and understanding the role of research and what part it can play in product development. And as you're doing that, inevitably, you're gonna find tools and services that you wanna incorporate into your research practice. So the next thing I'd recommend is becoming joint points of contact for these tools and services in their sales or organization to really understand what the capabilities are in the tools, but then also the cost and the value that it could bring to the organization. This will be the foundation of your research practice at the organization. So this is something that would be exceptionally valuable for you and your design partner to engage in. Now let's assume that your design partner comes to their role with a lot more experience. This tends to happen a lot. And I'd say the first piece of advice is something that you should probably do no matter what the situation is, which is involve your design partner a lot earlier in the conversations that you're having in your own head or with others around product strategy. Assume that there is a research solution or to answer some of the questions that you're having as you're working things out. Have your design partner poke holes in your product strategy to make it stronger. This is all stuff that I would recommend anyways, but especially if your design partner is coming into their role with a lot of research experience. And then secondly, as they engage in these research activities, talking with customers, developing research plans, add yourself as a plus one. There's no better way to kind of get practice and learn more about this than seeing it actually in application. So add yourself to these types of activities that your design partner is doing. But let's say the roles are reversed. You're actually coming to the role with a lot more research experience than your design partner. What might happen then? So if you've done a lot of research, one of the things that you've probably realized is how difficult it is to do participant recruitment. And as a product manager, you have access to a lot of things, not only in the organization, but outside of the organization. So I'd say that's something that you can start to lead is participant recruitment for research activities. And then also involve your design partner in this, but you can lead it to start and then exercise that muscle to really demonstrate how this can be wielded. How do you screen potential research participants? What kind of cohorts are you looking at when you think about your audience or your customer base? So that's something that could definitely strengthen this partnership. And then again, all these research activities that you're already doing, whether it's opportunity sizing or understanding your competitive landscape, involve your design partner. Get them to build that exercise, exercise that muscle with research. It's really gonna help their practice, but then the partnership overall. Now let's say you're in a fortunate situation where you and the design partner that you work with are coming to your roles with a lot of research experience. This is an excellent position to be in. And if this happens to be the case, I can think of no better advocates within the organization to think about expanding that research practice. Maybe there isn't even a dedicated researcher right now at your organization. There's no two better advocates for this particular role and expansion than you and your research experience design partner. This also includes the procurement aspect, the tools and services, as I mentioned before, really advocating for that additional spend or investment to the organization. And then also with all the research experience that you both are doing are adding to your particular roles, there's gonna be a lot of outcomes that you have. It's really time to start thinking about a living repository of insights that can help not only your immediate team, but start to help the wider organization as a whole. So when you think about your partnership with designers, it really helps to think about how much research experience you're bringing into the table. Because that's really you and your design partner are the foundation for research practice, not only with your immediate team, but the entire organization. I had a mentor who told me they would never hire a product manager unless at some point during the interview process, they walked over to the whiteboard and started to make a list. So I'm gonna leave you all with a list. Relationships, as I mentioned, it's about listening. It's about understanding what your partner's coming to the table with. But as it relates to product managers and designers, I think the two most important vectors are where each of you shows up on the spectrum of introversion and extroversion and how much research experience you're bringing to your particular roles. Now, listening and understanding your partner, these aren't complicated ideas, but they are extremely hard to do. It's no wonder why most of our organizations are terrible at DEI initiatives. We draw such heavy lines around our particular functions or identities. So consider this activity or this exercise as your first step into building a more inclusive environment where you're working. And then as I mentioned, these are all thoughts in progress. I look forward to continuing this conversation. I'm at Chanovi and on most platforms. Really excited to continue that discussion. And finally, a big shout out to my insanely talented colleague, Helena Zhang and her partner, Tobias Freed, who invented phosphor icons upon which this entire presentation relies. A really big shout out to them. If you're going to be attending Figma's config conference next month, I highly recommend hearing Helena speak. She's going to have a great segment there. Thank you so much. I hope you enjoy the rest of ProductCon.