Design Doodles

Reflections on reading: Product, Design and AI by Marty Cagan and Bob Baxley (https://www.svpg.com/product-design-and-ai/)

The article describes the specific roles of the product manager and the product designer, what each function’s responsibility is, and how they work together with the help of GenAI. While reading, I’m gaining thoughts and ideas from my experience designing product together with product management over many years working for a large corporate organization.

Who is the spider in the web?

In my long-time experience, the designer was always following the product manager. The product manager is the spider in the web for the product in development, the designer was only one string (or a few strings) in that web. But.. the designer is a spider in a much bigger ecosystem. As a design function, we span multiple webs (e.g.. products), we are connected to larger programs (e.g. design systems), and beyond that, we seek to share and inspire other design ‘spiders’. The two worlds live next to each other but do pose a certain imbalance, there is a difference that hampers evolution.

In the article the product manager has a high-level view (“the product manager is not an expert on all … aspects of her own product”), while the designer (and other functions) have a more specialist view (“recognize that very few product designers or engineers have this type or depth of knowledge”). While not clear from the article, it is my expectation the generalist and specialist roles will need to be more interchangeable and more fluid than it currently is.

The article does nicely point both functions are necessary, though I’m doubtful about the reason why this would not be the case. Is there a battle for AI technology ‘ownership’? Is there a undercurrent where this would (finally) give us a reason to get rid ‘of the other’? Often with new technologies, people claim ownership trying to become ahead of others. With this technology I’m advocating for a level-playing field, where we are all equals (or more equal) now, and by standing together with our human intelligence and unique insights, so we can apply critical thinking against the power of the tool(s). As the article rightfully says “we need to focus on the critical thinking and judgement that the product manager and product designer each need to bring to the team.”

It is true that functions that create products, have more or less involvement during certain development timelines of the product. Engineers typically come in later, a product manager sets out the requirements at the beginning, user researches start with those requirements and discover the real human problems, UX designers conceptualize and prototype it, usability engineers test the products in a later stage of development, etc.

In the UX process that I have recently created you see this coming back as well, as this is how we traditionally do things; we all have our responsibilities and tasks along the process timeline, and it is very hard to change due to expectations, culture and planning. It is even hard to define a common ground we all work towards as one team! A great product with a great user experience should be our shared goal, but often we see others or ourselves being responsible for and driving a singular output. I’m not convinced yet if GenAI will democratize this process, it is already hard to bring functions into one process, as each one has their own goals and ways of working, let alone rewrite the script all together and let a technology drive equality.

A level-playing field

Nevertheless, the article describes clearly different responsibilities between the functions. In an ideal world, everyone would chime in on a level-playing field bringing in their unique perspectives. But we also know that separated responsibilities also invoke ownership, an ‘us vs others’. As a designer I know this only too well, it is never great to hear people giving their non-expert opinions about a design.

What I liked about working in my own GenAI project is that we all we’re on the same boat and none had a clear role when discussing directions or decisions when together. Surely, everyone brought in their perspective, and even the AI technology was bringing solutions, but we all were designers and product manager at the same time and we were all discussing launch plans and regulatory issues.

The best direction I see now, is an equal playing field when working together, and then go your own way in your expertise, working out what is expected from you, and bring it back (asap, if it is AI it should be faster!) and collaborate again as equals. Basically, being a generalist when collaborating, and a specialist when developing next steps. However that it is a mindset change – if you bring in design solutions, others will see you as the designer. Will AI level this playing field? I’m not sure yet, it is a human thing of culture and discipline, though I also see the democratization of knowledge and capabilities. Basically, I can write a product marketing brief as well 🙂

Both functions (product manager and designer) are meant to understand and get close with the intended customer, though the questions and understanding we (want to) have are for different reasons. I also know this often overlaps, and sometimes fight with each other. Multiple functions ‘go out there’ and bring in their understanding of the customer, and because of different goals we see often challenges in understanding each other. Bringing in all those perspectives and having a tool that summarises that as one big block of knowledge, but also provides output that is relevant for your function with connections to other data you would not have known or asked for, would be fantastic.

Or… will it overburden everyone? E.g. is it better to stay a specialist and let others be a generalist? The article is not always clear about this, but in the end it does say what I also stated before. We all bring in our unique perspectives and unique goals, but the tools are similar and the collaboration with these tools can enable a true collaboration on an equal level. It will be important to have, for the time being, orchestrators and organizers that support that transition.

Everybody becomes a creator

This conflicts somewhat with the tendency to have everyone become a creator of content and remove middle management as pure organizers, managers or orchestrators. In this trend, everyone should become a “product creator”, where product manager also become ‘do-ers’. While reading this article and the definitions for product managers, it seems they are already ‘doing’ a lot. But in my experience, I notice more time is spent on overview, connections, and demonstration. There is also more time spent on sharing than on active creation while ‘discovering the product.

This could be my limited perspective. I never worked as a product manager. They do seem to be more orchestrators rather than actively creating. There is definitely an opportunity to not have the discovery & prototyping phase only be done by the designer, where currently the product manager ‘judges’ if it meets his/her criteria, but do it themselves or together with the designer. Now it sometimes seems that a designer is the (Human Intelligence) tool for the Product manager.

Note, if this becomes a common ground, this does start to ‘scratch’ with the traditional role and responsibility division. Imagine a ready made prototype by a product manager, asking the designer to further work on it and a developer to make it production ready (e.g. clean it up). The question comes back to; do we want shared ownership and a mindset change, or will some function claim (main) ownership where others follow?

Conclusion

In the end, the conclusion “Our belief is that when generative AI tools are used by people with strong product and design sense, we can not only build the product faster than ever (delivery), we can figure out the right product to build faster than ever (discovery).” is generic but it does hold the promise we need each unique skills and strengths to build what our users need. I do miss the AI tools support in this particular article, as how it can emphasize en lift all people involved in product creation.