Without these four skills, you are embarrassed to say that you are a product developer

The importance of design in the tech industry is so obvious these days that it almost feels cliché to mention it again. Whether it’s consumer products (Airbnb, Uber, Dropbox) or business products (Slack), there are plenty of companies that exemplify the value that great design can bring. It is no wonder that this year more than six venture capital firms in Silicon Valley have extended olive branches to designers, inviting them to become their partners. This is an unprecedented move.

The challenge for product managers working on web and mobile products today is to figure out what “design” means in the context of the role.

In our company, we often hear product managers ask questions like this: "I am a product manager, but how important are design skills to me? What design skills do I need to learn?" Below I will try to share our experience with you.

What exactly does a product manager do?

Before we figure out what design skills a product manager needs to learn, we first need to figure out the main responsibilities of the product manager role. As the "owner of the product", the product manager is responsible for all aspects of product execution. He needs to be able to do the following:

Have a comprehensive understanding of all aspects of the market and competitors: determine market segmentation, product pricing, product positioning, etc.

Understand user needs, pain points and goals

Develop strategy/vision for product development based on responsibility to users and the market

Translate this product strategy into short-term and long-term product roadmaps, prioritizing features based on importance and time to implement.

Define a set of business and product requirements and communicate product strategy with different stakeholders

Assist and support teams related to building your product: business department, development team, design team, sales team, marketing team, technical support team

Extensive communication and interaction with the market

As you can see, none of these are easy tasks, but no one has ever said that being a product manager is an easy job.

So, among all the things that product managers need to do, which ones are related to design skills? What design skills are needed?

Four design skills that product managers should have

First of all, we must point out that the design skills required for a product will vary depending on the size of the company. In a small, tight startup, the roles of Product Manager and User Experience Designer (UXD) are often played by the same person. However, as your team grows, your responsibilities as a product manager will slowly change (this article from UXPin describes this in more detail).

So, when considering the following skills, be sure to take the size of your team into consideration.

Skill 1: Advanced User Research Skills

Top product managers truly understand their users and can articulate their pain points, wants, and needs to the rest of the team (usually in the form of personas or storyboards).

This means that a product manager needs to have strong research skills and empathy - he must be able to conduct in-depth interviews with customers and conduct relevant research, comprehensively apply the data obtained, and gain thorough insights into problems from conversations with customers. This is important no matter how big or small your team is — the product manager must truly be the voice of the customer so that they can steer the direction of the product.

Key design skills: field research, usability testing, character design, storyboarding, customer journey map ( CJM for short, a technique for describing the customer’s experience, subjective reactions and feelings when using a product or service).

Skill 2: Basic Interaction Design Skills

A good product manager should be able to clearly describe the user's goals and define the product's functional points based on these user goals. In addition, the product manager should be able to understand the product architecture and clearly outline the path for users to access each page and functional point.

As your team grows, perhaps UX designers will help you share these responsibilities in the future, but as a product manager you still have to have knowledge in these areas so that you can share and interact more deeply with customers, designers, etc.

In a smaller team, wireframes and user flow diagrams are very effective tools for product managers to communicate with other team members. If you are also a user experience designer, it is also necessary to familiarize yourself with some common design styles (layout solutions for common user scenarios that are acceptable to the general public, such as search, login boxes, settings, etc.). In addition, it is also useful to master some usability principles in the field of interaction design so that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel and don’t have to worry about coming up with a design that frustrates your users.

Key design skills: sketches, wireframes, user flow diagrams, site maps, user stories, design patterns.

Skill 3: Taste

This skill may be controversial, but I think it must be brought up - top product managers have ineffable taste. As a product manager, you don’t need to be a visual designer yourself, but you must be able to recognize what great design is.

Taste is not something you are born with. You must read a lot of designs, including good and bad designs, and compare them carefully, analyzing why these are good designs and those are bad designs. With lots of practice, you’ll eventually develop the taste to lead your product team in the right direction.

The reason why taste is a controversial skill is that taste is difficult to define, and if your taste is not recognized by others, this subjective point of view may cause discouraging and unnecessary disputes in your team.

But in any case, as a product manager, it is undoubtedly a good thing to have your own taste. As the "owner" of the product, if everyone is convinced of your taste, you yourself will act as a trustworthy judge of product quality in the entire team, which can greatly improve the quality of the product and avoid unnecessary disputes that hinder the development progress. Sometimes if you doubt your own taste, you can take a look at the design of the iPhone, which is a good measure of taste.

Skill 4: Basic concepts of visual design

In addition to the taste mentioned above, a product manager should also know the common vocabulary of visual design. In this way, you can communicate with the other party in the language of designers, so as to understand the pros and cons of the designer's design and the deep reasons why he or she chose this design.

You have to know that when you discuss with designers, you will be more effective if you communicate with them using terms such as "contrast", "levels", and "color depth" than if you simply tell them to "make that logo bigger".

Knowing people and making good use of them vs. taking over other people's business

Product management is a delicate art. A great product manager must have knowledge of the different aspects of a product (sales, marketing, engineering, user experience, finance) in order to create a successful product. At the same time, as an independent role, the product manager also needs to know the boundaries of his or her responsibilities.

Product managers with a technical background often make the mistake of overstepping their boundaries, causing chaos for the entire team. Technical knowledge background can indeed help product managers to quickly figure out the feasibility of the product to a great extent, and also allow them to communicate smoothly with engineers.

However, technical product managers must always remind themselves that the code still needs to be written by engineers, and the technical solutions still need to be decided by engineers. You have to know that the idiom "overstepping one's authority" will never be a positive word, at least not in the field of product managers.

Similarly, when you work with designers, you also need to pay attention to these boundaries. Your role is a product manager, and your main responsibility is to figure out what problem the product is going to solve (the responsibility is What): for example, to thoroughly understand user needs, to conduct in-depth analysis of the market, and so on. Instead of doing what a designer should do.

You should let professionals do professional things, let experts such as interface designers and user experience designers define and provide corresponding solutions (their responsibility is How), and you will find that these solutions may be something you personally cannot even consider.

Knowing how to use people well instead of interfering in other people's affairs is the talent of a general who leads the entire army.

summary

A product manager is a versatile person with many responsibilities, but with only one ultimate goal: to create a great product with your team.

Depending on the size and staffing of your team, the lines between the roles of product manager and UX designer may blur. But as a product manager, whether or not you need to serve as a designer at the same time to contribute to the team, if you can master the basic design skills mentioned above, you will definitely be able to take your role as a product manager to a higher level.

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