The magic behind Designer + PM collaboration

How successfully you cooperate with PMs will influence the quality you can deliver with your product.

I've worked with product managers for about half my product design career. If you ask a product manager what their job is, you'll hear something similar to what the organization's product designers do. There's a massive overlap between PMs and designers.

Our job is to understand what customers need and deliver it in a product that will drive revenue for the business.

How successfully you cooperate with PMs will influence the quality you can deliver with your product. But often, designers and PMs have different approaches to achieving these goals. This leads to friction in the collaboration and results in poor product decisions.

You'll spend a lot of time working with a product manager as a product designer. There's a lot to take care of to create mutually beneficial relationships. Here's what I know about it.

The foundation of a solid relationship

These roles work closely, so feeling comfortable around each other is incredibly important. Qualities such as trust and respect should be at the core of such a relationship. We're all humans, in the end.

When you feel that relationships don't work well, but you still have to work together every day, you'll become annoyed or stop communicating with each other. So take time to develop a strong, trusting, and friendly relationship.

Designers rarely know that PM's work primarily involves aligning teams to build and deliver the right thing that solves customer problems and advances the business.

The most vital foundation for success is a solid relationship. Designers and PMs must work together to minimize the risks of any value or usability issues. This is where the most magic happens.

Open communication

Great collaboration can't exist without recent and transparent communication. And the first step towards this kind of communication is being clear about your expectations.

For designers, transparency means sharing your work early and often. Proactively approach PM to show the latest updates, explorations, or finished designs. Remember, they're juggling a lot of things.

Don't be afraid to share early, rough ideas. These explorations can often spark conversations that will help drive decisions forward.

Focus on outcomes

Great PMs and designers always focus on the outcomes over outputs. It's all about solving a customer and business problem rather than just shipping a new feature.

It might seem logical to keep investing in things you've already invested in. It's in human nature. But even if you're far in the process of building a product, it's never too late to ask if you're still on the right track to reach the outcome.

Build shared understanding

PMs gather all the context of the project before designers do. They review the existing customer feedback, review the competitors, and talk to other stakeholders. Product designers need to build a shared understanding out of that.

Ask questions and have the PM walk you through the answers. Get into their head and learn everything you can about the project, features, customers, and business. Designers should question how we know something is a problem in the first place before attempting to solve it. PMs are excellent in providing the context of the problem.

Conclusion

The key to building an excellent end product that solves customer problems and helps businesses grow is a stunning collaboration between the designer and PM. So invest time and resources to build strong, mutually beneficial relationships.

• Build a strong foundation with respect and trust

• Communicate openly

• Focus on the outcomes

• Build shared understanding