The importance of UX for Product Managers
Or why UX is more than just a “pretty (inter)face”.
Yes, UX is more than just a “pretty (inter)face”.
There’s this general misconception that UX is about making the product look “good”. Applying some colour here and there, some trendy visual elements, maybe some animation, and…voilà. Job done.
But nothing further from reality. There’s actually a lot of science in product design. And research. And work.
The second misconception is that UX skills and tasks should be limited to the job of a product designer.
And again, this could not be further from reality.
But to understand why, let’s first define what UX really means.
UX = User + Experience
I know, it seems obvious. Indeed, “UX” stands for “user experience”. Cool story, but why does this matter?, you will ask.
Well, as its name indicates, UX is a user-centric methodology, or approach.
This means the “User” is the protagonist of our product or digital experience. This digital experience should be adapted to their specific goals, wants, needs, problems, lifestyle,… you name it.
And, for example, what would you need to do if you had to, let’s say, “offer the best gift ever”? Exactly, you should know pretty well the person you are offering the gift to. Well, the same happens with digital products. In order to offer the best experience ever, we need to know our target user extremely well.
So that’s why User Research is the first and most important stage when designing and developing digital products.
1. Getting to know the User
The goal is to have a really comprehensive portrait of the target user: who they are, what they do, what they value, their pain points, what they want to achieve, the blockers, how they feel, how they think…
In order to do that, we can use several tools like surveys or interviews.
And once we have all the information we need, we proceed to create our:
- Personas: A persona is a fictional, yet realistic, description of a typical or target user of the product. It describes their needs, concerns, and goals, as well as background information such as age, gender, behaviors, or occupation.
- Jobs-to-be-done map: A framework that helps us understand both the user’s specific goal, and their thought process or steps until “job” completion.
- Competitive analysis: What other solutions are our target users currently using? What are their pros and cons?
- User Journey map: If our product does not exist yet, how should the user flow be when using our interface? If it exists already, it’s important to map how is the current user flow, all the tasks and steps the user takes and how the user is feeling at every step. The goal? To identify touch-points where the experience can be improved, opportunities.
And once all this is defined, it’s time to start defining and designing the actual experience we want to offer.
2. Designing the Experience
A digital product needs to be more than just pretty, or “cool”. It needs to be useful, usable, and yes, desirable. These are the three essential, non-negotiable elements for a great product.
1. Useful
The first and most important requirement: the product needs to help the user somehow. It must help the user achieve a goal in a better way than the alternative solutions, either by easing a pain (painkiller), or by providing some pleasure (vitamin).
And that’s why the user research we have done at the very beginning is important. Knowing everything about the target user is key to identify which user’s problems are worth pursuing and solving.
2. Usable
If “useful” is building the right thing, “usable” is about building the thing right. Usability is all about how effectively, efficiently and satisfactory a user achieves their goal using our product.
And here it’s where psychology and “human-computer-interface” fields of study are put to work. There are several principles we can apply to make our products more “usable”. For example:
- Visibility: showing the system’s status, what’s going on, what are all the actions the user can take at every moment, and what she is expected to do.
- Feedback: providing instant feedback.
- Errors: Helping prevent errors and supporting error recovery.
- Familiarity: using familiar design elements and language as well as consistency is important to improve learnability and efficiency.
3. Desirability
Yes, here it is when we make it “shine”, when we delight our users. We make the experience “cool” and enjoyable. And aesthetics has a lot to do with desirability. However, it is not the only consideration.
For example, we can use “gamification” — like dashboards, reward systems, or even “social recognition” like so many social media platforms use with mechanisms such as “likes” or views. Copywriting can also help make the difference, using the right tone and words.
So… Should Product Managers be the “UX Masters”?
Absolutely.
As you know, the Product Manager’s main responsibility is to deliver value to the customer through the product — while bringing value to the business, of course.
And to achieve that, understanding the user and knowing how to deliver a relevant and delightful experience is critical. UX offers a framework that enables exactly that.
There are certainly many skills a Product Manager should have, like data proficiency. But I’m sure UX is one of the most important. You don’t need to be a UX specialist, of course. But knowing its principles and methodology will enable you to make better decisions and ultimately, better products.
