If we say that a good and remarkable product brings a great user experience. Then the formula should look like this:
Remarkable Product = Great User eXperience
Now, if the Product Managers are responsible for the planning and execution of the product… Do you still doubting if they need to know basic UX skills?
A good user experience is a must to have for every successful product. That’s why UX has become so important nowadays (and it will for the future years!).
Also, Product Managers interact a lot with designers. While designers are are experts in user experience more than PMs, they miss out the product strategy, business goals, the whole product vision, allocation and resources, etc.
Knowing UX will not just help to better communicate with designers, but also to take good decisions and a sense of design interaction.
With this being said, let’s see what these skills are!
User research
PMs need to understand user needs, pain points, and goals.
That’s why PMs should be able to create user personas with their name, picture, characteristics and objectives.
Personas help to understand the end-customer and deep dive into what they want from your product.
Visual design elements
Knowing the basic elements of design will help you to communicate with the design team more effectively and understand how they make UX decisions.
Also, using design language like alignment, legibility, contrast, typeface, etc. Will make the design team take you more seriously when discussing design decisions.
Interaction design
Understanding the overall architecture and flow of the product is a must for every PM and know how the information flows through the journey.
Also, a Product Manager should be comfortable enough with user journeys, wireframing, and storyboarding so you can provide constructive feedback.
Design taste
Is important that Product Managers develop a taste for good design and be able to differentiate between a design that could be successful than one that can make thousands of users go away.
This is also part of the research and product validation. A Product Manager is a great customer advocate emphasizing with them.
After knowing this, what do you think?
Thanks for reading.