5 tactics for Product Managers to improve their design sense
Product managers have to wear many hats. Some are comfortable and some not. One such hat that most PM’s need to wear is the designer’s hat. But if you have had no formal training in design or user experience, chances are that you might not relish this responsibility. However, every PM who wishes to deliver a fantastic user experience must start working on their design sense immediately.
Before proceeding forward, let us take a moment to understand what design sense is and why should PMs consider improving this.
For the purpose of this article, I would define design Sense as the ability to perceive, understand and judge design. It helps envision a product’s 1) Look and feel 2) Functioning. It also implies the ability to critically evaluate a design and give constructive feedback.
PM’s with good design sense develop the following good traits:
- Come up with wireframes instead of giving vague descriptions.
- Keep design as a top of the mind consideration rather than an afterthought. This helps craft a better customer experience leading to higher activation and retention.
- Bring attention to detail on every task they work on, no matter how small.
- Derive valuable insights from other products through the power of observation.
- Ask sensible questions and communicate feedback in a logical way while evaluating a particular design. This helps the design team a lot.
- Convince other stakeholders on why a feature needs to look and work in a certain way.
Improving one’s design sense is a slow process. A lot is learnt from experience and experimentation.
Following are five tactics I have been following to improve my design sense.
1. Know the rules
You can’t play well until you know the rules.
At the surface, User Interface (UI) seems to be the placement of buttons, icons, menu bars, input fields and other information in an appropriate and pleasing way. But dig a little deep and you will find that UI design draws a lot from the principles of human psychology. A lot of principles and rules have emerged based on how users perceive things, react to them and understand them.
Understanding these can help us appreciate why things are designed in a certain way. It also helps articulate our thoughts when we find something amiss.
Laws of UX is an excellent starting point for understanding maxims and principles that are used while building user interfaces. Another good source is the Nielsen Norman Group’s website (I have been guilty of binge reading this one!)
2. Know the Common Design patterns
When dealing with similar problems, don’t re-invent the wheel.
Jakob’s law summarizes the need for common design patterns quite well: Users spend most of their time on OTHER sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all other sites they already know.
This finds an echo in common design patterns — social media login, lazy registration, breadcrumbs for aiding navigation, infinite scrolling, carousel for helping users browse through a set of items etc.
Whenever you are working on a new feature/workflow, check out how the same problem is being solved on other sites/apps. This would aid you in coming up with better wireframes and also engage better with the design team once they have tried their hand at the problem.
3. Evaluate design in a more thoughtful way
The one who questions the most ends up learning the most.
While evaluating the design of a feature, practice the following:
- Try to dissect it from all possible angles. How the normal flow looks like, what corner cases could come up, where might the user get confused etc.
- If you feel something is amiss with the size/colour/placement of a button/icon/input field, don’t hesitate to ask probing questions.
- While giving feedback on a design, don’t jump to suggesting changes. Articulate the problem you foresee with the current design and then let the designer respond. This leads to a constructive discussion instead of making the other person defensive.
Deeper engagement with the design team will definitely help your design sense grow by leaps and bounds.
4. Don’t skip the wireframes
Theory is good. Asking questions is better. But practice is the best.
As PMs, an exciting part of our job is to conceptualize a feature from scratch. Wireframes are a quick way to help everyone visualize a rough version of the final outcome.
Often, due to laziness or lack of proper process, we might be tempted to verbally explain the requirements to the design team. This is not a good practice. It prevents us from effectively visualizing the final output.
Wireframes should be a non-negotiable part of every PM’s toolkit. If this sounds daunting, simply start with a pen and paper sketch.
5. Study carefully the products you use
Inspiration is all around us. You just need to look for it.
We use apps and websites on a daily basis to fulfill our needs — talking to friends, consuming news, entertaining ourselves, buying stuff etc.
An easy way to improve our design sense is to become more thoughtful with the products we use. If you liked a certain feature or were impressed with the layout, ease of use of a product, then take note of it.
You can also try doing product breakdown of your favorite websites and apps— and look at them from a UI/UX lens. During the breakdown, ask questions like: how have they designed their navigation, how do they introduce new features, what is the layout used, what features really stand out etc.
A keen design sense can help PMs transform a good product into a great product. The key to success is persistence. We should commit to improving ourselves one step at a time — with every feature that we work on and every design conversation that we have.
