Why are designers moving into the product career path?

EDIT: my view has evolved since I first wrote this article.

I was given the opportunity to present my thoughts at IxDA Sydney (8 Aug 2019). From the moment I wrote the blurb for my talk, my view started evolving. I learned more from talking with others, reflecting on what actions I’d taken in my own career and getting lots of feedback on different points of view. I wrote the original post for this topic prematurely. I’ve left the original article unedited below.

I would like to hear from you about your experience because my view will evolve again. Here’s the talk, you can see how it’s evolved since my original article.

What an amazing sketchnote!

Ulf Sthamer on LinkedIn: "Quick #sketchnote from the last IxDA Sydney meetup. Melanie Hambarsoomian…

• This is a meaty topic.
• It’s based on my observations and my view has evolved since I first wrote the blurb for this. I also prematurely wrote a Medium article (note: original below).
• I’ve learned so much since speaking with people for this talk and exploring the topic more, so I want to hear more from people so that my view can evolve even more.
• When I talk about ‘design’ this includes researchers.

When I explain the design process, I walk through the first part of the double diamond: starting with observing people to understand their problems and needs, figuring out which problems are the best to solve with product, exploring a vision, exploring ways to solve the top problems, all the way through to detailed design, slicing the design, working with engineers, measuring success as a team and iterating.

And this is the question I sometimes get in response. In some ways this is a fair question because there is a lot of overlap between the Product and Design functions. However, sometimes the problem space is associated with Product alone.

Or it might be “I’ve received the wrong problem to work on”, or “I think I’ve been given the wrong solution”.

• If you want to be a product manager because you love that discipline, then do it, it’s an incredible discipline. For me personally, the emergence of product management coincided with us moving away from a practice I don’t like: just taking requirements that were put together in isolation of real people’s needs and passed over the fence. Then designs were passed over the fence to engineers without involving them in the process.
• I wanted to solve real problems, work collaboratively, measure impact and work towards outcomes over features or solutions and partnering with product and becoming a product designer has facilitated that.
• But, if you’re considering moving into the product management career path just for influence, it’s not the right reason.

Even if you haven’t heard any designers express the desire to move into product management, you might have heard an expression of the myths that I think underpin it.

Some of the people I spoke with to inform this talk hadn’t heard any designers express this sentiment about moving into product. For some, this is because they work in companies where design maturity is high and the functions are already working effectively together to add value.

…or decide what you can work on.

I believe in cross-functional teams working with Airbnb’s three-legged stool model. I’ve worked in multiple organisations with this model and I’ve seen it working in higher levels too, not just within the product teams.

I would also say you can stretch the model further: you can work this way prior to the product inception when you’re working on the problem space. Depending on your needs, it could also include other functions like CS and Product Marketing.

I’ve seen new products spun up as a result of this kind of partnership around presenting the case for the problem.

I believe in this model because I think it leads to better outcomes:

• It encourages shared ownership and more buy-in to the vision: there’s more care for the outcomes.
• It breaks down hard barriers and each discipline can add more value, earlier: e.g. engineers can come up with better and cheaper solutions than designers.

Tri-track agile articulates how design is more than delivery, it’s also about starting with observation and understanding people’s needs.

I worked in a cross-functional team that was asked to explore a new customer segment that the organisation wanted to serve, but didn’t know how: we didn’t understand their world and needs yet. The team did research, mapped the journeys and jobs to be done together, prioritised problems and ideated together. It wasn’t Product or Design alone. There were healthy tensions and different angles to tackle our task because of our different perspectives.

These models (The Design Ladder and Sabine Junginger’s design in the organization model) identify that design as just giving form to something is on the lower end of design maturity.

Design as strategy and integral to all aspects of the organisation is design maturity and provides value beyond delivery.

Side note: InVision recently published their Design Maturity report, that shows only 5% of companies are at level 5: “These companies are robust in all the dimensions of maturity, but what really separates them from the others is design’s involvement in strategy”.

Change By Design also talks about design maturity: and the value that can come from pulling design out of the studio.

These ways of working and levels of maturity can impact our ability to have an impact on people.

I’ve done contextual inquiries and invited the product team to come along and observe. Not a ground-breaking practice, many people who do research know this is a good practice. The outcome was the engineers were fighting for a larger MVP than the product manager and I were.

More and more organisations are coming to expect this way of working or this level of maturity.

I heard a story about a board being presented a company’s new strategy. One of the first questions asked by the board was: can you take us through the customer research that informed this strategy?

And similarly, I went to one of Mentally Friendly’s events on design x mental health. Professor Maree Hackett was on the panel and spoke about what happens when people apply for grants to fund mental health initiatives. The panel asks them if they’ve spoken with people who have lived experience with a health issue. Maree kindly shared the details from NHMRC.

Despite everything I’ve spoken of about high design maturity, we also need to recognise when a company doesn’t need as much shaping of the problem space or design vision at that time. Moving to product won’t solve that either. Some examples are:

Being in a founder-led company where the founder(s) have been in the domain for years and the company needs to focus on execution and delivery. Doing more research might just uncover what you already know as an organisation.

Already having a vision or research insights that you are unable to deliver. I was in an organisation where the design team was getting frustrated. There were so many known problems for customers, why weren’t we solving them?

I quantified it: I looked at how many times the same research insights had been found over and over. I looked at how much value for customers we’d delivered in the last year to tackle the planning fallacy because if it were true, continuing as-is didn’t make sense.

One reason we were not delivering so much was tech debt. Not the kind you could solve with a couple of tickets each sprint. We needed to replatform. In this scenario it wouldn’t make sense to do lots of big research, we needed to solve the tech debt issue as a matter of priority.

I’ve seen people outside design hold this myth as well.

John C. Maxwell’s 5 Levels of Leadership model highlights that title does not equal leadership: “People who make it only to Level 1 may be bosses, but they are never leaders”.

I was lucky enough to work in an amazing product team at the Telegraph UK, where Alex Watson was the Head of Product. I have so much respect for him. I rarely crossed paths with him in the day-to-day but that’s even more a testament to his influence.

Alex hadn’t heard designers expressing the same sentiment about moving into product, but Alex has been working and partnering with design and other functions. One point that echoed John C. Maxwell was you should only move into a product job because you want to be a product manager, not for influence. If you do it for influence, you’ll just be miserable. It’s not often you satisfy what your colleagues want: it’s a hard job often not well understood. This is a tiny fraction of what I learned from Alex’s input.

I also reached out to Hugo Cornejo, VP of Design at Monzo for his input on design having a seat at the table, as I love Monzo. I haven’t met Hugo before, he kindly gave me input. Sometimes companies don’t have a C-level person for an area because it’s doing well, and sometimes the opposite is true: having a particular function at exec level could be a sign the company wasn’t good at that function and tried to solve it top down.

And I listed this myth mainly because my own view evolved. As you can see in my original article below, I used to be quite passionate that the org chart should represent the equality between these functions. I wasn’t a fan of one discipline reporting into another, which is from past personal experience. I used this structure as a proxy for how the disciplines worked with one another, when looking from the outside in. And when I heard people say they wanted to move into product (for some effect on influence) I questioned why there wasn’t a design seat.

But I’ve realised from speaking with people for this talk, this is a good model for a way of working together, rather than an org structure checkbox. As you can see from input above, even if you have this structure it doesn’t necessarily mean the functions are doing well and you can work effectively without the structure.

These are some of the things I thought about within design and influence…

I’d like to hear your stories. I shared a few of my own.

In an organisation, I came across two opportunities to better serve customers. I was passionate about both. I didn’t know of a formal business case process or a template, so I made my own documents and started pulling together data: qual research, input from CS, cost to the business for workarounds, etc.

With the first business case: I actually disproved the need to tackle this, to myself. I didn’t present it to anyone because I realised it wasn’t the biggest customer problem. Earlier in my career before product design, maybe I would have kept going on about that customer problem from a more purist UX standpoint. Now I parked it because there were better places for us to spend our effort and I had the tools to discover that.

But the second opportunity did appear to have some merit. I presented my case with a researcher, product manager and someone working on strategy for that customer group. They were on board and the strategy leader referenced my case in subsequent planning meetings for this customer.

Don’t wait to be asked.

I proposed updating our product teams. They were following the Airbnb cross-functional team model, and I thought we could get even more value if we:

• Had additional functions in that team, such as CS and Product Marketing.
• Reorganised our teams so they were empowered to solve a customer problem through the entire journey, rather than being focussed on sequential steps of a journey, which resulted in silos.

We didn’t formally change our approach but we did parts of it anyway. We built relationships with representatives from different functions. We interviewed CS when we picked up relevant problems and understood their hypotheses. We involved other disciplines in the sketching process.

As a design team, we took time out of the week to step out of our product teams and work together to map the entire journey and all the opportunities to make the journey better.

Some general advice from product managers who input on this talk: be conscious that you’re not the walking toolkit person. If we take practices out of the textbook instead of acting more like product designers, we lose influence. E.g. if a design problem is low-risk, can be solved with convention, measured and iterated on post-release easily, there’s no point fighting for two rounds of usability testing.

Despite the emergence of product design, it sounds like this might still be happening. I’ve seen it first-hand in a different way: I’ve seen product managers say that we need to do a one-week design sprint when the problem was really simple to solve: the design team was recommending that we could spend the design sprint on something that was more meaty and less of a pattern.

How do you facilitate design to involve others in the process as well? If we go away and create designs in a corner we might come up with something that’s not as high quality, robust or feasible.

I’m driven by this.

If you can have a meaningful impact on people (regardless of the ‘how’: whether it’s org structure, good people you work with, good influence you have, the kind of work you’re doing, lifecycle of the business, etc…) then that’s great!

But if you don’t feel you’re having a good impact on people:

• Can you change it? Have you tried to?
• Have you examined yourself? Is there anything you should be doing differently?
• Do you understand what the business needs right now and whether that matches up with what you want to do?

In summary, with the intention of having the best possible impact on people:

• Product, design, engineering and other disciplines can have a better impact if they work on the strategy and problem space together.
• Design can add so much value to strategy, the problem space, the experience across products and touchpoints, vision and so much more. This is design maturity…
• …but recognise not all organisations might need this level of design maturity at the time, check what’s needed.
• Title and org chart is not a guarantee you’ll have influence.
• Move into product if you love the discipline, not to have influence.
• Influence regardless of where you are, don’t wait for permission, title, or to be asked.

Speaking of influence, these people all gave up time to give input on the talk. A special thank you to Jason Taylor and Jane Austin who are design leaders across my current and last two roles. They’ve had a huge impact on my career and on my views of leadership and design. To get info from them first hand, you can watch Jane’s Mind the Product talk: Great design for great digital products or, hopefully you can catch a future presentation of Jason’s ‘What is Design Leadership?’ talk.

I learned so much from writing this talk and re-examined my original post a lot. My view evolved and it will probably evolve again. I shared my details as I’d like to hear from anyone who would like to talk, share your stories, agree or disagree, ask questions. Get in touch.

— — — — — — — [The original post] — — — — — — —

I’ve heard a few designers and leaders say they want to move into the product career path due to the influence and impact they can have.

I believe product, design and engineering should be equal partners from the start. Many great people along my career have influenced me to feel this way. So why might some design people be contemplating a change to product, to influence? I have three hypotheses:

1. Some of the design process is more commonly associated with product

You can’t design properly if you don’t have a clear understanding of the problem. During the old world of waterfall and requirements, solutions rather than outcomes were passed down to designers. Many designers would challenge these solutions via research and the design process. You can’t solve a problem well if you don’t know what the problem is.

Since the emergence of product, requirements and waterfall have become less prominent. Understanding the problem is now typically associated with product. It is also the first of the double diamond design process. Both disciplines have strong skillsets in this space, which is why I advocate that design, product (and engineering) are peers and partners. But some workplaces only recognise this as a product responsibility or skill, which might contribute to designers wanting to move to product.

Source: Wikipedia commons https://bit.ly/2X11bR7

2. Design doesn’t always have a seat at the table. So some people are starting to take the Product seat to influence strategy.

In my belief that design, product and engineering should be peers, I think one way to reflect this is in the organisational chart. Not all organisations have this hierarchy.

GOOD! everyone is a peer and there is healthy tension. I’ve deliberately left out other functions like operations, to keep this simple.

Not good. If you disagree, how would it feel if tech reported into design?

I was made an offer for a role where as the designer, I would have been reporting to a product manager. I spoke with the head of product and gave my opinion about design being a peer to product. He told me that he respected all disciplines and saw them as equal. I wholeheartedly believed him, but I wondered what might happen if he personally left his role. And why the organisational chart didn’t reflect the intent to make sure everyone was aligned. I challenged this because I wanted to open up a conversation about it.

When there’s no design seat, some people consider sitting in the product seat. Obviously there are other ways to respond to a situation like this: e.g. trying to change it, leaving it, etc. but perhaps people who are considering product believe it’s a trend in the industry rather than just a few places.

Why does this seat even matter?

It’s not about power. It’s about enablement and influence. If design isn’t at that table, it can* imply it is only a function for executing what other disciplines decide. This isn’t design. Design starts with people, research and problem definition. Similarly, engineering isn’t there to just execute anything design says (we moved away from that when we moved away from waterfall and passing over the fence).

Equal hierarchy gives shared ownership, equal and early visibility and input into strategy and a balanced voice in decision-making. A side consequence of not being a peer discipline may also be that the career path is shorter, making it harder for more senior people to keep growing upwards and making them question whether they move to a different track.

*To play devil’s advocate…

I would argue that you can do great design work to create great outcomes for people without a seat in the c-suite. Hierarchical equality on the org chart is one way to enable good design and influence, but it’s not the only way. It just might require more work because the org chart tells others a lot about the department’s role.

Everyone needs to figure out what good looks like to them. Perhaps the outcomes you’re looking for are already in place e.g. you have enough budget to hire the right team, and people are looking for design’s input on key decisions, even if design are not in the room when the decision is made. Whatever it might be, you need to figure out what it means to you.

3. The definition of design is becoming narrower in some companies.

Many startups are hiring designers who are more skilled in the delivery/UI side of the double diamond, without hiring for other skillsets (research, interaction design, more purer UX, etc.). This focus on delivery might be completely appropriate when there are lots of very well understood problems, and the company needs to focus on solving them.

But I wonder if this might create a perception amongst other disciplines that design as a discipline is only about delivery. Would this make it harder to get design involved earlier in strategic decisions as the company grows and needs more discovery work? The historical positioning of the design team may reinforce the perception that problem definition is now only product’s responsibility instead of both.

My prediction is one of three things will happen:

1. We’ll see this hypothesised trend validated, at scale: More designers and leaders will move to product. The definition of a product lead and the structures around it will evolve as a result.
2. The trend doesn’t exist, or is replaced by another trend: There will be more and more companies that see design as a peer to other disciplines.
3. Something else: I may have gotten it all wrong. Like most things in life, there’s the possibility some other trend that I cannot predict or see will emerge. Because I don’t know, others may know better and life kinda surprises us a lot.

So what?

The ‘why’ behind having design influence is to serve people. Not because of power or authority. My argument is that disciplines should be equal (not that design should be the overlord of the universe). When that seat isn’t there for design, some might choose to get this influence by sitting in a different seat.

It’s ok for designers to move into product roles. Product managers and leaders come from all sorts of backgrounds: operations, marketing, business analysis, and so on. The core sentiment is that design people want the recognition that there is lots of overlap between product and design, rather than a black and white split of responsibilities to one or the other. The philosophy is more value can be delivered if these disciplines work together.

As mentioned, a seat at the table is one way to achieve outcomes for people through design. So…

How might we increase design’s influence, regardless of any organisational trends or official seat at the table?

1. Figure out what success looks like to you: perhaps you’re happy as long as you’re doing the right design process and what people decide to do with your recommendations are up to them. Perhaps you want to be a Chief Design Officer. Perhaps you only want to focus on generative research, or you only want to craft beautiful UI in a design system. Someone else’s picture of ‘good’ might not be the same as yours. But you need to know what good looks like so you can influence towards that and find people who think similarly to you.
2. Educate internally: help people understand the design process and how it will help people and the business. One of the most classic approaches is to involve others in design research. Help people build empathy. Sometimes I choose to do guerrilla research. Instead of asking whether I should do it, I just do it and share the insights. Workshops, participatory design and sharing stories from other companies (or bringing in speakers) are helpful. Look for like-minded people outside of the design team and create momentum with them.
3. Educate externally: Maybe for you, this is publishing something, mentoring, or connecting with people who are sharing the knowledge. Use your influence and tell your success stories. Perhaps others will use this as a case study to influence within their company.
4. Don’t wait for the seat at the table: challenge what’s around you. If you see an opportunity, talk to people internally who are open enough to hear you. Try what you can to influence regardless of your position. Leadership and influence is not about title. I’ve made a few business cases even though it wasn’t part of my role and even when there was no formal business case process. I just did it anyway because I saw an opportunity and wanted to do what I can to enable others to make an informed decision.
5. Vote with your feet and help along the way: if you’re looking for design roles, choose companies that you think align with what you’re looking for from point no. 1. If you don’t take the role and you think there’s something they could do better, give them feedback. Maybe they want to do great design work but have never had the right person to help them do it! Maybe they don’t know how. Or maybe what they need is different to what you think they need, and you’ll learn something new from their response. Take a few minutes to share that feedback with them in a kind way. You never know, they might be completely on board with what you suggest and hire you to actually help make them happen. Or at least start making change.

and lastly, we can make sure we collaborate with other disciplines as peers, even if the org chart doesn’t reflect this. We can be collaborative and be design facilitators.

I’d also love to hear from you: if you managed to influence to create a seat at the table, how did you do it?