From Rosenfeld Media's Product Management + User Experience Virtual Conference.
UXers who practice user research and Product Managers have a lot in common. They both want to learn from users and customers and work hard toward developing successful products, features, or services.
However, sometimes they may feel disconnected from each other, perceiving one another as too slow, fast, biased, academic, disorganized, vague, and what not. During this talk, Tomer Sharon, author of It’s Our Research and the forthcoming Validating Product Ideas, will provide six practices—three for UXers, three for PMs—to work better together in researching users and their needs.
UX designers:
Be there early to help Product Managers to Shape product roadmap
Listen to PMs to identify knowledge gaps
Let PMs be: invite them to ask users questions
Product Managers:
UXers can make you heroes
Get feedback on your survey questions
Customer meetings are a rare opportunity to learn
Abi Jones has always been about independence. She’s been helping folks feel capable from the very beginning—when she taught third grade. Abi’s more recent work on the MySpace redesign team and her current gig as an interaction designer for Google Books support that same goal: giving people confidence to tackle the hard challenges.
She recently worked with a Google team to design a flexible, reliable feedback system. Abi was reminded that jumping into a pre-existing team is hard—especially when it’s a team of engineers and you’re a designer. How do you define your role and create a model that works? How far do you take a design before production? How do you give them the skills to continue once you leave?
In her debut presentation, Abi will share how creating and modeling product principles, scoping iteration, and trusting specialists (like writers) are all part of the magic. You’ll hear about the challenges that reshaped her process.
In the UX world, Kim Goodwin is a big deal. A regular on the UX conference circuit. Bestselling author of “Designing for the Digital Age.” Team builder and UX evangelizer at PatientsLikeMe. Kim knows design—and designers. She’s hired, fired, and coached loads of them for her own teams and for clients, too.
Kim understands the challenges of a competitive job market. The candidate with the most impressive résumé isn’t always the smartest choice. It’s not always easy to tell the diamond-in-the-rough from the shiny-but-fake. But Kim’s figured out how to find the hidden gems.
Kim shares insights that help folks on both sides of the interview table. Learn how to define and articulate the skills you’re hiring for, and how to build a framework for evaluating candidates. Understanding what makes a good hire will help job seekers present themselves to hiring managers in the most effective manner.
Self-document. As you’re working, you’re also creating the pieces that you need for the deliverable. Nothing is created that can’t be shared and used.
Discourage time wasted on perfectionistic polishing of deliverables. Lowest fidelity necessary.
Understand where 20% of the work will bring 80% of the benefit. Designed to help you prioritize.
Understand that lean methods are those that do one thing at a time and do it well—answer a question, communicate a concept, establish a next step. Bite sized and with a purpose.
