Author: Marcin Treder

Marcin Treder is the CEO and co-founder of UXPin, a product design platform. Since co-founding UXPin in 2010, he has helped build and lead product teams in the Poland and Silicon Valley offices. Previously, he worked on projects for two companies that IPOed and managed the design team for one of the biggest eCommerce companies in Eastern Europe. He holds an M.A. in Cognitive Psychology. Marcin has been given numerous awards, including MIT 30 under 35 for his accomplishments in design and business.

How to Get Started in UX Design?

How to get started in UX Design? That’s an excellent question. Although the number of design resources for beginners grows rapidly, I firmly believe that they do not offer the right approach to the problem. UX Design is a holistic approach to product & service development that requires a solid background of the right thinking habits, rather than just a set of hard skills. Take a look at the list below and let me know your thoughts.

How to get started in UX Design?

  1. To start with – design tools. While great designers are efficiently using their weapons of choice, tools themselves never made anybody a great designer. Most of them are so far from the true nature of the design that they can only spoil you.
  2. Turn yourself into a constant redesign machine. Think about how to improve any product and service that you see. Including a door handle and a coffee machine.
  3. Observe people around you and analyse patterns in their behaviour, problems that they encounter using certain products etc.
  4. Whenever you’re tempted to design something, stop yourself and try to describe: who’s the Customer, what’s the Problem and what could Solve the problem (the C-P-S Hypothesis).
  5. Design as little as you can. Solve problems.

When you’d feel that you mastered all the tasks above, get more practical:

And build up your portfolio having in mind that even if you don’t have big clients, you can certainly help some NGOs (we’d get you a solid discount at UXPin for doing that!), or a local salesman. Any improved experienced will be a proof that you’re a UX great designer.

UX, UXPin and The Year 2013

2013 passed in a blink of an eye. Looking back, it was an amazing year. A year full of impossible things happening. A year of magic. A year of design.

Let’s start with the last bold statement: 2013 was a year of design. Surprised? Well, consider that: The number of people somehow connected to UX Design grew to the level of almost 1.6M, LinkedIn users only, around 80% year over year growth.

Think about the lasting change in the quality of Google and Microsoft products. And hell… the quality of the web itself. Finding an ugly website is harder than ever. User Experience Design merged with product development resulting in a stream of amazing products. In 2014 you’ll see even more of that.

When it comes to UXPin: we broke all records. Before I report you details, two words that must be said: thank you. We all feel very fortunate to have such supportive and engaged customers. UXPin wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.

We’ve started 2013 as a company of 6 in a tiny office in Gdynia (Poland). Big dreams, even bigger hopes and lots and lots of positive energy that helped us work harder than we probably should. Right now 19 people in Gdynia and Mountain View (CA), takes care of your UXPin experience. I take great pride in our team. Amazing professionals capable of things that are usually considered impossible. It’s a privilege to work with them.

Take great customers, amazing team working hard on a product and the financial results must follow.

UXPin growth

Last but not least, we’ve managed to successfully go through fund-raising in Silicon Valley. Amazing investors (Andreessen/Horowitz, IDG Ventures…) believe that UXPin will significantly improve the way digital products are designed. Some of them even joined our board and are working alongside us every day. Gil Penchina – one of the first investors in Paypal and LinkedIn even became our Chairman.

2014 – we’re ready. Ready to work hard, improve design and rock’n’roll day by day.

On behalf of the whole team: We wish you all the best in 2014. May every day be a lesson that makes your entire life better.

iWatch – The Best Unofficial Concepts

Couple of hours before yet another iPad Event, we’re again sure that the famous and much-expected iWatch won’t make an appearance. Unfortunately for the consumers (and probably for the shareholders as well) Apple won’t announce the revolution. The public will be forced to wait indefinitely for the premiere of probably the most useful wearable computer on the planet.

In the meantime, let’s fire up our imagination and expectations by watching amazing iWatch concepts conceived in the minds of creative designers all over the world.

    1. iWatch by Thomas Bogner

iWatch Concept by Thomas Bogner

    1. iWatch by Esben Oxholm

iwatch_YankoDesign2

iWatch Concept by Esben Oxholm

    1. iWatch – A Future Concept

    1. iWatch by Stephen Olmstead

    1. iWatch by Martin Hajek

iWatch Concept Martin Hajek

iWatch Concept Martin Hajek

    1. iWatch by Nerowinger1984

    1. iWatch by Federico Ciccarese, Raffaello Infantino, Andrea Castellano, Mauro Alfieri

    1. iWatch by Edgar Rios

iWatch Concept by Edgar Rios

iWatch Concept by Edgar Rios

    1. iWatch by Tolga Tuncer

iWatch by Tolga Tuncer

iWatch Concept by Tolga Tuncer

    1. iWatch by Pavel Simeonov

iwatch_by_Pavel_Simeonov2

iWatch Concept by Pavel Simeonov

What’s your favourite? Which one, do you think is the closest to the Apple real concept?

How Does a Hiring Manager Identify the Best UX Professional?

Who gets the job in UX? The qualities of the best UX Designers.

In my pre-UXPin life I had the privilege of being a UX Manager of a team consisting of absolutely amazing designers. I personally hired some of them and well…can’t say that the process of hiring UX professionals is an easy one. Finding people who are creative and analytical at the same time is always a challenge. What’s more – there’s plenty of job opportunities for UX professionals. A quick LinkedIn search shows nearly 19k open positions. That’s certainly something.

I thought it might be useful for all of you to know what UX Managers and HR people are looking for in UX Professionals. Below you’ll find my list of the qualities I’m looking for in UX Professionals and, for comparison, the list published on Quora by Jonathan Baker-Bates – experience UX Designer from London.

As a hiring manager, I never cared much about testing one’s ability to wireframe or prototype. After all, anybody can be taught to produce a decent wireframe. The things that I was obsessed about are on the verge of competitions and personality traits. I believe (and I’ve seen it happen many times) that people who fit the following description have a greater potential of becoming amazing designers.

5 essential traits of a great designer:

  1. Curiosity – User Experience Design is deeply human-centric. Designers aren’t painters, but rather the psychologists of their target groups. The key to designers success is to curiously gather knowledge about the behavior of the users and act upon it.
  2. Acute Analytical Mind – User Experience Design has to be based on knowledge about the user’s behavior. Gathering this knowledge requires a will to collect data and an ability to properly understand it..
  3. Brainstorming Creativity – I like to work with designers who are able to quickly generate sketchy ideas for the solution of user’s problems. The ability to creatively generate fresh and innovative solutions is indispensable.
  4. Empathy – Great designers care. They constantly think about the users and their problems as well as the needs of their teammates. It will sound weird, but… being human is part of the job.
  5. Clarity of Expression – Self expression is an important part of designers every day job. Explaining the design to others, talking to users, expressing design ideas as a wireframe or prototype – the success of all these tasks depends on the designer’s ability to clearly express his/her thoughts.

In case it seemed like the candidate fulfilled these five criteria did I have a chat about his or her knowledge in psychology, human-computer interaction, information architecture, etc.

So that’s my approach. To give you a broader view of things – I’ve found the following list of traits of UX Professional formed on Quora by Jonathan Baker-Bates:

  • Good articulation and clarity of thought. The practice of UX is often about whether you can explain things to people, and whether your thinking is clear. Unlike good visual design, good UX design is not self-evident, so anyone doing UX needs to be able to explain themselves and their designs very well.
  • Self abdication and appeal to higher authority. In general (and there are notable exceptions) UX design is about other people. It is not, and cannot be about individual opinion. Good practitioners almost never talk in the first person about designs. Instead, they talk in terms of research findings, personas and scenarios.
  • Empathy and accommodation. Good candidates think a lot about everything. They think about people, their lives, their needs, and their environments. That goes for both the people they are designing for, as well as those they design with. They must be social, bright, and easy to get on with.
  • Knowledge. UX research, UX thinking, techniques, and methods are being discussed all the time by those in the industry. Good candidates monitor that, but question things constantly. They never take things at face value.”

It seems like we have similar approaches, although I wouldn’t say that self abdication helps the designer in his pursuit to become great. Honestly, I rather like to work with independent, strong, personalities who truly question everything and only can be persuaded by data.

I hope that will help you with your job interviews.

Good luck!

How Does One Keep from Falling for an Initial Design Idea?

Design is an unfortunate mixture of art and science that simply hates any shortcuts. Designers, on the other hand, are often more than willing to take shortcuts. Who’s not guilty of falling in love with the first design idea? I know I am. You start thinking about the design and immediately afterwards you’re able to see the solution that seems to be perfect – at least in your mind. You’re not forcing yourself to come up with anything else and you simply start wireframing your first real guess.

This very moment of questionable epiphany can ruin the entire product.

Design is a conversation in which different points must be presented and argued for or against. It’s too simple to just agree with yourself on the first premise and rush to the end of the project. Falling in love with the first idea is depleting you of mental and creative resources that could lead to something absolutely amazing. By falling for the first idea that comes to your mind, you’re getting stuck in your local maximum – you’ll never know how much you could achieve by releasing your creative powers and going further.

Local Maximum

And yes – the design process is wasteful. On every step of the design process should you leave more ideas than you’re taking with you. The rule of thumb is simple: the design process should undergo clarification – the further down the road you are the less waste you’re supposed to produce. You should brainstorm dozen of ideas, sketch several of them, wireframe a couple of them, prototype the best three, only take two of them to visual design, etc.

Split-testing obviously puts this logic into question but my point is simple: if you have the money, time, market situation and resources to test several fully made designs – do it. If not – there should always be a testable design with several variations (the difference of details, copy, etc. – something that can significantly change user’s behavior and business results).

Having that said – let’s think about how to prevent yourself from “marrying” the first design idea that comes to your mind.

  1. Always engage several people in your design process (developers, managers, friends…) and try to work with them right from the beginning.
  2. Brainstorm multiple solutions and use very rough sketches to express them.
  3. Always start with sketching and low fidelity wireframes.
  4. Test your design ideas with users before moving toward final design and implementation.
  5. Don’t consider yourself omnipotent :)

Good Luck!

10 Most Beautiful Retail Stores in the World

I assume most of you deal daily mostly with digital design. Websites, Software, Mobile Apps… – that’s our reality. In my experience though, the design inspiration should be broad. The best projects I’ve ever worked on had some connection to physical reality.

eCommerce websites inspired by shop-windows, Financial websites with bank-style influences, etc. – this kind of design inspiration always brings some kind of freshness into our skill-set and much-desired familiarity to the minds of our users. It’s not about modeling the whole design to resemble its physical predecessor. It’s rather about taking the inspiration and creating something completely new with reference to the original.

That’s exactly why it’s worth spending a while watching things that are not digital. Let’s start with a series of the most beautiful retail stores in the world. Contemplating the work of retail-space design masters can teach us a lot about the relation of aesthetic and business efficiency, as well as space management.

Hope the following list will be as inspiring for you as it was for me

Thom Browne, Tokyo

Thombrownetokyo1

Comme Des Garcons, Tokyo

Comme Des Garcons Tokyo

HAN KJØBENHAVN FASHION, New York

HAN KJØBENHAVN FASHION NEW YORK

Otsuka Gofukuten Cloth, Kyoto

OTSUKA GOFUKUTEN CLOTH KYOTO

Selexyz Bookstore, Maastricht

church book store Maastricht

Plural Bookshop, Bratislava

Plural Bookshop, Bratislava,

Aesop, Hong Kong

AESOP STORE Hong Kong

Menscience, New York

MENSCIENCE NEW YORK

The Story Unfolds Bookstore

The Story Unfolds store design

Apple Store, New York

Apple Store Fifth Avenue

Top 10 Design Discussions on Quora

Design discussions on Quora

Quora became a place to be if you care for an occasional conversation about Tech-related stuff. Best designers in the world are certainly present among Quora members. Take a look at the best design discussion and join the stream of conversations!

10. What Do Samsung Employees Think of Apple Design?

Have you ever wondered what Samsung employees think about the design of their arch enemy – Apple? Wonder no more. Quora discussion reveals the truth. “Many of my coworkers consider Apple to be just a hype builder. Most of the time they don’t want to give credit to Apple engineers. But on the other hand, there are a small number of Apple users working in Samsung. We appreciate the quality of their ecosystem and the beauty of hardware-software integration…”

Continue reading Top 10 Design Discussions on Quora

What Does Design Actually Mean?

Design is a funny word. Mention it in a conversation and it adds value without adding a precise meaning. If you hear “that’s the great design” do you know exactly what your interlocutor meant by that? Aesthetics? Function? Both?

How about “I’m a designer”? A couple of months ago I was presenting for a group of experienced Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. One gentleman in his late 60’s told me after the presentation “I’m a designer as well. I used to design circuits”. Unfortunately, that’s not the kind of design I can understand, so we didn’t find common ground.

Design is a dangerously obscure term. Especially in the Age of Design in which “good design” mark might be a highway to success for any product and “bad design” may doom anything.

Diving deep into the nature of design can give us some kind of clear view for the matter, so let’s get back to pure words and try to define design in a general way:

What Is Design? 

1. Dictionary Definition of Design

Design is the creation of a plan or convention for the construction of an object or a system (as in architectural blueprints, engineering drawings, business processes, circuit diagrams, and sewing patterns). Design has different connotations in different fields.

(Source: Cambridge Dictionary of American English)

2. Design Etymology

Design (verb):
The 1540s, from Latin, design are “mark out, devise, choose, designate, appoint,” from de- “out” + signature “to mark,” from signum “a mark, sign”. Originally in English with the meaning now attached to designate; many modern uses of design are metaphoric extensions.

Design (noun):
The 1580s, from Middle French desseign “purpose, project, design,” from Italian disegno, from disegnare “to mark out,” from Latin designare “to mark out” (see design (v.)).

(Source: Etymology Dictionary)

3. From Design Authorities

DESIGN: (noun) a specification of an object, manifested by some agent, intended to accomplish goals, in a particular environment, using a set of primitive components, satisfying a set of requirements, subject to some constraints.

(Source: Ralph, P. and Wand, Y. (2009). A proposal for a formal definition of the design concept. In Lyytinen, K., Loucopoulos, P., Mylopoulos, J., and Robinson, W., editors, Design Requirements Workshop (LNBIP 14), pp. 103–136. Springer-Verlag, p. 109)

To design is to devise courses of action aimed at changing existing situations
into preferred ones

Herbert Simon, Nobel laureate

Getting To A Better Understanding of Design’s Meaning

The common notion in all the definitions seems to be regarding design as to purposeful action, a plan of solving a particular problem. Design, regardless of the particular pragmatic discipline, is a deliberate set of actions that are meant to provide value for the receiver of a “designed thing”.

The term Design will gain a deeper meaning by thinking about it like this. Design is more than aesthetics. Design is more than just a planing function. It’s about giving meaning to something. It’s about the experience. That’s why the concept of the design transcends single disciplines and can be applied to the web, mobile, software, fashion, industrial, interiors, etc.

Isn’t that something?
Let’s continue the conversation around what design means to each of us and how we understand it.

5 Dangers of Flat Design

Metro UI Flat Design

To say that „Flat design is extremely popular” is to say nothing. The Flat design took over the design world. Microsoft (since 2010), Google and Apple adapted the flat design to some extent and thousands of designers followed (check out the Flat Design Showcase).

The simple and clear aesthetics of the flat design is easy to recognize and become a brand on its own rights. Some designers though tend to see it as the beginning of the revolution:

„I believe that the flat design trend is a symptom of the growing maturity in the field of web and interface design. This maturity applies to our designers – who are getting better at making interfaces that encourage interactivity and engagement – as well as to our users.” /Marci Ikeler, Designer and Founder of Little Arrows

„In essence, the flat era of design has narrowed the constraints but surprisingly expanded our approach towards design. Skeuomorphic design was not a trend, it was necessary for technology to be adopted. Now that it is, flat design is another necessary step that will facilitate exploration of new design techniques that will take the industry to new heights” /Damian Madray

If they are right, there’s hardly a way back. The flat revolution will unify the digital world under a single rule. Whatever will be in a different aesthetics will be judged as an oddity. While all the big brands are switching to the flat, that view might be truer than ever.

And this is exactly where I see the danger. While I admire the flat design aesthetics I’m afraid that many designers might fall into the trap that will ruin their design ambitions (and life of their users in the same, unfortunate, time). Oh yes… Flat design is tricky. Let me introduce you to 5 obvious dangers of Flat Design:

  1. Forgetting Affordances
    In many cases texture, gradients, drop shadows and other ‘non-flat’ user interface elements hold an important information value. They help to create affordances in the interface. A button that looks like a button brings in the right mental model to the minds of users. That helps them understand the connection between a button and their goal – that’s a highway to interface efficiency.

    If you’re working on a flat design – make sure that you took care of affordances.

  2. Misusing color & contrast
    Flat designs must rely on color & contrast as the indicator of interaction in the interface. That’s not an easy task. Colors got their meanings and lead to certain physiological reactions. To master color as an obedient information carrier – that’s certainly one of the biggest challenges in front of the flat design.
  3. Lacking the beauty of typography
    Flat designs rely on typography as on the primary carrier of aesthetic value and information. That’s absolutely great. Who doesn’t love beautiful typography? Right? The only problem is that typography is the art on its own. Lack of typographic skills will be more visible than ever in a bare flat design.
  4. Poor rather than simple
    Ornaments and any „extra” ingredients are banned in flat design. That’s cool. It supposes to lead to the beauty of simplicity. The danger is though that the interface will look poor and unfinished rather than simple. Creating something beautiful, useful and simple is the ultimate design challenge.
  5. Lost Visual Hierarchy
    Back in the days, designers were really concerned by the visual hierarchy of information that they are forcing on users. Having a full spectrum of effects: shadows, gradients, textures… designers could try to guide human perception of the interface. While it’s still possible in the flat design, it’s definitely harder.

All 5 dangers might be summed up in a single sentence: Flat Design is hard.

And here’s your takeaway – a handy graphic:

Flat Design InfoGraphic

Design Your Own Google Glass App

Google Glass Wireframing

Wireframing and Prototyping UX Design Ideas for Google Glass

UXPin has a simple mission: We want to make design easier for you. No matter what platform you are working on. No matter what stage of design process you are in. We’ll be there to provide help and relief.

That’s why we absolutely had to create a design solution for Google Glass.

Just imagine bad design on the Glass. An unreadable, hard to comprehend, distraction hanging in the upper right corner of your eye-line. That’s not only disturbing but also possibly dangerous. Glass needs properly designed apps. Glass needs great designers. Great designers need great tools.

Let me introduce you to UXPin’s Glass Prototyping solution.

We believe that the visualization of your design ideas should be as easy as building something with LEGO. That’s why we’re providing you with a library of Glass UI elements that you can simply drag&drop onto the Glass canvas and simulate the experience of wearable computers.

Have fun!

ps. The Glass baseball app in the video was inspired by the experience of my first baseball game ever. My great teammates and wife gave me a birthday present – tickets to a Giants game. Thank you so much! I had a lot of fun :).

3 Things That Every Startup Has to Build

Be Happy Go Lucky

Photo Credit: x-ray delta one

3 Things That Every Startup Has to Build

8 years ago, soon after high school, I’ve worked at Kentucky Fried Chicken for a couple of months. Tough job to start a career, but I really wanted to buy an awesome guitar and I needed money for that. The first day wasn’t particularly good. I was definitely the slowest, most confused, KFC employee in history. Customers were going mad, so one of my supervisors took me for a Face to Face meeting and said “Marcin, I don’t know if you really understand the meaning of words fast food…let me explain: it means that food must be served in a really fast way”.

As mean as it was, I got it and survived inside the KFC for the next 6 months.

I took this miserable life lesson with me to both: the User Experience and the Entrepreneurial world. I’m always deeply thinking about the expected outcome that guarantees success and the real meaning of the situation. For User Experience Design the outcome is always a great, efficient, product. For entrepreneurs… well that’s a little bit more complicated.

I’ve learned (and believe me…it took me some time!) that, on a very basic level, every startup must do only 3 things to survive. Three things that define the meaning of a startup, just as serving food quickly, defines the existence of fast food.

  1. Build an amazing team
  2. Build a great product loved and desired by customers
  3. Achieve significant, sustainable, growth

As far as I know, that’s it. Only 3 things!

At UXPin we spent months talking to you (our customers), observing your reactions in the social media, changes in metrics… and we were iterating, like crazy, on the product. Finally, thanks to your amazing feedback, we’ve started to grow.

When you know that your company actually works, that’s an amazing, powerful, feeling. When you see the growing satisfaction of customers and the growing revenue, that makes you jump high in the air!

And we’re just having our best month in history. February was the previous best month and before that – January. That’s our sustainable growth.

Weekly Growth March

The number of paying customers will be, again, more than 30% higher than in the previous month.

In fact, we’ve sold more accounts last week than in the first 6 months of the company.

But that’s not what’s most important today. Company had the best week and the best month in history, while we (Marcin Treder and Marcin Kowalski) are in the Silicon Valley, working on the next step for the company (lots of legal and financial stuff ;)). That’s the clear sign that we have in place the third factor that every startup needs to succeed – a great team.

So here’s to you! The greatest startup team ever!

Without the right team, a startup means nothing, just as without a loved product and sustainable growth.

The Importance of Copywriting in User Experience Design

Importance of great copy in UX Design

Click to see the full size it doesn’t get prettier, but certainly gets more readable.

The importance of copywriting in User Experience Design

Importance of copywriting in User Experience Design should never be underestimated. Whether you sell books, encourage people to read your blog, or try to persuade visitors to sign up to a b2b app – great copy is absolutely indispensable. Jeff Gothelf calls copywriting “The Secret Weapon of UX” and I simply couldn’t agree more.

Back in my UX Manager times I was dreaming about having dedicated, professional copywriter on my UX team. We’ve never found the right person, however I still think it’s the best solution for large organization. For smaller companies the only option is to encourage UX Designers to learn basics of copywriting, which really should be part of our skills.

Copywriting is a weapon that we should use mercilessly. Would you agree?

Serious Growth Hacking. The Best Week in UXPin History!

Catching Startup Growth

Jump high and catch the growth! Photo Credit: Emery_Way via Compfight cc

Hack the Growth! Growth Hacking in UXPin

In his famous blog post Startup = Growth, Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator, said: “A startup is a company designed to grow fast.”. Planing and executing a growth strategy is the straight way to business haven – explains mr Graham and damn… I couldn’t agree more.

Creating a product is a constant endeavor to please current customers and conquer the hearts and minds of new people. It should be planned, precisely executed, and measured. It’s a non-stop job. You just can’t have a rest for five minutes. It’s a race.

“A company that grows at 1% a week will grow 1.7x a year, whereas a company that grows at 5% a week will grow 12.6x. A company making $1000 a month (a typical number early in YC) and growing at 1% a week will 4 years later be making $7900 a month, which is less than a good programmer makes in salary in Silicon Valley. A startup that grows at 5% a week will in 4 years be making $25 million a month.” /Paul Graham

At UXPin, inspired by our great advisors, we measure and plan our growth strategy per week. We try to keep our growth rate in sales high, so we precisely plan our marketing strategy (90% of which is to create meaningful content for all of you!) and constantly improve our product – introducing new features, or improving existing – almost every week.

Does it work?

Yes! Since we’ve reached the traction, back in August 2012, our average weekly growth of sales is 7%! We’re keeping our growth rate healthy (around 5% weekly is usually considered awesome for SaaS companies) and we’ve just nailed our weekly record of sales.

Last week we’ve reached almost 8% of weekly growth and we’ve exceeded our former record of sales by 41%!

UXPin weekly growth. Result of serious Growth Hacking.

I’d like to take this moment and thank all of you – our customers, supporters and friends. Our dream of making UX easier for web&mobile teams, comes true thanks to you.

I cannot thank enough our amazing team. Working with these guys is a privilege. They simply rock!

  • Marcin Kowalski – our COO&CFO
  • Kamil Zieba – CPO (@ziebak)
  • Paweł Neubauer – CTO (@bauerpl)
  • Markus Zwick – Customer Succes Couch (@ZwickMarkus)
  • Jacek Złowocki – Programmer (@jzlowocki)
  • Maciej Wojdyr – Programmer (@mwojdyr)

Product Manager and UX Designer – What’s the Difference?

Product Manager and UX Designer

Photo Credit: pelican via Compfight cc

Product Manager vs. UX Designer

I always advocate in favor of broad definition of User Experience Design practice. The one that contains not only UI design, but whole set of activities that lead to creation of a great product.

Here’s the definition from my recent ebook UX Design for Startups:

“User experience design (abbreviation UX, UXD) – A discipline focused on designing the end-to-end experience of a certain product. To design an experience means to plan and act upon a certain set of actions, which should result in a planned change in the behaviour of a target group (when interacting with a product).

A UX designer’s work should always be derived from people’s problems and aim at finding a pleasurable, seductive, inspiring solution. The results of that work should always be measurable through metrics describing user behaviour. UX designers use knowledge and methods that originate from psychology, anthropology, sociology, computer science, graphic design, industrial design and cognitive science.

When you’re designing an experience, you are in fact planning a change in the behaviour of your target group. You’ve found out their problem and you’re trying to destroy the burden using design methods.

User experience lies at the crossroads of art and science and requires both extremely acute analytical thinking and creativity.”

Planning, measuring, building, validating – that’s a pretty broad set of actions, but this is what, I believe, have to be done to create stunning UX Design. The question that’s often asked is the role of Product Manager in that picture. If UX Design is responsible for the product, what Product Manager is responsible for?

I’ve heard from a couple of well respected UX Designers, that currently Product Development and User Experience Design are almost the same and in the lean future they actually should become the same. UX Designers are expected to understand business objectives (couldn’t agree more!), be really team-oriented (collaboration is crucial!) and guide product through iterations (we should be great at measuring behaviour and acting upon results!).

Is there anything left for Product Managers? Well, in my opinion, yes and no. It all depends on the type of organization.

PM = UX Designer

For small startupish teams UX designer and Product Manager can be the same person. UX designer should well understand business goals, users needs and should be focused on delivering an amazing product. Product done through ongoing, efficient, collaboration with other specialists.

If there’s not a lot of dealing with stakeholders, marketing is done in a guerrilla style, sales are limited to simple activities, the financial part of the product is rather obvious, the strategy doesn’t need to be adjusted to corporate strategy, etc. there’s no need to bring on board an additional person.
A small team can deal with most of the problems on their own. In fact, this how we work at UXPin.

PM ≠ UX Designer

However, if there’s an ongoing need to coordinate the work of different departments (sales, marketing), dealing with stakeholders is overwhelming, the strategy is as complex as a whole organization, marketing is a challenge, the engineering team is massive… – there’s definitely place for a Product Manager. PM, in this environment, uses his understanding of the target group and the product, to make sure the train is going in the right direction.

The things mentioned above shouldn’t be done by a UX Designer. The danger of losing focus on the design will be too great.

The little image below sums up he distinction between Product Manager and UX Designer in organizations that actually need both positions

PM vs UX

If you found this article useful, feel free to give our UXPin app a try below. We designed UXPin to improve collaboration between product teams (especially with regards to UX designers and PMs).

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How to Recognize Great UX Designer?

Not so long ago (though in pre-UXPin times), I was working as UX Manager. That’s a great position to be. Taking care of interfaces intertwined with taking care of the team of talented designers.

I was constantly thinking about skills great UX designers possess and ways of enhancing these skills among my people.

Let me share with you what skill-set I had (and still have) in mind.

Continue reading How to Recognize Great UX Designer?