Product Managers to develop basic design skills

Your career differentiator, your work accelerator

Whatever the size and the stage of the company, I am a fan of Product Managers who are able to design at some level to communicate their ideas. I am going to analyze how much you can design to meet your goals.

Reasons to design

You may already know that creating an application doodle on a whiteboard during a PM interview gives you more credit as a candidate. I hope your design skills are not limited to the interview process, there are many other reasons you may want to design on a regular basis as a Product Manager.

1. Shortage of design resources. Under the notion of a Product Trio, you may have heard that a good designer should be the partner you need to bring your ideas to life. I agree with that idea, and there is no better thing than working with a good Product Designer, as it is to work with a good Engineering Manager. However, expectations don’t always meet reality, as there is frequently a shortage of design resources, especially for startups. Thus, when you want to communicate an idea, you may wait for the next availability of your design resources, or you create an early design either to get alignment or early validation of your ideas.

2. Create clarity, reduce complexity. There is no better way of realizing the complexity of what you describe through documents unless you try to design it. This is the moment that you realize that a nice-looking idea may be more complex than you initially thought, or that a simple idea may have different implementations. Personally, for big releases, I regularly create some draft designs and I iterate between the document and the design, so I improve my clarity and simplify what I suggest.

3. Bridge communication gaps. Hopefully, you won't need to code your solution; If you want to test your prototype, you have faster and more efficient ways to create alignment on what you have in mind. Trying to get closer to the final state of the deliverable by designing it will help you have a better view of what you expect from the product designer and the engineers. You will also realize how better your team are at their craft and that you should trust them, or you may realize that they miss some important details and you have to step in. If you treat your designs as an interface for accelerating your collaboration, and not as imposed requirements because “you know better and you can design too”, you will see improvements on your teamwork. Ideally, this will happen in a workshop-like environment, where all have equal opportunities for contribution.

4. Visual mockups win attention. I have written scenarios, use cases, stories, 1-pagers, 6-pagers, PRDs. I can guarantee, there is no stronger way of promoting your ideas if there is a mock design. I have got the green light for a new concept one month after it was dropped, just because this time I had a flow of screens to present. But if your design is too bad, you may have the opposite outcome. In that case, you may have to work more with your designer, before you communicate it broadly; ask them about their opinion, before you bring up your designs to your audience.

5. Learn from doing. Studying the competition or state of the art applications, and trying to copy their UX for your new feature or product is a great exercise that keeps you fit, about your product sense. There is no better way to realize why you like a product than trying to design similar experiences for your case.

6. Do better QA and elevate your standards. When you try to design, you pay attention to the details that you didn't before. The location of the timestamp, the header and the subheader, the single vs multi selections. Then, it is easier for you to find deficiencies on your upcoming releases, even from the designing phase.

How to develop your design skills

You should realize yourself how design may help you with Product Management. Lately, it is easier than ever to design functional prototypes, and I don’t refer to AI-generated wireframes; I prefer having control of what you design and why, and of course you may run iterations with GenAI input as well.

1. Choose a tool. Find the tool that fits you better. My advice is to learn Figma. It has a learning curve, not as bad as the Adobe products, but if you learn to build prototype flows, it's a great skill you will never regret.

2. Reuse the design system. Use your team’s design system to speed up your process, and not confuse the audience by redefining the whole UI and UX. If you learn Figma, there is a big chance your Design Team is already using it, so your life will be easier.

3. Use templates. Search on the Figma community for templates, in case you need to cover a new flow not covered by the design system. Copy the components you like and reuse them.

4. Use collage. If you don't have the luxury of time to develop, use collage, with screenshots from your favorite and most relevant applications. In that case it is useful to create flows. If you are even on an earlier stage, you may use Figjams showing how different users would navigate through different screens.

5. The copy is crucial. Pay attention to the copy of your designs. Your audience will focus more on what you write than how it looks.

6. Keep your team in the loop. Get feedback and advice from your design team, while you are honest with them that they will redesign everything from scratch, or keep the ideas they like. Also, clarify to your internal stakeholders that this is your work, not designers’. Be honest with your audience about the goal of your designs, and insist that this is a way to create clarity and get early feedback. Don't try to sell that you are a designer.

7. For big asks, go with the team. If you are a mature team, go to a design sprint, to balance your creativity with team work and get the maximum from your team. But not everyone team has this “luxury” (we may discuss this paradox on another post).

8. Choose when you go with wireframes. If you feel that the design of the product is important, you should stick to wireframes with emphasis on the flow and the copy. For example, there is no reason trying to design the website yourself.

Designing for products without UI

And where come the edge cases? What happens if I design a non-UI product, or an AI one? In that case, I can suggest the following tools:

1. Use a service design blueprint to describe the whole experience. There is interaction with your website or with an email, even in that case. You may want to create a Figjam to address it.

2. Emphasize the copy and the flow, trying to expose the value of what you are building. Choose a scenario that makes sense for your business, and make it look like a demo for a keynote presentation, a newsletter or your website. Work backward and think how your demo will impress your audience and will pass the message to the audience, without losing sight of the feasibility.

What about Discovery?

In my career, I have seen amazing product designers and engineers with great PM skills. I have seen also PMs with an engineering background and understanding. I have seen however very few PMs with good design skills. You can make this a differentiator in your career. And I hope you will never need it in your day to day track ; but I doubt it that you won't use it if you start realizing how much value in your collaboration you may unlock.

What someone may argue is that the time spent to design could be used for other activities, especially discovery. I see the designing skills of a PM a ways to accelerate the cycles between discovery and early validation, at least to get early feedback, not on a final stage. For B2B companies, it's also a good way to align with internal stakeholders. And as I mentioned already, it's the best way to elevate your design sense so you can better communicate with the product designers.

The goal is not to replace a Product designer, but to decrease your validation and alignment time. If your company provides you with the resources and the systems to achieve that, you should feel lucky. But even in that case, if you ever decided to join or run a startup, you will need design skills for sure.