User experience and interface is what will make or break even the best of solutions.
Next up on my mini-series on career transitions in to and out of product, I’ll be touching on UX/UI.
UX/UI Designers -> Product Management
If you’ve been doing UX/UI for at least a couple years, you’re probably privy to what you need to do to understand users and to create experiences that are both intuitive to them and engaging. From here, stepping into product management will require you to expand your focus to overall business strategy and become privy to market trends.
Saying it another way, you need to expand from your specific target demographic to those that exist around and influence it.
You’ll also want to get a handle on a foundational level of analytics (both collecting and decision-making) and practice communication to various types of stakeholders (i.e. customers, engineers, marketing/sales, C-suite, etc.).
Product Managers -> UX/UI Design
As a product manager, you should be well aware how important it is your solution solves problems that people want to have solved. But, if you’re focusing more on the design of said solutions, you’ll now need to make sure they’re solutions that people want to use in the first place.
A great rule of thumb I’ve learned from my colleagues in UX/UI design is that if your solution needs an in-depth guide or tutorial to use, you’ll may have a harder time getting users to adopt and use it. Keep your designs simple and uncluttered. Even more, ask yourself, “if a complete stranger to the solution were to see this thing, would they intuitively know what they’re looking at and what to do?”
And there you have it. If you’re considering a switch from UX/UI to PM or PM to UX/UI, reach out if you have any questions! I’ve been at this for well over a decade and am happy to help and share what I’ve seen help and not help.
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