Product Management in Practice by Matt LeMay

Author:Matt LeMay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Published: 2017-11-23T05:00:00+00:00

Yes, You Need to Learn How to Talk to Users

In some organizations, a product manager might be the sole “voice of the user.” In other organizations, a product manager might be working with an extensive team of user experience designers and researchers who are tasked with conducting exploratory interviews, developing user personas, and overseeing usability tests. To my ongoing consternation and disappointment, I often hear about product managers who dismiss or devalue the work of their counterparts in user research. This, to me, is not only a dereliction of a product manager’s connective duties, but also flat-out counterproductive. If you are lucky enough to have people in your organization who are trained experts in learning from users, why wouldn’t you want to work closely with those people?

The answer, I think, comes back to the same insecurity that drives our five archetypes of bad product managers. “Owning” the relationship with your user can seem like an important source of authority for a product manager. And the specific tools and techniques deployed by user researchers can feel like implicit accusations that you don’t really know as much about your users as you should. But the truth is, you could always stand to learn more about your users. And any new tools or techniques that can help you learn about your users should be taken as a gift.

I did not always subscribe to this belief. Early on in my career as a product manager, I straight-up threw a fit when a UX designer I worked with suggested that we create some user personas—composite profiles of user needs and behaviors designed to help us get out of our own heads and focus on the people for whom we are truly building. Yeah, um, I don’t have to make up a bunch of fake users because I understand our real users, thank you very much.

For all of my attempts to sabotage and undermine the efforts of my persona-peddling colleague, I actually wound up finding this tool tremendously useful. Yes, we were building for “fake” people, composited from interviews with real users. But having anybody other than ourselves in mind as we designed our product assisted us in making better decisions. User personas—like any tool or technique—is not without its limitations and pitfalls. But reflexively dismissing specific tools for user understanding does nothing to help you understand their respective limitations and pitfalls—and guarantees that you will enjoy none of their benefits.

Long story short, you can always learn more about how to talk to your users. You should read books and articles about user research. (I’ve recommended one of my favorites in the appendix of this book.) You should seek out the user researchers in your organization and ask if they can mentor and guide you. Practice every new technique you learn whenever you can. Remain open and curious not just about learning from your users, but also about learning how to learn from your users.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.