“Crazy busy week!” vs. headphones and Figma all day.

What designers can learn from product managers - and what product managers can learn from designers.

My feeling is that designers are quite happy people, happy with their tasks, not too stressed out about workload. They go to work with a smile, sit down to enjoy nerdy coffee while reading the four new emails from yesterday.

They plan a workshop for half a day and then open Figma to move a pixel or two while listening to cheap indie in expensive headphones. And for the record: I’m not saying this is, by any means, a bad way of working – quite the opposite, actually. I think that this is in many ways a healthy and sane way of coming closer to our shared goal: create value.

Quality takes time and design is a process that needs to be respected. Rushing = not doing design well. It seems like designers have it all figured out, it’s a role that has the fundamental ingredients of not rushing into crapy decisions. A key pillar in design work is to reflect and really motivate every pixel move with deep insights.

So what’s the problem then? - and what’s the learning? - I will get to my point very soon - I’ll just have to share my blunt generalising observations on what a day looks like for a product manager as well.

Product managers on the other hand - wake up early to catch up on the already overloaded inbox before the first meeting. Back to back meetings throughout the day, but there is an ongoing incident that needs to be coordinated during these meetings as well.

Decisions are asked to be taken in the chat and stakeholders are wondering about feature requests and performance data. With a long list of requests waiting to be prioritised and a team member who just resigned - it’s a pretty stressful day.

The very core of this role is to make sure the product team spends time on the right things. But with 20 great ideas and the capacity to take on one thing - it’s easy to feel something like “WE ARE NOT MOVING FAST ENOUGH!” With high expectations on what to deliver from different parts of the organisation - and with the goal to be as fast as possible to market, this is in many ways a role that has the basis and the fundamental ingredients of a stressful work situation.


I’ve now had the pleasant privilege to work both as a designer and a product manager. I've done the headphones and Figma, and I've also had a “crazy busy week” once or twice. I have been part of these two different communities and picked up some clues on how we together can become better product people, how we can tweak our ways of working together toward a more value-driven approach. I’m not saying I have figured it all out, but I think I have become a much better product person by having one foot in the design community and one foot in the product management community. Understanding both roles and the types of struggles we face in both design and product thinking helps.

Here are my humble lessons learned so far:

What designers can learn from product managers

Value is created only when customers interact with the design made. Only then can we see and measure the effect and move forward, make money, raise KPIs – measure OKR outcome. Meaning: The goal should be to release things. Always.

Figma and the workshops are tools to get closer to something that is releasable. But my feeling is that designers tend to spend quite a lot of time sorting out what to research, what to design, doing workshops on what to workshop on. Solving the right problem is important, maybe the most important. But as long as no release happens, no value is created. Let this sink in for a second: as long as no release happens, no value is created, since value is created only when customers interact with the design made.

So if designers could have release in mind, set goals around small releasable pieces of work, the world would be a better place, at least from a product manager’s point of view.

One insight and one release drive much more value than 1000 insights and no release. Design too often tends to be like 90% sorting out what to build and 10% making it actually happen. I think a 50/50 approach would bring a lot more value.

Designers could spend a little less time on visionary work and a little more time on getting things out – like story writing, story mapping, coordinating feasibility, connecting with stakeholders, QA. Small improvements – hand over a list of low-hanging fruit fixes to our PMs. Make release happen!

What product managers can learn from designers

first: Chill the crap down! You are not exactly creating value by sitting in meetings and being stressed out about things all day long either. Value is created first when you hit that go-live button – when users interact with the feature you made. Only then can revenue and happy customers happen.

So, take care of your time; one good decision is a lot better than 20 not-so-good decisions. Building great products takes time and needs reflection. Enjoy a nerdy coffee and some indie once in a while. Think about all the meetings as: Is this meeting bringing us closer to a release, yes or no? And set the priority based on that.

Product manager work tend to be 10% sorting out what to build and 90% trying to make this happen. I think a 50/50 approach would create much more value here as well. Meaning more: identify the problem, ideating on solutions, taking part in usability testing, writing surveys, and less coordination and overhead work. I think that this way, it’s easier for the product owner to identify the smallest releasable thing as well.

Now go ship something.

Happy Friday!