Product Managers: Here’s How to Make Your Designers Love You

Design encompasses more than one thing. As such, your designer may be more talented in one area than another. For example, they might be great at interaction design, but they lack a bit of artistic flair when it comes to visual design.

It’s important to understand this when interacting with your designer. If one aspect of their work isn’t 100% up to your expectations on their first try — it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a bad designer. It just means that you’ll need to work around their strengths and weaknesses.

Because PMs and Designers have a different ways of looking at things, you have to explain the reasons behind your decisions. Saying ‘just get it done’ when questioned won’t only be incredibly unhelpful, but also makes you look pretty unlikeable.

Your Design team will care about providing the best experience for users, and will probably also want to maximize the visual appeal. It’s your responsibility to explain why something has been decided a certain way.

As a team, you need to find a balance between what looks good, and what functionally achieves your goals. Sometimes you’ll need to be on the other side of compromise when a designer tells you that something just doesn’t look good.

This isn’t just because designers are, in a way, artists. Yes, they have a vision, a style of their own, and things they visually prefer. But they’re also educated professionals who know what users want to click on and why.

Getting Design involved from the beginning, rather than building something and passing it along to be ‘prettied up’, greatly improves the quality of your product.

Users don’t just want things that work, they want things that work beautifully. Getting your designers involved from the very beginning not only earns you their respect and trust, but also helps you build your product in the right direction.