What is the role of UX in product management?
As the digital world becomes more visual and the problems of humans become more complex while requiring less time to solve them, it has become paramount that product development becomes user/customer-centred.
The emergence of design thinking as a method of solving problems gave birth to user-centred design. Initially, products were just designed and people were allowed to figure them out without taking the experience of users into context. However, product teams asking the questions of what is, what if, what wows and what works by product teams, gave birth to the realisation of how important UX is to the growth and success of a product.
This did not only lead to the emergence of some significant game-changing Product development methods and frameworks such as PLG where the product grows as a result of an improved user experience, but that is also: people love the product, then they try it which leads to the acquisition and then retention.
At the centre of this whole process are Product managers. As product managers, we are in charge of aligning the customer needs or pain points and helping build features(improve the UX) that will solve those problems in concordance with the business objectives.
This means that having a product with a great UX will simplify the user journey and increase the product's usability, leading to faster customer acquisition and retention.
In summary, here are 3 major roles UX plays in product management:
Improves adoption and retention: As I have mentioned before, the faster new customers are adopted the higher the probability of a great product, and when the UX is seamless users will be retained and prevented from switching to alternative products
Understanding UX as a PM enables you to be able to communicate with other members of the product team. Especially the design team, Here you will be able to explain the vision and the goal of the product clearly because you understand the importance of the user experience which will make the product design process seamless and simple for the team.
Understanding UX as a product manager will help in building a better product and enhance the overall brand perception. We all know that branding is at the centre of business growth these days. Having a good UX will improve the NPR of your product, and the overall perception of how users see your product will improve as a product manager once they have a good experience and when the time taken to complete a task is simplified.
As product managers, UX plays a major role in our day-to-day activities, especially when developing and improving products, having a basic understanding of its principles which are similar and intertwined with that of product management will help in easing out the product development process and in the end improve the experience of users who make use of the products we develop.
