While it’s very important to follow an effective UX design approach, PMs face different challenges in designing product features. PMs have to make hard decisions on product design which may directly or indirectly influence product success. Let’s have a look at a few prominent challenges and how to tackle them:

• A difference of opinion among UX designers and PM. The UX design team may disagree with the business or feature requirements as shared by Product Managers. On the contrary, Product managers may not agree with the UX design approach.

• Effort intensive UX versus low usability UX. Dev effort required for a given UX approach can be on the higher side. However, from the usability perspective, the same might be the best approach as per the  PM or a UX designer. Here, PM needs to take a final call on the best-fit design approach while considering all these constraints.

• Effort wastage due to Re-designing. Undiscovered usability gaps reported later by actual users/stakeholders may result in overhauling of developed features. This may significantly impact the top and bottom line of the business and demotivate product teams.

• Delayed product development. Multiple and unexpected iterations in prototypes and UIs, which may delay the reviews and availability of designs on time for development to get started.

How PMs can overcome UX design challenges?

When it comes to addressing the above-mentioned challenges, here are the key things you can do to ensure product design success.

• Understand user personas and refine them. Start by creating user personas. It’d help you ensure that the product connects to real situations and real people. It’s extremely important to modify the user personas based on your findings to represent the target users of your product more accurately.

• Know real-life use cases. Interactions with real customers would help you get a clear cut understanding of real-life user scenarios. This would help your design team think in the shoes of your users as you expect them to use your tools in their real-world work environments.

• Ensure the technical feasibility of designs. The tech approach affects the feasibility of design and vice versa and so it’s important to maintain clear communication among all the teams involved in the process.

• Validate designs & incorporate feedback. Finally, test the usability of the product with real users heavily pays off. Here, you can use the product’s interactive prototype to conduct usability testing. Constant reviews from internal stakeholders and real users (if possible) at different stages of the product development lifecycle would help you avoid massive rework at a later stage.

• Back up with numbers. Arguments are best justified with reliable data. Don’t let your team digress in numerous possibilities and take the most practical path in the interest of customers by tracking their behaviour and usage patterns.