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How Product + Design Work Together To Build ‘A Better Future’

3 Tips from Jared Spool (Strategic UX) and Roman Pichler (Product)

Compared with other software development disciplines, product management and user experience (UX) design are still pretty young professions. That said, they’re maturing rapidly and growing more specialized every day. As their evolution continues, it isn’t always clear who’s responsible for what on a product team and how best they can work together (we offered guidance on this topic in a post last year). Maybe it’s no surprise, then, that UX designers and product managers seem to get in each other’s way on the road to success.

This post canvasses the views that Roman Pichler (PM) and Jared Spool (UX) recently shared in consecutive podcast episodes of Product Momentum. What’s most intriguing about both conversations is how they each arrive at the same desired outcome – improving the lives of end users – despite taking parallel paths.

Jared calls that desired outcome a better future, while Roman describes it as the positive change a product should create. But both agree that whatever the solution, it’s less about building shiny new features or making things look pretty (i.e., outputs). Outcomes always trump the digital knickknacks we create along the way.

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Bridging the Gap: Highlights from ITX’s 2nd Annual Product + Design Conference

ITX hosted its 2nd Annual Product + Design Conference on June 22-23 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel Ballroom in downtown Rochester. The 2023 event’s 225+ Keynote Day attendees included every fashion of product maker and leader.

They may have entered the conference as product managers, designers, engineers, QA specialists, and content strategists. But they exited as members of a product team – collectively responsible for solving one shared problem: how do we improve the lives of our users

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From Product Strategy to Roadmaps and Release Plans

Illustration showcasing how a Product managers starts out with a product strategy and ends up going through a product road map to end up in a product release.

In the Planning Stage, look for the ITX innovation lead to guide the product team from Vision to Strategy to Roadmap. In our recent post, we explained that Vision represents a desired future state. Strategy explains how you’ll get there, and Roadmap lists the mile markers along the journey. In this post, we examine the innovation lead’s role in navigating that path.

Building software isn’t about the features you add – the bells and whistles. It’s about helping your end users be more successful. Any notion that a product with more features is by definition better than a product with fewer features is a misguided one.

Innovation leads help their clients and teams discover the difference between adding features for features’ sake and adding features that solve problems for users and create business value for clients.

Our journey starts with Vision, which directs everyone’s effort and investment toward making users more successful. In addition to vision statement – a declaration of objective – innovation leads help teams strategically derive two additional artifacts: the product strategy and the product roadmap.

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Illustration showcasing how a Product managers starts out with a product strategy and ends up going through a product road map to end up in a product release.

Product + Design: Collaborative Best Practices That Deliver Transformative Results

Product manager and UX designer working together

A discussion of UX Design and Product Manager roles, best practices for working collaboratively, and the transformative outcomes to be realized

Not long ago, Jesse James Garrett shared his concern over persistent conversations around “the differences between design and product and the antagonisms they sometimes provoke.”In this post, we – 1. Explore the product and design roles, pointing out the differences and embracing the similarities; 2. Identify 5 best practices to exploit the tension and avoid the antagonism; 3. Realize the transformative outcomes that can result when UX + Product join forces.

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Product manager and UX designer working together

Celebrating 50 Episodes of ITX’s Product Momentum Podcast

Podcast 50th episode collection of headshots

When AJ&Smart CEO Jonathan Courtney roasted us on our own show about our podcast release cadence, we took the good-natured jab to heart.

Now, in welcoming SVPG’s Christian Idiodi as the 50th guest of the Product Momentum Podcast, we not only recognize an important milestone. We celebrate our connection with you – a growing community of seasoned product leaders, industry newcomers, and product specialists committed to improving the lives of others.

Since shaking those first episode jitters with guest Jeremy Durham, Sean and Paul have been an extension of the ITX mission: learning together, growing our knowledge, and delivering technology that solves complex business problems so our clients can move, touch, and inspire the world.

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Podcast 50th episode collection of headshots

Can Large Enterprises Innovate Effectively?

Idea lightbulb taking off like a rocket and not

Pathways to Growth for Mature Organizations and Startups

Of course, large enterprises can innovate, but it is harder for them than for startups. Many do not know where to begin. They look back and recall how, as a startup, they discovered the product-market fit that made them successful. And now, in full growth mode, they attack innovation with the mindset of growth they have today – which does not work.

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Idea lightbulb taking off like a rocket and not

Overcoming Barriers To Successful Product Discovery

Illustration of people climbing ladders to the lightbulb of ideas

To those in the digital product space, the term “Discovery Phase” will likely wash over us like many of the other oft-touted buzz words of our industry. But a healthy discovery process allows us to understand product-market fit and identify key user needs. What’s keeping us from incorporating this valuable learning into our products? We believe it’s either ignorance, intuition, or inertia that stands in the way of successful discovery.

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Illustration of people climbing ladders to the lightbulb of ideas

ITX Product Momentum Podcast – Episode 23: The Product Leader’s Path to High Performance

Podcast illustration of High Performance

As a community, have we gotten better at product leadership? And if we haven’t, what’s it going to take to get there? The answer to both depends on who we ask and by what yardstick we use to measure our performance. For example, is there alignment between the big organizational vision and our individual product vision? Have we mastered the softer skills to bring together such a diverse group of people? And do our teams know how to think through complex problems and adapt when the ground shifts beneath them?
In this episode of the Product Momentum Podcast, Sean and Paul pose these questions to Richard Banfield, VP of Design Transformation at InVision. Richard’s natural curiosity provides some helpful takeaways:
The notion of high performance is not new; powerful examples exist in every industry and sector. Find one that works for you and imitate it.
Effective product people first need to be people people.
Building a practice of high performance requires us to teach our teams how to work together, think together, and decide together.

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Podcast illustration of High Performance

Blazing the Path to Product-Market Fit: Dan Olsen

Illustration of two heads including information and a site connecting the two

Full disclosure. Technically speaking, I don’t claim to know anything. Okay, that may not be entirely true. There’s a lot of knowledge I’ve gained through experience. But not much else of what I truly know is (what I would call) organic; most of what I know I’ve learned from others.

For example, I’m not a technologist by training or trade. In the same way my knowledge of automobiles is limited to their operation (but not to their repair), my knowledge of how software product people work their magic is, shall we say, “well contained.” But that doesn’t mean I haven’t noticed how they effortlessly convert user insight and market data into a product vision to make our world a better place. I stand in awe of the designers and developers who translate that vision into problem-solving software products. My brain isn’t wired to work that way, but thank goodness our world is populated with a community of technology artists whose brains are.

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Illustration of two heads including information and a site connecting the two

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