Design thinking is among top qualities in product and products designed with a deep understanding of user needs are more likely to provide satisfying and effective UX.

I start this post at a late hour reflecting on how numerous products are less than impressive or lack user-friendliness, speaking of UX and UI as well. It is perfectly understandable that many online products get launched as MVPs, but I find it disappointing that many of them remain in the same stage for too long, even if they have functionality flaws! What does such poor state communicate?

A key focus of modern product management is cross-functional collaboration, which ensures that all team members are aligned with user-centric goals and objectives. However, what happens is that communication frequently fails, leading to less successful products. Why is communication essential, and how does it relate to design thinking in product management? A lot.

Firstly, design thinking is more than just design or UX, contrary to what some aspiring product managers might imagine. It involves systems thinking about the product’s entire flow – how it is built, examining user flows, ensuring they are intuitive and meet user expectations, identifying preferred features that need more focus or prominence, how these can be marketed once the product is live, the extent of permissible experimentation and innovation, among other considerations. Design thinking is comprehensive and demands thorough knowledge of the product, the industry, and the market in which you want to showcase your work once done. Why did I mention all of this? Obviously, you must be aware of the many stakeholders (UX designers, development teams, marketing, upper management, authorities, etc.) and how all features and details have to be communicated among multiple departments and people who sometimes inadvertently but also consciously miscommunicate ideas or even decisions done by yourself or somebody else in charge of the product.

Now, off to the intentional miscommunication because this is a problem to make big issues in a long run. Let’s face it – some people just want to be more important than others and if it leads to conflicts, it’s great! Yes, you read well – great! If you get conflicts, then you must find a way to settle them and you are aware of the existing issue that might get in way of some positive outcomes for the product. However, if such people do it sleeky and behind the back of others or, even worse, behind your own back, then the product will certainly suffer and someone will have to take the blame and responsibility. Whoever is the one to take the blame, the product already suffered.

Even if we forget the internal communication in product management, or even company-wide, there is feedback from the market and the holy customer. How can customers communicate if your native app sucks? They can report bugs, leave comments, right? As part of design thinking, how much do you care of the input given by customers directly? Obviously, they cannot write tickets in Jira, but did you ever write tickets in Jira based on customer feedback?

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