The 10x Product Designer and the 7 things they all have in common
The gap between an A and B player is no more apparent than in Product Design. I’ve never been a big believer in the “you either got it or you don’t” philosophy to life (as I’m a big believer in constant improvement), but if I ever were to believe it… it would be a result of observing Product Designers.
In the same way, I fully subscribe to the 10x engineer, having seen great examples at both Wayfair and Drizly of 10xers, I subscribe to the 10x Product Designer.
10x Product Designers:
Are obsessive over customer experience beyond the “core product,” and leverage all departments to craft the voice of the customer and the product experience. 10xers are a sponge for information across the organization, looking beyond “the app.” To them, the core product is the entire lifecycle. Which includes all customer communication touchpoints, all customer acquisition channels, all CRM outreach, and all app/site interactions. They spend significant time beyond their closest Product, Eng, and BI business partners, and stay close to the work other departments are doing. Like, keeping close to Marketing CRM teams is what they are doing with push notifications, text, email, and social interactions on Clubhouse, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Like meeting with Customer Service teams to triangulate what customers are saying on the phones and email with their own user interviews. They are able to work with Product to create digestible tagging of incoming email/text correspondence. They look at every player in the organization as a means of gathering data and leveraging it to create one voice for the customer.
Have incredible business sense. They are able to align the customer to the business and think in terms of customer impact on the goals and metrics of the business. This often means staying very close to the Analytics team, and even developing their own SQL chops to be able to pull their own data. 10xers are amazing at design, but they also skew towards having an analytical mindset, oftentimes pushing closer and closer to the PM function than anything else.
Move at an incredible rate. The 10xers I know drive at 10x the speed. They are able to convert customer feedback and data into digestible wireframes, into prod/eng productive conversations, into iterations, into full-blown UX/UI, and into full-blown feature launches in 1/10th the time. It’s truly an incredible sight to see.
Bring multiple solutions to the table, build a case, and have an opinion backed by data. Have you ever worked with a Product Designer who when asked why they decided on their solution has said: “It feels right.” 10xers don’t do this. They can logically talk through how they arrived at a solution, and they partner with BI and Product prior to making sure the data supports the result. And most importantly, they are able to adapt their opinions to new data and other’s arguments that are presented. 10x Product Designers are able to make these decisions with all inputs, and not be forced to do something because “someone said so.”
Do not take things personally. Product Design is the #1 most visible part of a company, and because of this… EVERYONE has an opinion when it comes to Product Design. It’s a hard job to be a Product Designer and not only have to do your job but also be the most visible. Ex: It is extremely rare for a salesperson to tell an engineer what she/he thinks of their code. It is extremely rare for a Performance Marketer to tell a Data Scientist that their python is sloppy. But, everyone has an opinion when it comes to Product Design. The 10x Product Designer does not take things personally when receiving feedback from peers… which will always be the most by volume of all departments. They separate their personal feelings from the product and the feelings of their customers.
Are disciplined, self-taught, triple-threat UX, UI, and Graphic Design unicorns: The 10xers I know are all amazing at all three: UX, UI, and Graphic Design. (You can add in researcher if you’d like, but I consider that grouped with UX). They are the unicorns of unicorns. If it were a pizza pie, they would be 60% UX, 30% UI, and 10% graphic. But my point: They are amazing at all three. They are artists at their core. Many of them grew up drawing at age five. Almost all of them began as artists —> graphic designers —> UX/UI. And they “get it,” needing far fewer revisions to nail the design.
And are able to tie everything they touch to the purpose, mission, and values of the business. They think long term and don’t cut corners.
The best tech companies I know have 10x Product Designers. The worst don’t. Whether it’s a consumer product or B2B or B2B2C. I know many talented engineers and many talented Product people and many talented Marketing people at companies I think are a complete waste of their time and energy. I know zero, I repeat… zero, talented Product Designers who stay at losing/stagnant tech companies.
Two 10xers I’ve worked directly with Brad Durkin and Charlie Pino.