Series Kickoff: The Business Impact of Product Design

Episode Transcription

Anna Eaglin:

Here we are, kicking off a new series. This one is a topic that is near and dear to both of our hearts. This series, we're going to be digging into the importance of strong product design and the impact that strong design can have on a business and even the world.

Christian Beck:

Yeah. In fact, product design is actually what brought you and I together, Anna. Just think of it. If it weren't for product design, there would be no Better Product podcast.

Anna Eaglin:

Wow. I can't even literally imagine that world.

Christian Beck:

But since you guys always hear from Anna and myself, we wanted to bring on a new voice to help us kick off this series. So joining us today is Evan Tank, a senior product designer at Innovatemap. Wait. You've been on the show before.

Evan Tank:

Have I? No. I don't think I have.

Christian Beck:

I could have sworn you were, way early. We used to bring people into [inaudible 00:00:57] back in 2018, towards the end. Anyway. Okay. Maybe not. All right.

Evan Tank:

I remember [John 00:01:02] was online about product design.

Anna Eaglin:

Maybe that's what it was. Okay. Oh, are you not John?

Christian Beck:

Wait.

Evan Tank:

You have the wrong person.

Christian Beck:

This remote work, I forget who people are. John Tank, John [Moore 00:01:17], Evan Tank is here. Thanks for joining us, Evan.

Evan Tank:

Thanks for having me. First time, long time. Excited to kick this off.

Christian Beck:

We are as well. We've wanted to have you on the show ... Well, that's ... I really got Drunk History there. [crosstalk 00:01:34] have you on the show for a good one reason or two reasons.

Christian Beck:

We wanted to have you on this episode to set the foundation for this series, and breakdown for our listeners, what product design is. I know you've actually given talks on this. You've talked about it quite a bit around the office. You even did a really nice video about this. I think it was like a year ago.

Christian Beck:

We wanted to dig into that because, like Anna and myself, your background is in UX design, but we definitely mean something slightly different when we talk about product design. Let's start right there. What is product design as defined by Evan Tank?

Evan Tank:

Well, this has definitely gotten easier to explain over the years, as the term and the field have continued to evolve to the point where it's gotten kind of self-explanatory. Back in the day, trying to explain what user experience design was to someone who didn't work in tech seemed impossible. They're like, "You design experiences? What does that mean?"

Evan Tank:

Really, product design is just creating a product that meets both the needs of the users and the business. It's really that simple. So just making sure that the problems that we're solving for the business turn into exceptional experiences for the users that really also need a problem solved.

Christian Beck:

How do you describe product design to your family? Do you think it's easier to describe than UX design was?

Evan Tank:

Yeah, it definitely is, because people understand what a product is. You can say, "The piece of software that's on your phone, that's a product. I design that." But you don't say, "The piece of software that's on your phone, that's a user experience. You're experiencing that as a user." So it's definitely gotten a little bit easier.

Christian Beck:

At least for me, whenever I use that, I'm like, "You know like the Facebook app you use on your phone, I design things like that." Then they're like, "You designed Facebook?" and I'm like, "No." Then it's usually just a disappointing response, because I haven't [crosstalk 00:03:29]

Evan Tank:

I usually just say, "Yeah, I designed Facebook." [crosstalk 00:03:31]

Christian Beck:

Okay. All right. That's actually a really good idea. For people doing this, your family's never going to background check you.

Anna Eaglin:

Evan, we talked a little bit about what product design is, but what are the actual responsibilities of a product designer?

Evan Tank:

Yeah. I like to break it down into three main responsibilities for designers themselves. There's understanding your users. There's understanding your business and how or why your business needs to grow. Then there's turning those insights into actual user experiences.

Evan Tank:

To break down those three high-level responsibilities a little bit, understanding your users, that's doing user research, user testing, analyzing user data to get to the point where you know what their motivations are, what problems they're trying to solve, and how these products are actually going to fit into their lives.

Evan Tank:

There's understanding your business. Asking questions like why are we designing this feature? What business problem is this design going to solve? How are our competitors solving this problem? Are they? Why are they? Why'd they go that route? How's this thing going to be sold, and what it is for the vision of the product?

Evan Tank:

We're designing this feature so our users can do this, but as a business, it's going to allow us to pursue X, Y, and Z in the future. That's really important for designers to know upfront, so they can scale that into the product.

Evan Tank:

Then turning those user insights and business insights into actual designs. So things like prototyping, wire framing, workflow diagrams, style guides, design systems, incorporating branding and identity into the products, visual design, animations, motion design, those kind of tactical things that end up on the screen in the end.

Christian Beck:

Yeah. To me, that feels like those things that you ended with are, at least I would call UI design, which is a subset of product design. There's the UI aspect of it, but it doesn't speak to the full end to end experience of the product.

Evan Tank:

Yeah, definitely. The terms have shifted throughout the years. People understood design in terms of tech products as UI design in the early stages, because that's really those tactical things. That's what are the fonts? What are the colors? What do buttons look like? How do you interact with the fields in the product and the the tables, and searching and stuff like that. That's UI design, in a sense.

Evan Tank:

Then as the field has continued to evolve, there was this whole revolution around understanding your users. That's where user experience came into play. That's things like, I explain this in reverse in a way, but like doing that user research, understanding what their motivators are, that's when user experience was a heavy impact into it.

Evan Tank:

Now it's shifted into product design in the modern age. That's where you add that lens of the business on top of these terms. So when we say product design, we really mean incorporating the users, the business and those UI tactical things.

Anna Eaglin:

It feels like the definition of UX and product design, initially, designers were not thought to handle more than just the pixel pushing or the design piece. Then the title user experience seemed to come about because we wanted to expand the definition of what a designer could do, of what they thought about. That they thought about the user. They thought about the workflow. They thought about them more holistically. Now, it feels like that's more well understood in the industry. So we're able to focus the title again, back to product designer. Do you think that that's true?

Evan Tank:

Totally. There was a quote that said ... I don't remember who said it, so that means you can probably attribute it to Winston Churchill or someone ...

Christian Beck:

Evan Tank.

Evan Tank:

Because he says every quote in the world. Saying your product is easy to use is like a chef saying their food is edible. So nowadays, it's table stakes to have a really well-designed product that looks great, that functions well. Then you can start to focus on that product inside of the business itself. That's the way we explain product design.

Christian Beck:

I remember after winning World War II, Winston Churchill had that stint where he was a product designer, I think, for a early stage tech company.

Evan Tank:

Yeah, super early stage.

Christian Beck:

That's when he said that. Yeah.

Anna Eaglin:

Really inspirational

Christian Beck:

It was stealth, but actually never made it to market, because it was top secret.

Christian Beck:

One other trend that is not exclusive to product design, but I think is emerging, is product-led growth. We've had a series on product-led growth. I feel like what you're describing only increases demand for even UX to really understand what product design is, because ...

Christian Beck:

Just to share a little bit of my background, which I have on this show before, but when I was in-house designer for larger enterprise software companies, as a user experience designer, you didn't really think about the buying experience, because for larger companies, the users are just there. You don't really worry about acquiring them, and sales handles them.

Christian Beck:

But today, with product-led growth, now the product itself is almost inserting itself into the buying process, which, from my perspective, I think it increases the importance on UX designers to understand how the design fits into that broader process. Are you seeing that happen as well? Have you maybe seen your role evolve over the past four or five years designing software experiences?

Evan Tank:

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Just reinforcing that idea that designers don't work in silos. A designer can't just be taking a user story and translating it into a screen without the broader picture. They have to understand really how your designs will impact and also be impacted by those other disciplines, like the sales team, the marketing team, the branding team, any future developments for the product, because that's really how you continue to scale your product and make sure that it's growing at a rate that you want it to grow.

Christian Beck:

For designers maybe that are unfamiliar with business and don't get an MBA or anything like that, and I know you haven't either, how have you ... You talked about user research and that side of it, but when you think about the business impact of product design, what are ways that you think designers can actually understand that side, or learn that just like they're learning the user side?

Evan Tank:

I think it really comes down to research, interviewing your stakeholders that are involved in the product, interviewing or talking to ... I don't want to say interviewing because that seems so formal. But just talking to the sales team and talking to the marketing team for their plans on how they're going to launch this thing, or the go to market strategy. Just being in touch with those other disciplines at your company is hugely important. You definitely don't need a business degree to do that. You just have to ask some questions.

Christian Beck:

Okay. What we hear a lot from early stage startups are people trying to hire UI designers, or they try to get designers to go design the screens that development can build, they pigeonhole design a little bit.

Christian Beck:

How would you make a case for an early stage company that needs design help, to try to get them to understand the value of product design over just simply getting someone to make clean screens, I guess, for lack of a better word? Put another way, state your case for persuading an early stage founder for the value of product design early on in a product.

Evan Tank:

Product design's always important, no matter what stage you're at. But it's especially important that those early stage startups, because those people wear a lot of hats. If you are working at an early stage startup, you're not just doing what your job responsibility tells you to do. You're not just designing the product. You're going to be influencing so many things about the business.

Evan Tank:

A product designer at an early stage startup needs to wear a lot of those hats, and do some product management roles, do some user research roles, do a lot of those things that you're going to have a lot of those gaps early on, when there's only a handful of people to solve those. So product designers that really understand how product design fits into the business as a whole, once they understand that, they can start to act on some of those gaps and fill some of those gaps for the team.

Christian Beck:

That is great. They'll probably cut this, but I would be remiss if I didn't ask, because you are a taste maker, for lack of a better word, right? You're designing for a lot of-

Evan Tank:

What a high compliment.

Christian Beck:

Yeah. Well, I don't know. It could be bad taste. I don't know. You're making the whatever. You're a thought leader. You have a lot of impact. You work with a lot of startups, a lot of larger tech companies as well, but you set the bar early on for what product design's going to be like.

Christian Beck:

So I'm curious, from your perspective, you know design really well, what are ... Okay, maybe what is the one product or what are some products that you admire, at least from the outside, that you would reference as really great examples of product design today?

Evan Tank:

I tend to really appreciate products that are doing things behind the scenes that me, as a user, don't really see every in a day to day. Products like Houzz, H-O-U-Z-Z, and products like Zillow that are filling gaps in the market that most users don't fully understand.

Evan Tank:

If you ask anyone on the street what does Zillow do, it's like, "Oh, that's where you go to look at houses that are up for sale." But Zillow has tenant portals for early stage landlords that want to set up their payment profiles in the app. They do all kinds of things, because they really understand their market, and they understand what their opportunities are, and how to fill those gaps.

Evan Tank:

I really admire some of those companies that start with a pretty simple B2C product, but then turn it into this larger machine of solving problems for all types of different users in that space.

Christian Beck:

That's an interesting answer. If I were to reflect back why that's interesting for people, I'd say, I think a lot of people, when you ask a designer, a great product would expect beauty, or something that looks amazing, but you gave something ... I'm not necessarily criticizing. I'm a Zillow user myself. But it's not necessarily the pinnacle of gorgeous UI design.

Christian Beck:

But I think it's important too, for people listening, that I think for a lot of product designers, that is what great product design is, like you mentioned. It's a lot of the stuff that you don't necessarily see, the way that they solve things more than it is what it looks like. So that was a real great answer. I think it really exposes, I think, the true value of product design.

Anna Eaglin:

Evan, it's been so awesome to talk with you. Thank you so much for spending time with us today.

Evan Tank:

Thanks for having me again. This was great.

Anna Eaglin:

In the coming episodes, you'll hear from design leaders like Tyler Wanlass, head of design and interim head of product at Buffer; Laura Nunnery, senior product designer at Strava; and Gabrielle Guthrie, co-founder and head of product at Moxxly, which has been acquired.

Anna Eaglin:

In the meantime, be sure to subscribe to the show so you don't miss a new episode release. As always I'm Anna.

Christian Beck:

And I'm Christian. And this is Better Product.

Anna Eaglin:

Better Product.

Anna Eaglin:

Thanks for listening to the show this week. If you're looking for more resources on how to design, build, market and sell better products, then head over to betterproduct.community to join, well, the community. As always, we're curious, what does better product mean to you? Shoot us an email podcast@innovatemap.com.