Comments on: Consensus vs. Collaboration

By: Glen Lipka

Glen Lipka — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:10:50 +0000

Thank you very much, I really appreciate it. I actually don’t speak at many conferences, although I always love to do it. I wish I was invited to more. I was invited to speak at the ExtJS conference in April, but right now, that’s it.

I absolutely would love to help out. I’ll email you directly.

By: James

James — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 07:41:51 +0000

Belated reply, but…

Your UX presentation was top-notch and my favorite at the conference. As someone who is currently transitioning from a lead UI dev role to a lead UI design role, I found your presentation to be relevant and incredibly engaging.

Do you only speak at conferences? I would love to arm-twist my company (SF-based) into hiring you for an hour and motivating our developers:)

By: Glen Lipka

Glen Lipka — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:12:11 +0000

James: You hit the nail on the head where theory and practice make for an unpleasant outcome. I have had the opportunity of being a UX designer AND a product manager at the same time. I truly believe that product management should be the “junior” partner in the relationship.

What the product does is always secondary to how it actually works.

In other words, when an argument happens between design and product management, the designer should win. It will yield a much better outcome in the end. With that said, it is CRITICAL that the product management function be clear about what success looks like. Is it higher satisfaction? A specific use case? A specific increase in sales?

The place where it gets into trouble is when executives or any non-designer wants to insert their opinion into the design process. This is what makes products fail. I should blog about this detail more specifically, but it comes in so many flavors.

You said you saw the UX presentation. What was your opinion? I hope I was good, but you never really know.

By: James

James — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 23:38:08 +0000

My company strives for the collaboration model, but I have seen one instance where this has broken down: when a Product Manager thinks they are a UI Designer and when the UI Designer thinks they’re a Product Manager. In an ideal world both responsibilities are siloed, but realistically there is occasionally some bleed-over when both parties are passionate about their application.

When a smashing of heads between Product and Design occurs, there’s often a brief heated discussion and the unfortunate result is a Compromise, which, as you know (I’ve seen your UX presentation), can be a bad thing.

But generally, Collaboration works great as long as the insight offered by other stakeholders (buzzword alert) stays within the boundaries of their individual expertise.

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 21:34:37 +0000

We have none of those, everyone is kinda on their own, which is quite problematic. There is no sense of vision, since everyone is focused only on their daily tasks. There is no design at all, so the results are minimal and depend only on individual talent. I am trying to change some of this, but the HiPPO is not the dictator type (she is in terms of service, but not organizationally). Although it is not directly my responsibility, I feel that in order for my position to be successful (in the long-run), there needs to be a movement towards one of the three styles. An example of why this isn’t currently working is that in most well-run non-profits the staff donate to the organization. This makes big donors feel better about their investment, it just works. But since most the staff here are not familiar with this idea and individually they don’t feel it is even appropriate for me to ask them for money. However, a dictator could kinda make people do it, and a committee or collaboration would come together and release that this is worth while (and will contribute to the mission). I know we aren’t designing anything, but I through your post had a corollary towards general management systems.

By: mdmadph

mdmadph — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:56:06 +0000

Nothing but the first model.