I’ve spent the better part of my career playing both positions—product management and design. On the surface, they can seem like completely different roles: one obsessed with outcomes, roadmaps, and business metrics; the other, driven by human needs, flows, and finesse. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll find a shared core: both are about building solutions that make people’s lives easier—and, like any good team, neither can win alone.
Learn to Pass, Not Just Shoot
If you’ve ever watched kids play sports, you’ve probably stood on the sidelines shouting, “Pass!” as they try to score all on their own. It’s the same with product managers and designers—they both want to build great products people actually use, but they can’t do it solo.
Product managers are the bridge between the business and the team. They manage stakeholders, build roadmaps, write requirements, and ask, “How does this align with our goals?” Designers, on the other hand, are the champions of the user experience. They talk to customers, test flows, iterate on prototypes, and ask, “Does this actually solve the user’s problem?”
There’s definitely some overlap—product managers should absolutely talk to customers too—but it needs to be done with a clear focus so each role can play its position effectively.
When these disciplines operate in silos, it’s easy for things to go sideways. I’ve been in rooms where design gets reduced to a service function—“just make it pretty”—or where product rushes to deliver features with no real user validation, driven purely by quarterly revenue targets. These traps are common, but avoidable.
Trap #1: Design as a Service Function
One of the biggest pitfalls I’ve seen is when product treats design like a vending machine. “Here’s the Jira ticket—can you get me some screens by Friday?” In this setup, design is reduced to execution—just cranking out mockups without any real grasp of the underlying problem or context. And when designers get shuffled from ticket to ticket across different products and problem areas, they can’t build any continuity in their solutions. It’s demoralizing—and even worse, it creates fragile products that don’t scale.
Good product teams bring design into the process early and often—not just to whip up screens, but to help define the problem itself. When I led a large design team for a new mobile smart home app, we made sure our designers were at the strategy table from day one. They weren’t “just designing”—they were asking: “Why does this matter? Who is it for? What’s the real pain point?” That design team played a big part in steering the whole team toward problem-first, human-centered product planning by also asking business questions like, “How can we solve this problem within the time and with the resources the business is willing to invest to get us to market?” This approach got the business on board with rethinking the problem space, making the end result more focused and aligned.
When designers have the freedom to challenge assumptions and validate ideas with real users, the product becomes much stronger. When they bring those insights to the strategy table, it ensures that what gets built is both feasible and more likely to resonate in the market. It also cuts down on rework—instead of “designing after the fact,” you’re actually co-creating the solution.
Trap #2: Product Serving the Business, Not the User
On the flip side, product managers can easily get too focused on business goals. “We need to hit this revenue number.” “We need to launch this partner integration by June.” “We need to drive NPS by X points.” These are valid business goals, but they aren’t user needs.
When product teams chase business goals at the expense of user needs, cracks appear fast. You end up with bloated features that confuse people, or solutions that aren’t thought through and ultimately don’t deliver any real value. That’s when users (and teams) churn.
This is where design has to step in and push back—not as a roadblock, but as a conscience. The best design teams I’ve worked with know how to make a case—not just by saying “this is a bad UX,” but by bringing data, user research, and stories to the table. That’s how you shape product decisions that balance user experience with business value.
Passing to Win: Great Products Need Teamwork
When you strip away the titles, the best product managers and the best designers share three things:
A Relentless Focus on User Needs
Great teams ask: “Who is this for, and what problem are we solving?” If that question isn’t answered clearly and consistently, everything downstream gets fuzzy. Features become guesswork. Priorities become political.
In both product and design, you need to care deeply about users—not in an abstract “personas” kind of way, but through real conversations and observations. That means watching them struggle with your product. It means sitting in on support calls. It means being obsessed with the ‘why’ behind behavior.
A Discipline Around Research
Research isn’t a “design thing.” It’s a shared responsibility. Whether it’s usability testing, customer interviews, competitive analysis, or analyzing support tickets—research helps teams focus. It helps you say no to pet projects and shiny objects.
It also builds empathy across teams. When stakeholders hear users in their own words, they stop arguing about opinions and align around problems. I’ve seen roadmaps change dramatically because of a 20-minute clip of a user failing to complete a basic task.
Business Acumen That Drives Buy-In
This is the secret weapon. Whether you’re a designer or a PM, you need to know how to make a business case. That means understanding the company’s goals, the financial model, and what matters to your stakeholders.
If you’re a designer who wants to push for a new onboarding flow, tie it to activation metrics. If you’re a PM advocating for a user-driven feature, quantify the impact on retention. When you speak the language of the business, your ideas get traction.
When It Works, It’s Magic
When product and design operate with mutual respect and shared goals, amazing things happen. You get faster decisions, better outcomes, less rework—and a culture that values both craft and impact.
I’m fortunate to be at a point in my career where this is my focus. I bring these lessons into every project and team I work with. Whether I’m wearing my product hat, my design hat, or both, the goal is the same: build something that matters—to users, to the business, and to the people on the team.
Don’t be the superstar who scores all the goals on a losing team. Learn to pass, play as a team, and you’ll have a much better chance at winning the game.