John Zapolski — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 19:06:56 GMT

Back in the old days, outside of Silicon Valley, “user experience” for many people used to refer to the system that surrounds the product, including services, customer support, distribution points including the retail channel, etc. Somewhere along the way, user experience became synonomous with user interface design. That confused me at first—I always thought it was weird that user experience would be seen as an aspect of the product, rather than the product being seen as an aspect of the experience. The argument for product managers reporting into user experience managers always made complete logical sense to me, but it never matched reality. Since the reality was that UX managers were UI designers, it made more sense in practice for “user experience” people to report to product managers rather than the other way around.

But now that we’re seeing renewed interested in systems design (eg, Peterme’s Stop Designing Products

John Zapolski — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 19:07:29 GMT

*this part dropped from the previous comment*

...I wonder if there’s a role for a “president of the user experience”, a user experience manager, that manages the portfolio of products and services that make up something like the iPod system. Individual product managers manage, say, the nano, iTunes music store, iTunes video, peripherals, etc. and report into a user experience manager that allocates resources across the products according to the user experience strategy. What do y’all think?

John Zapolski — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 21:48:47 GMT

Michael’s examples are useful in pointing out how increasingly blurry lines are becoming between products. Convergence between hardware, software, and services accelerates that even more. Because of that, I think it’s an interesting time to explore alternative role definitions than the traditional product management function. (though I agree with Jeff and Chris’ point: “Becoming a product manager is a logical move for many UX practitioners…Additionally, product management is a common role within many organizations, making it easy to transition to a role that already exists.”)

For example, though strict definitions of which-is-what can be tough to settle on, I often find it more useful to think of web applications as services rather than products. In many service industries, including retail and banking, it’s the channel manager rather than the product manager who tends to wield greater influence over the user experience. For example, while a company like Barclay’s employs many sophisticated finance folks as product managers to develop new financial products like iShares , your experience as a customer tends to depend less on the features, benefits, and presentation of any one product, and more on how you’re serviced with it—inside the branch, on the Web, etc. The Web channel manager has to make sure he or she is able to bring together enough different products and package them correctly to sell them to you and service you effectively. Most people don’t complain, I hate my Citibank Access Plus Everything Counts Gold Checking product. They say, I hate calling customer service, or Citibank doesn’t have enough ATMs.

Similarly, your experience at a Wal-mart store tends to be defined more by the effectiveness of the store manager in making sure the store is clean, the aisles are navigable, the workers are friendly, the selection of products is broad, etc than by the effectiveness of the Rubbermaid Fire Resistant Line Wastebucket product manager. In both the Barclays and the Wal-mart example, successful design of the experience tends to have a lot to do with managing scope of the channel—are enough different products offered to satisfy customers while still keeping to a number that can be effectively managed by the business so that they can service them consistent to the brand promise of the company. Wal-mart’s ability to offer new products is constrained by their ability to keep the cost down and to make space to display them effectively at the store. Nordstrom’s ability to offer products is constrained by their ability to offer friendly, knowledgeable service around them. For Wells Fargo Online, it’s being able to offer access and easy transfer between a full range of checking, savings, mortgage, and investment products.

These scope management problems are fertile ground for learning about creating great web application services. Yahoo, as Michael points out, has the exact same problems as a Wells Fargo—how do you bring the information contained in multiple products like Mail, Calendar, Search, Messenger, and Local together in one interaction point (“channel”) so that the combined suite is truly more valuable than each individually? So does Verizon Wireless. Mostly they haven’t figured out how to rise to the challenge yet.

So, maybe channel management is a good place for UX professionals to seek to learn from, and to move into. What are some other “service management” roles that might be good adjacent functions to explore in addition to product management?

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by John Zapolski