Product Comms Series #3 | Robert - Juni

How do you align the goals of both design and product? The two don't have to be in opposition. We often think about it in binary stereotypes:

Designers focus on making things pixel perfect vs. PMs focus on the timeline

But at Juni they think of projects on a spectrum.

I had the pleasure to discuss these topics and much more with Robert, Design Director at Juni. Here are some of the key learnings he shared with me.

Key Learnings

1. Cross-functional Alignment: Product and design teams must have shared goals and an understanding of their collective environment to collaborate effectively.
2. Balancing Perfection and Practicality: Designers often aim for perfection in product flow and aesthetics, while product managers may prioritize timelines; successful teams find a middle ground.
3. Flexibility in Delivery: High-performing teams understand that delivery is on a spectrum, with varying degrees of quality and speed; they align expectations accordingly, especially when time constraints might impact quality.
4. Transparent Leadership: Clear communication from leadership about the product development journey ensures that all team members are aligned on current objectives, whether it's finding product-market fit or optimizing features.
5. Customer-Centric Optimization: Measuring success based on customer satisfaction guides the product optimization process, ensuring efforts are focused on enhancing features that customers value most.
   ‍

‍

Interview

Robert Lange

I think it's always a topic that product and design they have issues working together. I think in our organization we actually... work quite well.  

I have the feeling that in some organizations they are fulfilling or they have like their own goals that maybe don't necessarily align.

You know, designers, they maybe want to spend a lot of time making the perfect flow, they would like to make everything pixel perfect, you know, sometimes a PM maybe thinks more about timelines. So it's like maybe very stereotypical. But I think what made it work really is that everyone has an understanding of the environment that they operate in

Our deliveries usually sit on the spectrum. So it's not like very binary. So of course we all have our variables and you know, if something needs to be shipped faster, then you know, if everyone is aware that they are, the quality might be slightly lower, but taking this into account and you know, it's also fine. So I think generally aligning a little bit on the expectations when it comes to a timeline and quality splitting releases and different versions usually helps.

I think our leadership does very well and being like super transparent about where we are in the journey of building our product and so I think that makes also everyone very much aware if we are currently in the phase where we're trying to find product market fit for certain features versus optimizing some features, and some features show very good traction.

When we measure success on features we have a good idea if this is something that customers really want and really like and then we go in there and optimize that further.

But I think as you said like it's very important on that range to understand, you know, are we now in the phase of optimizing certain functionality versus trying to see if that functionality sits well with a customer and if not then we need to retry and if you try to optimize the wrong thing of course you know you spend a lot of time perfecting something that doesn't bring value to the customer.