4 Communication Tools For Product Managers
As a product manager, you may know that each part of your company speaks different languages. Sometimes they just have different interests. And your role is to build a bridge between your teams along these interests. So here I just compiled some useful tools what you should use if you want to be a perfect bridge constructor.
1. Workshops to get everyone on the same page
During our UX design and consulting projects, we organize workshops at the beginning of the design or developing process. Like persona or customer journey workshops or look and feel workshops. Who has to attend these workshops? Every person who has a tiny bit of responsibility for the product.
Just like you as a product manager, a marketer, a developer a designer and someone from the business strategy department. The purpose of these workshops is to get to know better each other and to have the same picture about the product, features, goals, etc. in everyone’s mind. And this is a good opportunity to explain everything to everyone as well.
We start every collaboration with our clients with workshops after the kick-off meeting. Our experience is that they love those workshops. Of course, you have to be creative to motivate everyone to take part in every task. You have had to care about the number of attendees and the time length as well.
2. Weekly design meetings where all parties attend
These meetings have to be attended by someone from each department. Like a member of the UX design team and from the developer team. Also, have to have someone from the business or marketing departments.
The purpose of these meetings is to talk about what happened in the previous week and who's going to do what on the next week. You can also speak about the challenges and difficulties. This is one of the best ways for everyone to understand others and represent their interests.
At UX Studio we organize design meetings for our clients every week. There we show the results of the ux researches, what we did about design and what we going to do next. And based on our experiences I just highly recommend to you that don't have more than 5 people in a meeting and it can’t be longer than an hour and a half.
3. Wireframes to discover hidden problems
If you are old furniture in the business you may remember those times when everything exists on papers. There were tons of papers full of diagrams and descriptions of specifications. Who likes those? I tell you: no one. Why? Because no one likes to read.
And the more important reason is that this was a source of so many misunderstandings. But the time goes and now you have several possibilities to build clickable wireframes. My opinion is that this is the best way to explain everything to everyone. This is one of the most efficient ways what we use as a communication platform.
A good wireframe worth more than a thousand pages. You can represent features, pages, flows, and even movements to the business person, a user and to the developer as well. And they are going to see the product from the same point. As it is going to exist in the future.
And a good wireframe not just the best communication platform but the best validation tool as well. Most of the users test what we do at our UX agency created on prototypes. When you have a prototype that is going to be the first time when all the details and questions come up that you haven’t thought about before. Here is a list of our most preferred wireframe tools:
4. User research to have answers for controversial questions
Is it a communication tool? Of course, user research is more than just a communication tool. But it has a communication aspect as well. Have you had a meeting when there was an important question and all participants had different opinions? How did you decide? Or even worst question: Who decided? Why don’t you let the users answer these questions?
If you do some user tests there will be some exact data behind the question. And bump the question is already answered. User research can give you an objective picture instead of some subjective opinions. And you can decide easily in every divided situation.
User research is the best way to share information with everyone because they can see how the users used the product. Do you need better communication? At UX Studio we record every user tests and presents the key elements to our clients. Do I have to say that they love watching these videos?
