How to Onboard a Product Designer to Your Project
If you’re a product manager working with a designer for the first time—whether they’re embedded on your team or contracted for your project—it can be hard to know what context and information to provide at the outset. How should you get a product designer up to speed and arm them with the tools they need to be effective? At Pragmatic Institute, we’ve written extensively on what’s necessary for a fruitful partnership between product and design, and it all begins with onboarding. What to Share with a Product Designer The market problem you’re trying to solve and your time frame Everything you currently know about your target users and their problems and goals, from user personas to maps of the user’s current experience or workflow (if you don’t yet have these materials, ask your designer if they have the research skills to collaborate on creating them) Where you are in the product life cycle: Are you aiming to solve a market problem with a brand new product? Did you launch a product that isn’t meeting objectives and needs better usability? Do you want to improve a mature product in light of increased competition? Business outcomes: the scope of the project
