Insights From The Thompson Twins On How Product Managers and UX Can Better Harmonize To Drive Bigger Business Impact

As a product manager, do you ever get frustrated by UX designers who want to influence decision-making, but don’t know how? As a UX person, do you find it frustrating when product managers won’t take your thoughts into consideration?

The Thompson Twin’s 1983 pop song “We Are Detective” tells the playful story of detectives who are being spied on by other detectives, and there are lessons in here for how product management and UX can better cooperate to drive bigger business outcomes.

The lyrics go like this:

Somebody’s watching me
And now I’m nervous, and I shouldn’t be
Somebody’s got their eye on me
Perhaps I should invite him up for tea?

We saw him smoking by the newspaper stand
There’s something odd about his gloved left hand
Saw him again inside the old cafe
He makes us tense; we wish he’d go away

We are detective
We are select
We are detective
Come to collect

Somebody’s after me
He left his footprints by the garden tree
Last night when I got home
I got the feeling I was not alone

Someone is on our tail
We think they’re opening up our morning mail
And now each time the telephone rings
We think of frightening things

We are detective
We are select
We are detective
Come to collect

We dress up in disguise
To get away from all those prying eyes
Our friends all think we’re mad
But we know better ‘cos the spy is bad

We are detective
We are select
We are detective
Come to collect

“Somebody’s watching me, and now I’m nervous and I shouldn’t be”

In product development, there’s often a delicate dance between product management and UX, not unlike the dueling sets of detectives in the song.

Both often see themselves as detectives or investigators, which is not wrong. But, in my experience, sometimes they can see themselves as adversaries — in a low-key battle over who “owns” the user, or what is the “right” definition of success.

Instead of feeling like they’re in competition against one another, they can tackle complex problems more effectively by acknowledging “we are detective” and leveraging their distinct skills to drive the business forward.

“We are detective, come to collect”

An effective way to cultivate an environment of mutual respect and collaboration is to acknowledge that neither side truly understands where the other is coming from and intentionally take action to rectify that:

Encourage product managers and UX team members to shadow one another so that product managers can learn more about the design process, and UX can learn more about product strategy
Establish regular feedback loops to discuss progress, share insights, and address roadblocks
Create shared metrics to align on common goals and objectives

“We dress up in disguise to get away from all those prying eyes…”

Product managers may define success in terms of business outcomes while UX may define success in terms of task success rate and error rates. But more effective teams will realize there are overlapping metrics that help both teams understand the broader picture.

Shared metrics that help align product management and UX typically include:

Net Promoter Score – Indicates if a user is happy enough with your product or service to recommend it to others (UX) which directly correlates with renewal rate (product management)
Active Users – Measures the number of users engaging with the product on a regular basis, which helps validate market demand for the product (product management) and provide insights on behavior patterns for optimization and enhancements (UX)
Feature Adoption Rate – Identifies features that resonate with users which informs roadmap, external messaging and BDR outreach (product management) and future design enhancements (UX)
User Retention Rate – Indicates the percentage of users who continue to use the product over a specific period of time
Revenue & Conversion Metrics – Understanding revenue generated from product sales or conversions, as well as conversion rates for key user actions, indicates what to do more or less of in the future.

By tracking and discussing these shared metrics, UX and product management teams can assess the impact of their efforts, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions to enhance the overall user experience and drive business success.

And in that way, they’ll no longer need to dress up in disguise to get away from all those prying eyes, because together they’ll uncover the truths that no single detective could ever surmise.

Unless that detective was Sherlock Holmes. But that’s a whole other post altogether.