The difference between product and marketing
Between 2019 and 2022, I had the privilege of mentoring 1K+ UIUX Designers for Springboard. During this time, many of my mentees ran into a similar situation during job interviews. Ugh Oh!
You see, during an interview a hiring managers would review my mentees’ portfolios and ask the same question. “Do you have any product work?” This in response to a product design job post almost assuredly. What did my mentees do?
Unfortunately, they didn’t get the job, but they did bring the bad news back to our mentorship sessions. After a handful of mentees came back with a similar pickle, I began to look deeper. What I found was a difference between product and marketing designs.
You see, marketing is relatively easy to do. I say that having done marketing design for the better part of a decade or more. Websites are typically marketing because they’re a pathway into the brand and whatever its trying to sell. You see all that changes with product.
Product on the other hand is about solving a problem in real time. If you can do that on the web, it’s a digital product described most likely as a web app. Progressive Web App was all the rage during my UX Engineering hay-day from 2013-2017. However, I want you to think about that.
Marketing Educates.
Regis McKenna the mentor to the late great Steve Jobs was quoted by Jobs who said, “The best marketing is education.”
When I first read that, I was like ok sure?! Sounds good!
It wasn’t until years later I came across Jared Spool on Twitter who said.
“Usability is the opposite of training.”
Having to contend with these two polar opposite statements in my own critical thought gave way to my very own theory that I believe the hiring managers that neglected to give my mentees a chance at candidacy might or might not agree with, and that is…
A product solves a problem in real-time.
This means that when we educate, train, have “Clippy” the paper clip wizard, explain, or inform we are taking up precious cognitive bandwidth in which reduces usability. — NNGROUP on Why we should Skip Onboarding
You see, my Bachelors of Arts in Design Studies from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, IL centered around industrial design. Industrial Designers design products. Physical products. In yearning for my aforementioned alma mater as a web designer knee deep in marketing an epiphany struck while reading “Design of Everyday Things” By Don Norman (The second time.) That epiphany was “Oh! I’ve designed everything from architecting houses to websites and physical products in between. Crikey, I’m a UX Designer!
In 1988, I believe it was, Don Norman was a contractor at Apple who was frustrated by the disparaging design disciplines. So frustrated he re-braned them user experience designers so they would focus on the actual goal rather than distracted by their own egotistic tactical deliverables. I would later go on to work at The Design Lab at UCSD while it was under Don’s direction. He paired me with Professor Stephen Dow in the Social Science Lab where we conducted research on crowdsourcing innovation phenomena under a grant from the National Science Foundation. Talk about coming full circle.
Fast forward to today, and here I’m championing the theory that we as UXPRENEURS should be designing and building SaaS (Software as a Service) that solves a problem in real-time without instruction! It should imbue the premium luxury qualities of a visually aesthetic brand and garner a premium subscription price at that! Furthermore, it should liberate one from working for corporations big or small, and instead help one bootstrap with “1000 True Fans”, by Kevin Kelly.
I couldn’t be more excited to evangelize UXPRENEUR. The intersection between startup business entrepreneurship and design research. You see, we live in the gig economy. That’s why it’s easier to get hired as a freelance contractor 1099 than it is to get full-time employment with benefits. So, if you’ve been getting rejection after rejection from full-time roles, maybe it’s time you considered maneuvering your market position towards building experience with contract work!
It is my mission to help get this message out to as many people as possible. We are all together on this. We’ve all suffered this fait. We’re not alone. It’s time to make use of the gig and indeed the knowledge economy at any rate. Our case studies in our portfolios are Not mere “Fake Projects” as some would like to call them. Even if they’re “conceptual” there’s business value there.
It is my opinion that we disrespect ourselves and our field when we describe projects in our portfolio as “fake” or “conceptual.” As if they’re not worthy unless done by a big brand soaked in the disgusting wreak of credentialism. No. If we tested our prototypes on real people, then our case studies are truly the scientific method applied. This is design research, or research through design as Sir Christopher Frayling would say.
Therefore, take heed in my message that we UXPRENEURs are not “faking” we are not mere artist fantasizing, we are entrepreneurial design researchers. We have employed ourselves. Self-Employed! Many of us in which have gone to great lengths and immense debt to our educational institutions of choice to prove for it. Whether bootcamp or student loan, or credit card debt that was us the UXPRENEUR both entrepreneur and UXer practicing as a practitioner of our discipline in the field. Make no qualms about it. Those who deride in their gatekeeping of lusting after capitalistic patronage be warned. There’s a new era of UX Designers that know better.
In conclusion, there’s nothing wrong with marketing and if done right education cures ignorance which is a very real and big problem I have no doubt. However, if our purpose is to solve a problem, then it’d better be in real-time, and if a digital product serves the purpose best, then as Dieter Rams once said, “Good Design is Unobtrusive.” Like a good butler, stay out of the way, but be the ever present hand of which power is felt.