True partners. Why do designers collaborate horizontally across entire organizations
#51: Cross-functional collaboration is a crucial skill of product designers
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True partners. Why do designers collaborate horizontally across entire organizations
Working as a product designer is definitely not a solo job. If you're part of a product team, you're surrounded by many other roles that contribute just as much to building the product, sometimes even more. The same goes for working at an agency or as a freelancer. Of course, the roles around you may change, and the nature of the work might be a bit different, but your ability to communicate with others is still key to doing your job well.
Strong communication skills alone aren't enough, though. You need to understand what roles are involved in creating a product, what each of them is responsible for, what they expect from you, what you can expect from them, and how to communicate in a way that helps you find common ground, avoid conflict and frustration, and prevent blame when something doesn't go as planned. Each of these roles has its own goals, way of thinking, and way of speaking. It's often said that the ability to communicate and work with others is more important than technical skills. Someone with less experience who knows how to collaborate can be more valuable than someone with deep knowledge who can't work well with others.
Whether you're seen as a partner by your teammates or someone who struggles to connect will affect not only the quality of your own work but also the performance of the entire team and even the organization. Teams that can't communicate simply can't deliver high-quality results. Of course, you won't be able to fix communication across the whole company or change how everyone thinks. Still, I want to share a few tips on what you can do to collaborate better and be seen as a true partner in your team.
Let’s now take a look at what you can do to be a strong partner to your teammates. Since each role comes with its own responsibilities, there’s no single formula for working well with everyone. Every role requires a slightly different approach, and expectations around collaboration and outcomes can vary, so we’ll go through each one individually.
Project and product managers
The PM is one of your most important collaborators and someone you should work with as a partner from the very beginning. It’s essential that you understand the business goals and project constraints. Your design solutions should support the product strategy, address user needs, align with the roadmap, and take technical limitations into account. A PM should expect more from you than just well-designed screens. You’re also responsible for analyzing problems, generating solutions, and iterating on them together. Just as important is your ability to explain your design decisions using data, research, and UX best practices, while staying open to changes.
As a designer, you should expect continuous collaboration from your PM. That means not only receiving information about priorities, product vision, and business context, but also being involved in shaping them. You should also have access to market data, competitive analysis, and product success metrics, as well as any constraints like budget or timelines. A good PM should be open to your ideas and receptive to arguments based on user needs.
When working with a PM, focus on solving problems rather than just designing interfaces. The same mindset should apply to the PM as well. You shouldn’t expect them to hand over fully defined tasks that simply need to be translated into Figma screens. Instead, establish regular syncs to discuss progress, challenges, priorities, and to analyze the problems the product is meant to solve. Speak the language of business and support your ideas with data, always keeping user needs in mind.
One of the most effective ways to work with a PM on a daily basis is the Product Trio model. If you haven’t heard of it yet, I recommend checking out the following articles:
Developers
Developers are another key group you’ll work closely with. They’re responsible for implementing your designs based on the specifications you provide. They’ll also give you feedback on the feasibility of your solutions, highlight potential issues, and help estimate the implementation effort.
When working with developers, make sure to provide all the necessary information about the designs you’re handing off. You should understand technical constraints and have a general awareness of the technologies they’re using. It’s important to deliver all required screens and interactions, account for edge cases, supply the necessary assets, and provide clear documentation. The scope and format of documentation should be agreed upon with your team.
Be a partner. Work together to find technically feasible solutions. Discuss ideas with them early so you can quickly gather feedback on feasibility and make adjustments if needed. Be open to technical compromises when necessary. You should also be quick to respond to their questions about your designs. Not everything you create will be self-explanatory, and you might not always remember to include every detail in the documentation. Being responsive and clarifying uncertainties will make the development process smoother and improve the quality of the final product.
Product Owners
A Product Owner is someone you’ll often work with in Scrum teams. They’re responsible for managing the backlog, setting priorities, defining sprint goals, writing user stories, and establishing acceptance criteria for new features. They also communicate progress to stakeholders and ensure the team delivers value in every sprint.
As a designer, you should have a solid understanding of how Scrum works and the role the PO plays in it. When working together, you can help refine user stories, add user context, and support a better understanding of the problems the product is meant to solve. You should also be able to estimate the time needed to complete your tasks, regularly share progress, and flag any blockers that might delay delivery.
QA
In many organizations, you'll also encounter the role of QA, or quality assurance. QA specialists are responsible for ensuring the quality and correctness of implemented solutions, not just from a technical perspective but often also from the end user's point of view. They thoroughly test the product’s functionality and check whether all user flows work as expected. They provide feedback on any discrepancies between the implementation and the design, as well as issues that affect the user experience. They report bugs that need to be fixed by the development team, and sometimes by designers too.
To be a strong partner to QA, you need to provide clear and detailed information about how the product should look and behave, as this serves as their reference point during testing. They should have access to the latest designs, prototypes, and specifications, and be kept informed of any project changes that could explain what might appear to be inconsistencies. Just like with developers, you should respond quickly to any questions or uncertainties about how the solution is expected to function.
It’s a good idea to involve QA early in the design process so they can understand the goals of the project, get familiar with the logic behind the solution, and prepare meaningful test scenarios.
UX Researchers
Another role you might work with is a UX researcher. While not every organization has dedicated research specialists, researchers are an invaluable source of insights into user behavior, needs, and pain points. They often handle solution validation with users or support you in conducting such sessions. You'll receive research reports from them that include specific findings and recommendations. They're also great partners for organizing various types of workshops with users or business stakeholders.
As a designer, you should collaborate closely with researchers, taking part in planning and conducting studies, as well as analyzing the collected data. To ensure a smooth collaboration, provide them with clear information about the research goals and give them proper context by outlining the business objectives and background of the project. You should be open to the results of the research and know how to apply them, even if they contradict your initial assumptions. This will likely happen more than once.
UX Writers
UX writers are another crucial role you'll collaborate with. They're responsible for making sure the content in your product is simple, clear, and useful for users. This partnership is essential, since content is an integral part of the interface. Even the best-designed screen won't work well if the copy is confusing. UX writers ensure that all elements like messages, buttons, and form labels are clear, concise, and functional.
It's worth involving them early in the project so they can fully understand the context. You should share information about the screen's purpose, the type of user, the intended action, and the emotions you want to evoke. It's also important to align on how you'll work together. Decide whether writers will edit the copy directly in the design or provide it separately, what types of placeholders help them during the design process, how you'll manage multiple language versions, and how updates to the content will be handled after release. All of this is key to making the collaboration smooth and ensuring high-quality content that directly impacts the usability of the interface.
Customer support
Customer support is an incredibly important partner in your day-to-day work. They have a wealth of information about real user problems and frustrations. You can also get valuable insights from them about newly introduced features or product improvement suggestions that come directly from users.
Your collaboration with the customer support team should be ongoing. Meet with them regularly to collect the latest feedback, identify usability issues together, and keep them informed about the progress on reported problems. This helps them prepare for upcoming questions from users. It's also a good idea to support them in creating tutorials or help center articles to make sure they’re as useful, clear, and accurate as possible when describing product features.
Business stakeholders
Business stakeholders are an essential part of every product you’ll work on.
They are primarily responsible for setting business goals, defining strategic directions, and shaping the product vision. This is key information you need to gather from them in order to design solutions that truly bring value.
From your side, remember to speak their language. You need to understand their key business objectives, success metrics, and constraints. Don’t talk about pixels or focus on visual details. When discussing your work, focus on the value it brings to the organization, how it supports business goals, and how it improves the user experience.
Also, make sure to present your work in the right way. Simply sending a Figma link is not enough.
If you want to learn how to effectively present your designs to business stakeholders (and others), be sure to check out this article:
Marketing
As a designer, you may also find yourself working with marketing teams. This collaboration helps ensure that marketing communication aligns with the in-product experience. This is especially important because the overall user experience begins long before someone starts using the product, as I explained more thoroughly in a separate article. Marketing is also a valuable source of insights about market segmentation, customer behavior, how people perceive the product, and where they’re coming from.
To make this collaboration effective, it's crucial that the marketing team understands the value the product delivers. This helps them craft the right messaging. Your role is also to support them in creating materials and to make sure the product and its features are presented clearly and accurately.
Other designers
Lastly, an obvious role you'll collaborate with, but one where the collaboration doesn't always work as it should: other designers on the team.
Working with fellow designers gives you valuable feedback and support when making difficult decisions. Since they look at your work from the outside, they can offer fresh perspectives and spot things you might have missed. Regular design critique sessions are great, but in my opinion, informal conversations and day-to-day discussions are just as important.
At the same time, you need to be open to feedback and constructive criticism. That’s the only way to truly benefit from this collaboration and improve the quality of your work. Working together also helps you maintain consistency in the product, whether through a full design system or simpler patterns and documentation.
Every designer brings a different background and set of skills to the table, which is incredibly valuable for ongoing growth and learning. Stay curious and be open to sharing what you know.