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I've been graced with this questions more than once. I know I'm responding accordingly but I want to throw these out to all of you and get your thoughts.

Question 1

Product manager: “Let’s say, the development team comes back to you and says ‘Hey this looks great but we can’t do this’. As a UX designer how would you handle this?”

Question 2

Product manager: “Developers are sensitive to making changes to a feature because they have so much vested time involved with a project. How would you go about making change in this political environment.”

Question 3

HR manager: “What if I came to you and said ‘I don’t like the way that button looks or how that interaction functions’?”

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    I'm voting to close this as we try to avoid discussion and opinion based questions. Also it appears, in my opinion, that the answer to all three questions is "I would be open and flexible to input from my team members".
    – DasBeasto
    Sep 19, 2015 at 0:23
  • #1 Firstly, it’s not about the looks since I’m the UX designer, secondly what can we not change and why? #2 That’s actually the ProdM’s job, but not sure whether or how to tell them. #3 That’s valid but insufficient informal user feedback, but nothing more since not the HRM’s job.
    – Crissov
    Sep 19, 2015 at 0:23

2 Answers 2

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Product manager: “Let’s say, the development team comes back to you and says ‘Hey this looks great but we can’t do this’. As a UX designer how would you handle this?”

I'd demand that management realize that this is the primary problem with waterfall design methods and that it's imperative that we bring development into the design process much earlier than is happening.

Product manager: “Developers are sensitive to making changes to a feature because they have so much vested time involved with a project. How would you go about making change in this political environment.”

See above. This is a management problem. Dev needs to be on the same team as UX. We're not in competition, but partners. Any time that dev invests should be the same time UX is investing so that everything is a joint endeavor rather than an us vs. them.

HR manager: “What if I came to you and said ‘I don’t like the way that button looks or how that interaction functions’?”

I'd say "who cares what HR thinks? What's our user research show?"

Ok, as you can probably figure out, those aren't the exact answers I'd use. Those are the answers I'd like to reply with, but realize that probably wouldn't go over well.

Bottom line, if I were asked those specific questions in an interview, I'd walk away from that position. It's clear to me that half the time would be spent with political battles. No one's got time for that.

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The answer to all three is "why?"

All these have to be caused by a reason (unless they are just personal preferences) and once you look at those you are in the right situation to make changes. And that's a UX Designers job. Don't accept "can't be done". Find out why. Don't accept "I don't like the look" find out why.

This is the shortest and best design manifesto in my opinion. Asking why.

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  • And if a Product manager tells you of the needs of developers, don't take it at face value ;)
    – KMSTR
    Sep 19, 2015 at 5:15

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