Last week, I had a discussion with 3 TPMs and a Sr. TPM to get feedback on the web mockups I've designed. It was going smooth until when I got up to draw a sketch to communicate an alternative design on the whiteboard. The Sr. TPM told me 'You got to save your energy, you need it for other projects' while laughing. I went back to my seat. The rest of them told I can continue produce new ideas. Honestly, I did not feel good about this experience. This did not happen in my previous jobs. Everyone used to listen to me and suggest/direct. Not sure if he meant it in a positive way or negative way. Do I need to be concerned? How do I take this? Thanks,
From what you described, they don’t think what you do is important and just want you to get something that’s good enough. You might want to consider switching to a product that designers have more influence/need to go beyond just good enough.
I have now streamlines my approach to just-enough work and do my own side projects to fulfill my design thirst -_-
Hard to tell from what you described. - Is this the right time to propose more design? Sometimes you are way past the decision point, and unless there is a risk involved (a major ux regression that would cause customer friction), you will have to move on and wait for the next release date. - Is this the right problem to invest additional design and eng resources? Iterating minor UI change vs iterating to increase efficiency of the overall flow are not the same. - What are you trying to accomplish by presenting an alternative design? If you are believing in the alt. design, then you should've presented it as the primary design. If your goal is to show how dedicated you are or your deep design thinking process, then move on. - Did you communicate what you want your stakeholders to do with your alternative design? If there is no clear execution path, they may not know what to do with it other than telling you good job. I do think the senior TPM should've handled it more diplomatically; however, there may be some history to it. If designers before you were more focused on ideation than shipping, it could've formed a bad perception on design. It may be worthwhile to follow up with him in a 1:1 and have a candid conversation on what he meant by it. You can always stress you are here to listen to your collaborators and want to understand where he is coming from.
Thank you for covering all the cases as my explanation did not provide enough background and details. We have a short time for the developer to implement the basic flow and before I started my explanation we had somewhat concluded to go with the current designs. I was suggesting a minor UI add-on that could address user's need for task efficiency. Now I think, they just wanted to pass on and not ready for additional considerations.
They can still put your UX improvement in the backlog for the future. At some point, the product will catch up with feature sets and start to demand more efficient UX. Success metrics can change over the maturity of the product, and you will find the right moment to push. Build a good relationship with user research or any customer facing XFN partner and look for signals. Best of luck!
Sounds like an ass