UX and Product Management Are Fraternal Twins
UX and Product Management are like fraternal twins—nearly indistinguishable down to the fingerprints. Their genetic makeup is so closely aligned that I can’t separate my responsibilities or the outcomes I’ve driven in either role. Why? Because they both chase the same goals. Sometimes, as a UXer, I’ve paved the road to those outcomes. Other times, as the product lead, I’ve brought them to the table for the team to shape and execute.
When a PM handed off problems to me, I’d respond with designed solutions. Now, as a PM, I still lead with design—but I write a lot more. My thinking comes to life on paper: wireframes, user flows, SWOT charts, complexity quadrants, and broad functional specs that go well beyond redlining a UX doc. But hot damn—if I’m not still doing at least 50% of my UX job. And honestly? I love the combo.
I don’t feel overwhelmed or stretched thin. I feel empowered—like all my skills finally click into place. It’s the kind of synthesis that helps teams trust me. I thrive at that intersection of business goals and user needs. Even when others are contributing to a PRD or helping with the roadmap, I still get that rush from being asked: “So, what should we do?”
And in that moment, one of two things happens: I’ve already asked myself that question and mapped the answer, or I think on my feet. I deal with ambiguity. I check my gut against business acumen and user understanding. And I decide. Prioritize. Speak with conviction. And you know what I often notice? “Wait—I’ve been doing this my entire career.”
In 18 years of UX, I’ve constantly made strategic choices. Sure, they may have been on a micro-scale—designing features, weighing usability, comparing directions. But the question was the same: Which direction do we take? And I answered confidently. Now I’m zoomed out, doing that at a product level—but I still zoom in too. I can wrangle stakeholders and pair with a designer. Collaborate with engineers while shaping vision. And I say again: I’ve been doing this all along—just without the title.
So, have I been a UX designer for 18 years? Or a product manager? Maybe the better question is: Have I always been a product leader delivering different outputs based on title and context? The answer is a big, bold yes.
When I start doubting myself—“Do I really know how to do this?”—the voice in my head answers back: Hell yes, I do. Somehow, I’ve always approached problems like this. Maybe it's a soft-skill superpower. Maybe it’s from constantly throwing myself into the mix. I know this about me: I’m an idealist. If I see an obvious, meaningful solution, I don’t want to debate it for weeks—I want to build it. But I also know that change management is slower in bigger orgs, which is probably why I love startups.
At Riot and Amazon, I learned how to do my job better. But I also got into trouble when I spotted simple changes and tried to make them happen. Not just process fixes—sometimes design patterns too. Take the time I proposed a horizontal nav for a landscape mobile app. Not standard for Riot at the time, but it made sense for the experience. My UX lead (not my boss) hated it. Not because it didn’t work—because it was different. That fear of change became a judgment on my thinking. But why should design sensibility be rigid when users themselves are so diverse?
That’s why Metwork felt like home. I joined as Lead UX with a 40% product focus and, slowly but surely, shaped the product side. I redesigned the foundation. Helped hire a design lead I trusted. And because of that trust, I shifted 100% into product management—steering the roadmap, still designing in my head, but through a business lens.
Now I wasn’t just designing subfeatures—I was prioritizing across 100 potential ideas to move the needle. Constantly asking: Why this? Why now? What’s the scope? The complexity? Will this help us now or later? What’s the tech lift? Can we drop this dependency or upgrade another? Then stitching all of that together into a process the team can run with—without me prescribing how. Just the order of operations.
And it worked.
I was managing product, leading with UX instinct, and doing the same job I’ve always done—just under a different label. UX and product management aren’t two different tracks of my career. They’re the same aesthetic. The same wiring. The same me.
So now I wonder… should we come up with a new name for this hybrid? Whatever we call it, I know it’s where I belong.