Designer - project manager. Reality or Utopia?

Let's first tell what I mean by the concept of a designer.

Very rare person I can call a designer. More often we have to use other terms that immediately make it clear in which of the design areas it is good.

If he communicates well with the client and retrieves information about the company, production processes, the target audience, and then turns them into introductory contracts and agreements, then this is primarily an account or seller (from our discussion in the comments, it turns out that the term "business analyst"). He can not only listen, but also speak. He makes the client understand that they are working on the project on one side of the barricades.
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If he generates this information into a list of functional requirements, creates a section structure for a future project, and then turns it into an interactive prototype, then this is a UX designer .

If the resulting prototype not only demonstrates the principles of user interaction, but also takes into account SEO, mapping on different types of devices, the grid, the size of certain elements and the placement of accents, this is already a UI designer . Often, a UI designer turns out to be just a designer who is already working in Photoshop on the prototype provided by the UX designer.

If a specialist is able to take such a prototype and write a functional specification on it, or even a technical task (on projects more complicated) with data diagrams, then this is already a technical writer .

So, in my understanding, a designer can possess at the same time all these competencies, plus an additional set of qualities that will help him to make successful projects. Here are the main ones:

• Awareness of all further development stages after the design and the ability to assess their cost and, by results, efficiency;
• A set of knowledge of psychology. This is necessary both for communication with the client at the zero stage and for understanding how the users of the projects will behave and why;
• I have already said about search engine optimization, but it will not be superfluous to repeat;
• Business experience. This, of course, aerobatics, but the point is very important. This allows you to speak with the client in the same language. Those who work in studios will easily understand me: often in critical situations, when performers and clients cannot agree, the owner of the studio itself enters the battle and things are getting better. It would not be necessary if the project manager (or an account, if you like), himself had some projects of his own, albeit small ones, and already prioritized work in accordance with the desire to help the client make money rather than make the project more complicated ( and therefore more expensive).

And now let's imagine what happens if such a designer is a project manager. Just list the pros and cons.

pros

• The absence of a “spoiled phone” when collecting project requirements at the very beginning of the journey. Because you will need to transfer them to yourself;
• Acquaintance and constant communication with the client will allow you to quickly receive the missing information, directly referring to it (now most studios are not so afraid to acquaint clients with their performers, but trust relationships often arise precisely between the project and the client);
• The absence of a “damaged phone” during the transfer of the prototype to the development. The designer is not only aware of the potential thin points of the project, but is also interested in eliminating them, because he has no one to shift responsibility for them (unlike scenarios where the project manager and the designer are different people);
• The speed of reaction to customer comments. No need to say: “Now I’ll ask Vasya when he makes your changes.” You can immediately say: "I will make edits then." Plus, the need to reduce Vasya with the client to clarify unclear points in the new comments disappears.

Minuses

• There is a difficulty in writing functional specifications. Because if you are a project manager, then you think that you can always bring incomprehensible moments to the developers in words, as they arise. Despite this, it is still necessary to write functional specifications. But the motivation is lower than that of just a technical writer;
• Such people are hard to find. In most cases, designers are technicians (designers still stop at UI more often). They are often hard to communicate with customers. I am occasionally approached by strangers who would like to work with me and show good prototypes as examples. But they begin to communicate in a familiar manner, or overly formal and ingratiating, which demonstrates their inability to effectively make the first contact. And for me it is very important, because in most cases I am looking for precisely those people who will potentially become design managers. So far there are no such forges of personnel in the form of courses or intensives, where comprehensive information would be given in all areas that I listed at the beginning of the article. A candidate for design now would have to attend several courses in parallel, which would be time consuming and costly. Studios are also often unable to forge such a specialist on their own. They are people of a certain mindset, high motivation and love for their profession.

Therefore, the whole idea would look utopian if I did not manage to bring it to life one day and test it within the company in which I worked, and later in my design bureau. I have been looking for people who work with me for five years (they can be counted on the fingers of one hand), and I did not have to train them. We just shared our experiences in the process.

If you are one of these generalists, then I have good news for you. However, you already know about it.