Whether a UX Designer or a Product Designer, many times companies are not clear about the role they should fulfill, and worse, they don’t know how to leverage a UX resource within their teams.

As I see it, a Product Designer (and also a UX Designer) should be the link that connects and aligns user needs with business goals. They should also ensure not to fall behind the competition and propose new things for both users and the business.

Now, knowing what a UX specialist is for, let’s see how some companies use them:

1. To design pretty screens
   There are companies, or more specifically managers within companies, who think that the role of UX in systems is just about making everything look good. Because of this, they ignore designers when they ask to conduct interviews, surveys, market studies, or competitive analysis. They expect designers to simply listen to the functionality that will be developed and design screens that work.
   
   Companies make better use of their UX resources when they trust them and support them in conducting surveys, interviews, and analyses, which then result in actionable reports that, when implemented, generate a positive and often measurable impact on results.
   
   Additionally, including designers in the analysis of functionalities and the creation of wireframes for technical documentation saves a lot of time and money. Usability issues can be discussed long before final designs are made, and developers can understand how the final screen would look and start building the foundation and integrating components that will later only be modified in terms of styles.
   
   
2. To stroke egos
   There are cases where a manager (usually a Product Owner, CTO, or CEO) uses the designer as a tool and takes micromanagement to another level, turning it into micro-design—if that word fits—by specifying font size, style, images, components, etc. They want to control every detail of the design as if they were the designer themselves, without consulting or seeking advice on user needs or competitive advantages. They think they’re like Steve Jobs, understanding user needs better than anyone, even better than the users themselves.
   
   Unless you’re Jobs and it’s the 80s or early 2000s creating things no one has ever seen, it’s best to listen to users.
   
   When Facebook was created, MySpace, Hi5, and other platforms already existed, but Zuckerberg noticed user details that set him apart—real connections with people users knew or could know, the sense of belonging starting from universities, or adding the ‘like’ button to posts validated by tools like Tumblr. In short, the user is our most important customer and must be satisfied with our product. As investor and co-founder of products like Airbnb, Reddit, Stripe, Dropbox, OpenAI Sam Altman said, “Your degree of success is directly tied to how good your product is that people spontaneously tell their friends about it.”
   
   Watch Altman’s conference, it’s worth it: Video
   
   There are ideas that may not be validated by users or seem counterproductive to apply. For example, returning to Facebook’s case, both MySpace and Hi5 allowed page customization at the time, resulting in pages with hideous color combinations or unreadable fonts, plus banner ads making reading heavy and increasing cognitive load.
   It was believed users appreciated this as an expression of their personality and created more engagement with the product. Facebook stood out by standardizing the interface and avoiding advertising initially, which was well-received by users.
   
   Although Facebook eventually allowed header customization and added advertising, these changes were made carefully to avoid turning the system into a cluttered marketplace full of ads and flashy colors.
   
   
3. To sell their services
   Similar to point 1, a company might have a designer just to charge more to end clients for having an allocated UX resource. It also provides status to say you have a UX person on the team. However, in many cases, this resource simply designs functional screens without a UX-focused analysis, failing to provide the necessary user value and without even conducting a single interview to validate hypotheses.
   
   
4. To design other things
   Some companies understand that having a UX designer on hand is like having a graphic designer or visual designer. Instead of investing the resource’s time in interviewing users, analyzing competitors, or creating design systems, they use their time for tasks unrelated to user experience, such as designing brochures, presentations, or social media posts. This is undoubtedly a misuse of resources, as the UX leads of a product should have one mission and one only: making users love the system.

In conclusion, if you understand what a UX resource, whether a UX Designer or Product Designer, can bring to the table, you can leverage and use them to do what they do best: turn your product into a useful, competitive, and profitable tool.