Can you share an experience where the product owner chose not to follow your design decision?

Question Analysis

This question is a behavioral interview question that seeks to understand how you handle situations where your professional opinion or decision is overridden by someone else, particularly in a collaborative environment like product development. The interviewer is interested in assessing your ability to deal with conflict or disagreement, how you handle feedback, and your communication and negotiation skills. They also want to see how you maintain professionalism and team collaboration when decisions don't go your way.

Answer

Situation: In my previous role as a UX designer, we were working on a new feature for our mobile app. I had proposed a design that I believed would enhance user engagement based on user research and feedback.

Task: My task was to create a wireframe that aligned with our user-centered design principles and presented it to the team, including the product owner, for approval.

Action: During the meeting, the product owner decided to go with a different design approach that was less resource-intensive. I took the opportunity to express my concerns about the potential impact on user experience, providing data and user feedback to support my design decision. Despite my efforts, the product owner chose to prioritize the timeline over the more complex design I proposed.

Result: While initially disappointed, I respected the decision and collaborated with the team to implement the chosen design. I continued to monitor user feedback post-launch, which gave us valuable insights. Eventually, the product owner acknowledged the impact my initial design could have had, and we iteratively improved the feature in subsequent updates. This experience taught me the importance of flexibility, open communication, and the value of iterative design processes.