I'm a hybrid, a unicorn, a Swiss Army knife: A user-experience designer who's also a product owner and manager and by the way can code up your front end. Or a product manager who thinks like a user experience designer and by the way can launch our site or application from scratch and then run the program to optimize and grow it.
You make the call which is which. I don't care about titles and never did. Silos are obstacles, and now, in the year 2026, we're at a pivot point where I see them breaking down all around us.
Wait what? Let me explain.
UX and PM, what's the line?
The convention we're used to is, there's PM over here and UX over there. They should work together but fundamentally do different things. But do we? Here's the original definition of UX:
“User experience” encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, its services, and its products. — Don Norman
That sounds a heck of a lot like product management, doesn't it? The lines between PM and and that original definition of UX have always been so blurred there's a huge grey area. I live in that grey.
Both PM and UX need to start with what to build and why. That's the strategic level, and UX isn't UX if it only starts at the tactical level — how is it organized, what does it look like? That strategic level is where we have to start if we're targeting outcomes (conversion rates, retention, leads, adoption, time on task, onboarding, insert your OKR here) and not just deliverables (wireframes, mock-ups, prototypes, design systems, and iconography).
In other words, the overlap starts all the way up at the 10,000-foot view.
UX and dev, what's the line?
Now, go all the way to the opposite end of the product lifecycle, with development. In theory we can draw a neat line between design and code, but in reality the designer who does the front-end code has been a mainstay role for 25 years. I'm no exception. I've written code since Netscape was a baby, and when push comes to shove I'm the one who can spool up an entire prototype in TextEdit and also optimize your stylesheets while I'm at it.
Does knowing how to build Web sites and applications make you a better PM or designer? Well, yes, because, just for starters, in the real world having had boots on the ground means you understand technical constraints and the tradeoffs developers have to make all the time, just as it's critical for an architect to understand the materials and construction methods she's working with.
What's changing?
OK, so there's overlap between PM, UX, and dev. I've been breaking down those silo walls for 25 years in roles with all kinds of titles, in organizations of all maturity levels, and in multiple verticals, business models, and product types. With and without clearly defined PM or UX roles. E-commerce, enterprise SaaS, mobile apps, fashion, packaged foods, banking, non-profit. SEO, accessibility, A/B testing programs, analytics, and research. Where there's a gap, I've filled it, regardless what job title it's “supposed” to fall under. Do that for a couple of years and you're a jack-of-all trades, master of none. Do it for 25, and you get really good at a whole lot.
Now, I'm writing this in 2026, and we're at a pivotal moment: AI is breaking down the silo walls all around us. It'll take time to reflect in job descriptions and org charts, but it's happening, and I'm here for it. I've always been here for it.
The speed with which tools like Claude can now ingest and process huge amounts of information from resarch and metrics, then juggle far more variables and considerations a human brain has the capacity for and cough up multiple ways to look at the same problem from different angles, frees up both UX and PM to focus on the what and the why. On the UX side, the huge amount of work and skill that goes into creating the artifacts — journey maps, wireframes, mock-ups, prototypes — can now be crunched into a conversation with the AI.
On obvious conclusion is, well, then can't the PM just do all or most of what the UX designers used to do? Or do we just need a new definition of the product designer role that does both PM and design? Or maybe the PM role can now lean much more heavily towards the PM being the subject matter expert in the vertical or market segment you're working in, and the product designer can take over more of the traditional PM role owning requirements and outcomes?
Sure. Yes. All the above, or some new combo. But: The output from AI is only as good as your input. The outcomes are only as good as your discernment using the tools, how good you are at feeding context and framing problems for the model, and how good you are at sussing out different ways of looking at the same information from multiple angles. Being able to spit out a fully functional prototype in an hour doesn't mean it's going to be a good product. The right market fit, the right user experience for the task at hand, built for the right user. That all depends on the experience and discernment of whoever is wielding the magic AI wand.
What I can say for sure, because it's already happening, is we're breaking through some traditional bottlenecks so we can shift focus. Over 25 years have shown me where the product and dev life cycles tend to get bogged:
- The design artifacts. So let's say we're adding a new capability to our site or our SaaS product. UX goes and designs. That takes time in Figma or XD or whatever we use. Then there's a review, with one to N number of people. Review produces more discussion, changes, maybe a pivot. UX goes back and reworks the artifacts. Two weeks later, another review. Rinse and repeat. Now? We can workshop prototypes in real time. We can get alignment in a fraction of the time because we're not spending two weeks in design tools in between each round. We can also spool up what we need for user testing, whether textbook or gonzo, in a fraction of the time.
- The dev pipeline. More than any other, the limiting factor on new capabilities and improvements has been dev capacity. PM and UX can design and produce requirements until we're blue in the face, but it's for nought if it can't get built. Let's be honest, most IT/engineering/dev teams have sitting on a mountain of backlog for years. “Fast follower” means ain't gonna happen. Capacity is limited, and competition for dev's time is a fierce battle. Who's in the middle of that battle? You, PM. Now that AI can speed up development, that means increasing capacity, which means we can get more done: Managing the roadmap can now be a matter of prioritizing and defining the right stuff more so than ruthless cycle of whittling down what we can do to the bare minimum.
- Stakeholder alignment. This, if you ask me, is where we tend to get stuck going in circles whether we're UX or Product. And this is what separates the best PMs and UX designers: The patience and ability to successfully negotiate multiple stakeholders' priorities, needs, and wants. Can AI do that for us? No. What AI can do is speed up the above two bottlenecks (design artifacts and dev capacity) so we can (a) get more done for more stakeholders and (b) free up time and brain resources on that negotiation and alignment process.
Given what AI is going as we speak, it's time to reevaluate conventional separation of roles and duties. Call it Product, UX, Experience, or Pink Elephant, but roles and responsibilities are due for a realignment.
I'm ready for it because I've rarely stayed within those lines to begin with.
Experience and skills
Enough with the editorializing. What is it that you actually do? Well, here's the kind of list of hands-on, real world experience 25 years can get you:
Product Management
- Pragmatic Certified Product Manager, Pragmatic Institute
- Product strategy and roadmapping
- Product lifecycle management, concept to launch
- Backlog management and prioritization
- User stories and acceptance criteria
- Discovery and requirements definition
- Business analysis and stakeholder alignment
- Go-to-market planning and launch coordination
- Agile/Scrum methodology
- OKRs and product metrics
Leadership
- Cross-functional team leadership
- Stakeholder management
- Career ladder development
- Mentoring and coaching
Research & Optimization
- User research and usability testing
- Conversion-rate optimization (CRO)
- A/B testing and experimentation (Optimizely)
- Behavioral analytics (Contentsquare, Hotjar, GA4, Looker)
- Data-driven decision making
Design & Technical
- UX and product design
- Information architecture
- Design systems
- Wireframing and prototyping (Figma, Adobe XD, Sketch, Axure, Balsamiq)
- WCAG and ADA accessibility
- HTML/CSS/JavaScript
- Responsive Web UI
- Jira, Confluence
Industries
Promotional merch, fashion, payment and billing platforms, government-to-citizen (G2C), governance/risk/compliance (GRC), consumer and commercial banking, non-profit, packaged foods, consumer electronics and fitness, and telecom.
Product types
Transactional e-commerce, complex internal operational applications, data-heavy UI and dashboard, enterprise SaaS, mobile app, online banking, CMS, and hardware/software integration.
