I'm a product manager. One of the things I'm moved towards doing with engineering teams over the years is bringing ideas when they aren't fully fleshed out sooner to engineering teams. It really helps do a couple of things- it saves time, if it is a bad idea, I found out sooner rather than later. And if it is a good idea, it gives other people the opportunity to contribute to it, making it their own as well as mine, which helps everyone on the team take more ownership of the outcome and have a better feeling of purpose in life. I think you need to earn credibility before you start doing it but once you have that credibility I highly recommend it.
There’s an approach in design thinking that you should only ever present half-baked prototypes to a team or client - if they see a somewhat polished product, one a few things can go through their mind: you’ve put so much effort into it, that you must really know what you’re doing, and will accept it as is with no further input; they might also think that you’ve committed to an idea that they didn’t endorse or have a hand in. They might also feel pity that you put in so much effort, and just let you do it.
All of these things relate to your points: you want them to contribute to the creative process, which ultimately results in a better product, and makes them feel like they’ve made a positive contribution. Everyone wins: you get hired again because you deliver a good product while making them feel good.
I have experienced exactly this. Painstakingly detailed wireframes that look like finished designs. What I have gotten back from world-class designers are my exact design but expertly, gloriously, colored inside the lines I inadvertently created and that the designers and team thought they shouldn't alter.
It’s great that you share your ideas with your team. I’ve been in both product management and engineering roles and I can say with certainty that everyone has terrible ideas, including (sometimes especially) engineers.
The thing is, you can’t tell if an idea has legs until you share it. And even after going through your own filter and that of your colleagues and other disciplines, the only thing that’s actually important is how the product is received by the audience.
So holding it all close to your chest is just a really good way of reducing the likelihood of success. And because of this, wherever I can, I try to mock up a cheap prototype of a product first, something that expresses my ideas in a tangible way that others can understand, just to make sure that what I’m working on is actually worth the time.
In principle I think it’s good practice, but in practice I think it’s risky. It very much depends on your relationship with your customers.
It can go wrong in a few ways.
Probably the worst way is where the customer takes a half baked demo or idea as a preview and a commitment, and then demands that you deliver it, or complains when you don’t; not all half baked ideas can be turned into a product.
Another potential pitfall is that the idea may be seen to represent a change to something important to them, and they get scared. Inducing needless fear is best avoided!
They might just tell you that it’s a stupid idea. Which at best is just embarrassing.
There are probably many other negative scenarios, but those come to mind from experience.
So while on the whole I think you really, really should let customers be part of the ideation process - they are the users and beneficiaries of the work, after all - you have to chose who you include carefully, because the relationship with your customers is fundamentally different to the one you have with your coworkers, and it can go south in really unexpected ways.
I agree. With some customers/prospects who I know won't take wireframes as commitments or think poorly of something have baked, I share such ideas. I'm hesitant to do so to a wide general audience.
Sounds heavenly. I frequently ask the PMs to include a few devs in the process just to help offer feedback or to bounce ideas around because like you said this approach does appear to save time. And from personal experience implementing an idea that you helped chisel out is a more enjoyable experience.
