Tell us a little about yourself. What does your job at Telefónica involve?
Everyone knows me as Josemi (José Miguel Sánchez). As head of the video eXperience Design team, I lead the definition and execution of digital experiences for millions of users, ensuring that the product is innovative, useful and consistent.
My job involves coordinating multidisciplinary teams that integrate talent in User Research, Product Design, Design Ops, Systematisation and Scaling, UX and UI, so that our developments meet the highest standards of usability and accessibility.
In addition, I promote a culture of design within the company, promoting best practices and ensuring that the strategic vision is reflected in every digital project we launch on the market.
How would you define the job of Head of Product Design?
First of all, it’s EXCITING! Balancing the different layers of complexity that make up the product from a design perspective is both an arduous and satisfying task.
It’s about leading the strategic vision of design, ensuring that every decision is aligned with user needs, business objectives and technological trends.
This position coordinates research, conceptualisation, prototyping and detailed design, as well as final implementation and continuous product improvement.
As a cross-functional mission, this role must facilitate collaboration between the different teams involved in product development.
What are your main responsibilities?
The main responsibility is to ensure that the defined strategy is executed in all the pieces released by the team.
This includes defining the vision and executing it in a roadmap aligned with it, supervising the production of all experiences to ensure they meet usability and accessibility standards, are consistent in the experience and ensure coherence, and validating prototypes and solutions through research and user testing.
Close collaboration with product management, technology and business teams must be ensured to align strategic objectives and tangible results.
Responsibilities also include establishing and maintaining design systems that ensure efficiency and scalability across all projects.
Finally, they must analyse metrics and KPIs to continuously improve the user experience and product quality.
How does this role differ from that of a product manager?
The Product Manager analyses the problems to be addressed, including market, business and user insights, understanding why they are relevant to the business, while the Product Designer focuses on how to solve them effectively by creating engaging, intuitive and functional experiences, transforming needs into business and user solutions.
The Product Manager works with priorities that are carried over to a roadmap and where impact metrics are mapped out, while the Product Designer contributes research and experience design to meet needs.
These are different but complementary roles, and their collaboration is essential for launching products with traction in our markets.
What professional profiles are dedicated to this profession?
Designers working in this discipline come from a variety of backgrounds, from psychologists and sociologists who conduct user research to industrial or interaction engineers who come from a Design Thinking mindset and are able to adapt to working with other methodologies as well.
We can find service designers, interaction designers, researchers, product designers, UX designers, UI designers, UX writers, design system designers, and strategic designers.
The truth is that the range of professionals is very broad and can be highly specialised.
What impact does the emergence and evolution of new technologies have?
New technologies are constantly redefining the discipline, and designers naturally integrate them in a cyclical manner and maintain an open and flexible attitude towards new opportunities: artificial intelligence, data analysis, multi-platform systems and scalability have raised the bar in terms of personalisation, accessibility and development speed.
Now, product design involves understanding emerging trends, such as conversational design, adaptive interfaces and automation, integrating technical capabilities with creativity to serve the business and the user.
Which people working at Telefónica would you nominate for this interview who you consider to be excellent at their job?
I nominate Mario Gómez Gálvez, for his tireless pursuit of experiences that have an impact on our users. He is currently redefining how our customers can benefit from a virtual assistant that makes their daily lives easier.
