A lot of UI/UX designers while only starting their career think they can manage themselves. Of course, people who work well with time and tasks will complete projects much faster and easier. However, talking to clients, and potential partners, working on marketing materials and developing skills seems to be too much for one person. In the other words, we strongly believe that designers actually can manage themselves easily, but this will neither result in high-quality work nor in sales.

The project manager may seem useless to the designer from time to time. While talking to managers in various companies, I’ve found out, that the feeling like you are the “odd one” and no one honors your work may already be considered as a part of the normal professional deformation. This happens just because designers always have a visible end result of the work process: the design itself. At the same time, the manager can only have permanent communication with the client and good feedback. However, even feedback and a satisfied client will be thought to be an achievement of the designer. Coming to this point, designers never think in-depth about all the details of the management process.

UI/UX Design Management

The normal workflow of the project manager includes a lot of things, not only technical communication with the client and sharing of feedback. It also includes:

• planning of the project, which may seem natural for designers who got used to working with managers;
• calls and checks of the incoming tasks;
• briefs and technical tasks creation;
• feedback and portfolio sharing;
• financial management;
• marketing and PR;
• communication with partners and improvement of the partnership program;
• communication with designers and interviews;
• education of the team and self-education;
• communication with previous clients.

This is not even considering sales, while in some companies managers also do sales and email marketing. Covering all of this requires from 6 to 8 hours of work daily, which designers may simply not have. Moreover, if not working on some of the directions, like PR, Marketing Sales, or financial part, work will be strongly affected.

Definitely, a lot of designers can manage themselves easily. However, this will not be the same effective and productive as if the manager would be working on their skills. Working with a manager may require additional finances, but at the end of the day, it will result in way more income!