As an old bird in the Internet industry for more than 1 years, I will solve all your problems at once by answering three questions.

1. Should the product manager draw a prototype?

To put it bluntly, product managers should not draw prototypes, or they should not only draw prototypes.

the prototype is just a tool, which is used to explain the operation process of the interface. In principle, the product manager will not directly control this link.

so what should a product manager do? For product managers, it is necessary to pay more attention to analyzing users' needs and planning functions. Zhang Xiaolong once said, "The product manager is a person standing beside God." He likened the product manager to a player with God's perspective who can see through all sentient beings and human nature, so people around God should set the rules of game operation for this product according to the needs of users, and promote the operation of the product as a whole. You are welcome to say that the dirty work is left to interaction.

product managers really need to draw pictures, but they should draw "storyboards" to make it clear to everyone that our function is to help users solve any difficulties in their real lives, and it is not advisable to give up the basics.

of course, this is about dividing products and interactions into two roles. One thinks about demand, and the other thinks about realization. As long as it's awesome enough, it's no problem to make sure it's round, just don't recruit another interaction, it will hurt people.

second, should product managers understand interaction design? (You should also want to know)

The answer is yes! You may feel contradictory. It is said that product managers should not draw prototypes, so why do you have to understand interaction design? This is not contradictory.

Product managers should treat products like children. If product managers are completely forbidden not to draw interactive design drafts, it is like not letting Zuckerberg write code. On the other hand, how many product managers can do code (or interactive draft) as well as Zuckerberg?

The reason is that the phenomenon that domestic product managers now draw interactive design drafts is the main reason for the backward start of the industry and the lack of interactive design talents. Whether product managers should draw interactive design drafts depends largely on corporate culture and organizational structure.

I think the correct approach should be that the product manager should treat interactive manuscripts quickly and carelessly; The biggest difference between the two is that the information is transmitted to the designer quickly and roughly, and the interaction designer forms a detailed plan according to the general conceptual information. If cooperation, such cooperation is the most efficient, here.

third, how should the product manager and interaction design divide their work? (In the previous methodology, this is dry goods)

The product manager is mainly responsible for sorting out user requirements, planning, function screening, business model and operation model exploration, version iteration time planning, agile development function point description, etc.

if it's a product on the WEB side, there will be less interaction-related things involved. Since the product manager knows all the function points well, if he is proficient in prototype design, the prototype created by PM himself will not only help developers understand the function points, but also reduce the communication time with interaction designers, which can greatly improve work efficiency.

If it's a mobile product, there will be many things related to interaction. Since the product manager needs to plan each function point, it will be very laborious to handle the details of interaction. At this time, it is best to consider giving the details of interaction to interaction designers and planning the functions wholeheartedly. Although it costs some communication costs, the optimized interaction details will reach a more professional level in the user experience.

to sum up, the product manager's demo and interaction design are demos, and the biggest difference lies in the description of interaction details, which also depends on the interaction complexity of the product.

digression: As a product manager, you need to constantly improve your ability and be familiar with using various tools and online design platforms, such as foreign software Sketch, Axure and justinmind, as well as domestic online product design collaboration platform for copycats. Whether it is interaction, technology or even UI aesthetics, we should keep improving, so as to cope with more complex acute events.