Laurie Warren covers digital product management and how it involves applying a broad set of skills, such as user understanding, stakeholder communication, planning, and prioritisation, to digital products that can range from small local websites to complex apps and hybrid physical-digital offerings.

She shares her work with charities and community businesses, illustrating how digital product skills are used to turn community-led ideas into functioning, sustainable, and secure digital services that support fundraising, volunteering, and day-to-day operations.[
The podcast also highlights the environmental impact of digital products and AI, emphasising the need for mindful, lightweight design, good data practices, and awareness of legislation and sustainability when managing digital products.

Key points

  • Digital products are not limited to large apps; they include websites and other online tools that must support user journeys such as e-commerce, volunteer scheduling, fundraising, and share offers for community businesses and charities.
  • Many professionals effectively act as digital product managers without holding the title, and the focus should often be on developing “digital product skills” (user empathy, communication, planning, prioritisation, and tact) rather than a narrowly defined job role.
  • Sustainability is a critical but often overlooked aspect of digital products: data centres consume significant energy and water, bloated code and unused media increase carbon footprint, and even emails and AI prompts carry a carbon cost, so managers should design and maintain lightweight, efficient products.
  • Technical knowledge can be part of the role; some managers code and build products themselves, but often the core responsibility is to manage stakeholders, understand technical implications, interpret data and analytics, and ensure security and compliance with data regulations
  • AI is increasingly embedded in digital product work, as a tool for research, planning, coding (including “vibe coding”), and even auto-building simple sites or apps, but it has limitations around bugs, cybersecurity, data security, and sustainability, so product managers must learn to use it effectively and responsibly.[

 

Transcript

Transcripts are auto-generated.

Kiran Kapur, Host (00:01):
Hello and welcome. We are in the world of managing digital products.

Laurie Warren, founder of Canvas Consultancy (00:07):
We're talking about being able to understand the user. We're talking about communication with different stakeholders and it's being able to balance all of those different things together as well as dealing with issues that come in that need maybe prioritising and fixing. So you need to be able to cope with many things at once, but also able to be a really good communicator.

Kiran Kapur, Host (00:28):
I'm absolutely delighted to welcome Laurie Warren, who is a tutor at the college, but is also founder of Canvas Consulting and is one of the bubbliest people I know. So Laurie, welcome to the show. Can we start with what Canvas Consulting does?

Laurie Warren, founder of Canvas Consultancy (00:44):
Oh, thanks Kiran. Thanks for having me and that's a great introduction. So Canvas Consultancy, it's a business I set up 10 years ago now I think, when I decided to go freelance and self-employed. And I have ended up working in the charity, not-for-profit, and community business sector, actually is something I really enjoy. So I basically am a business consultant. I help small businesses, charities and community businesses most recently, basically with their marketing, business planning, getting ideas from concept to launch all the way through. And actually as part of that role, I'm now the recommended supplier. So providing digital services, websites, those sorts of things to those community businesses because that's something that those businesses struggle to access, struggle to do in-house themselves quite a lot. So I saw that as a sort of gap in the market, I suppose, to be able to offer higher level expertise and digital knowledge to those small businesses, communities, charities that were struggling to do those sorts of things themselves.

(01:56):
So in a nutshell, that's what I'm doing on a day-to-day basis.

Kiran Kapur, Host (02:01):
Brilliant. So I think we all understand the idea, a concept of a charity. Do you mind telling me a little bit what you mean by community businesses?

Laurie Warren, founder of Canvas Consultancy (02:09):
Yeah, of course. So a community business is generally where a community or members within a community have come together to set a business up. They tend to be things like shops, pubs, cafes, but on the periphery as well, we have things like bookshops, farms, sports centres. It basically means anything that is owned and run by the community. So there are different ways of doing it and setting it up, but the most common way to set that up is with what's called a community benefit society. So you form a board, you have a chairperson, a secretary, a treasurer, you have the meetings, and you are then able to fundraise to purchase assets or apply for loans, funding to be able to either purchase an existing building and bring it into community ownership. We see that quite often with pubs that are closing, shops that are closing and actually several usually retired members, but usually really skilled people, decide to come together and form a group to try and save those rural businesses.

(03:17):
And that's where I then get involved, or the charity I work for, which is the Plunkett Foundation, is able to get involved to provide some sort of external expertise to those groups to help them basically bring what is a big dream all the way through to reality into a functioning business, and beyond to help them manage that business as it grows. Often it's run with volunteers, and there's quite a lot of involvement in that.

Kiran Kapur, Host (03:46):
Yes, I can imagine that it has its own challenges. So I'm very intrigued that when I think of digital products, I tend to think of sort of big global apps, something I might get from the app store or whatever, or a big software platform. But actually you are talking about websites that might be quite small and quite local. So am I misunderstanding the scale of a digital product?

Laurie Warren, founder of Canvas Consultancy (04:11):
Yeah, and that's a common misconception I suppose, is that a digital product manager is managing, yes, big apps for big tech businesses, but actually a digital product can be a website, and those websites need to be managed by somebody. They need to be brought from the idea all the way through to launch. Some are obviously more complex than others in terms of calling them a digital product. In the example with community businesses, for example, that website needs to be able to perhaps accept online orders, even have an e-commerce element to it, calendars so volunteers can have a look at availability and staffing. There's the fundraising element to it. So being able to link to crowdfunding and even launching share offers so people can come and purchase shares and become members. All of those things is what that website needs to do in that example of a community business.

(05:11):
And that's the same for charities as well. And to be honest, any business that's running a website online, have these decisions to make around how that digital product is working for them and for the user, what that user journey looks like, where we need to maybe think about developing that product going forward to be able to support the business as it grows. And they can become a burden as well. If they're not well-managed and people don't have good control over them or are thinking forward with them, they can actually become a huge burden, particularly when you're relying on volunteers or people who it's not naturally their job trying to run these products as well.

Kiran Kapur, Host (05:51):
I could see why there would be a gap in the market. And also in the charity side, the website and being able to accept donations or be able to fundraise, be able to explain what you do is so important. So again, I think I had a view that digital product managers had the name and the title being a digital product manager. But I think what I'm picking up is that actually it's not that. You may not have the title of digital product manager.

Laurie Warren, founder of Canvas Consultancy (06:19):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I would never have said I was called a digital product manager, but actually looking back over my career, I've managed many, many digital products. And actually, I think we need to maybe think about it more as digital product skills rather than it being a sort of role in itself. I think there are probably a lot of people who would recognise actually, I am doing lots of those roles within my job, but I'm maybe not called a digital product manager, or I don't consider myself a digital product manager. And I also think businesses looking forward in the way that things are moving actually probably need more and more of those skills around digital product management, whether it's necessarily recognised as an entire digital product manager. I think there's a lot of hybrid and crossover there as well.

Kiran Kapur, Host (07:11):
So when you say digital product management skills, what sort of skills are we talking about?

Laurie Warren, founder of Canvas Consultancy (07:15):
We're talking about, well, being able to understand the user and identify with our users and what that user journey looks like and being able to meet their needs. We're talking about communication with different stakeholders and being able to plan and prioritise, set a vision, but also communicate that vision to other stakeholders, which may be people within our business. It may also be people external to the business. So if you're relying on an agency or a developer to bring your idea to life, there's a lot of communication and collaboration needed there to deliver that value. And I think those are skills that transcend across no matter what, because actually being able to be empathetic and understand that user and how they would use your digital product and also aligning that to the business goals as well. There can sometimes be a bit of a mismatch in terms of what the business goals are, but how the user will actually end up using that digital product.

(08:16):
And it's being able to balance all of those different things together, as well as dealing with issues that come in that need maybe prioritising and fixing, but also thinking several steps ahead as to how does this need to support the business and those goals going forward as well. So you need to be able to cope with many things at once, but also able to be a really good communicator, and I think have a great deal of understanding and empathy with how people will actually use that product and how it will land in the marketplace.

Kiran Kapur, Host (08:50):
I thought it was really interesting when you said that your community group, one of the things you'd need is obviously the website, and you might need an e-commerce and you might need a calendar for the volunteers to be able to see it. And I thought there's an end user journey that I hadn't actually thought about. So we talk about users, don't we? You're not talking about customers necessarily.

Laurie Warren, founder of Canvas Consultancy (09:08):
No, there are both, and it depends on what role you're in and what the product is and what that looks like. But generally we would call the customer the person who is purchasing the digital product, and that could be different to who is using that digital product. And I think the easiest way to explain how those things can jar against one another is the business's goals. Let's use the website as the example. The business's goals are perhaps we want to collect as much email information as we can, data collection. We want to be able to improve sales and gain customer information. And so therefore we want all these popups, every opportunity we want to be able to collect that customer information. As a user, that can be quite jarring because we've all been on those websites where there's constant popups that are in your way, you're trying to remove them, and actually they have really deterred from the user journey and the value that that product is then delivering.

(10:05):
So the product manager there is having to manage the expectations of the business and their goals, because at the end of the day, they're the paying customer who's paying for that product. But the user who's using that product, their goals are going to be completely different. And the same thing does apply with the community business. They might want to get across this whole backstory of the community business and how it came about and all the different roles within the team. But actually, a user might just be someone visiting. I need to know when you're open, and I need to find the map because I want to come and visit. I don't need to scroll through several pages of backstory to get the key information that I need. So part of that management role is being able to balance everybody's needs from one product and make sure that it works ultimately for the person using it.

(10:56):
Otherwise they're just going to go, oh, this is not usable and disappear.

Kiran Kapur, Host (11:02):
I'm getting the impression that one of th,e skills you need is tact as well.

Laurie Warren, founder of Canvas Consultancy (11:10):
Yes. Yeah.

Kiran Kapur, Host (11:11):
I could just imagine you having to go in and go, well, I can understand why you want to collect all this information. However, this novel of pop-ups is actually quite jarring for the customer.

Laurie Warren, founder of Canvas Consultancy (11:23):
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I do occasionally joke that we're working with community business and I absolutely love doing that, but there's nothing like going in and trying to manage a team of retired people who have decided that the next good project in life is to resurrect the pub. And they all have their own very strong ideas of how that should look and everything like that. And actually coming in and trying to organise that from an external point of view does definitely require a degree of tact for sure.

Kiran Kapur, Host (11:55):
Yes. Excellent. I mean, I think all marketers have to employ tact when we're dealing with stakeholders, but it just sounds particularly fraught in the areas that you are. Okay. So I think one of the things that always intrigues me about digital products is we tend to say, "Oh, we'll go digital because that will save paper and it will save trees and therefore it's environmentally neutral." And I have a feeling that you are going to tell me that's not the case.

Laurie Warren, founder of Canvas Consultancy (12:22):
Yes. So one of the other aspects of what I do and love to talk about is absolutely sustainability. And I think again, a huge misconception that anything online is very carbon-friendly or carbon neutral because we can't see it. You send an email, there's nothing really physical there. You don't think of anything in terms of a carbon weight there because it just happens instantaneously. It's quick. It's not like turning on the engine of a car and hearing it or going and putting diesel in and paying for it at the moment. And so there is a huge misconception that actually when you're doing things online, and you have a website, and you're not printing things, that doesn't have a cost to it, but actually it does. Everything that's stored, everything that's on that website, if we're using websites as an example, every video, every image, all of the coding behind it has to be stored somewhere.

(13:19):
So it's on what's called a hosting platform. And that is all being held in a physical data centre somewhere. We just don't see them. And actually, if you visualise huge warehouses full of big data centres that are using loads of electricity, humming away, they also need lots and lots of water to act as coolants because they get hot. They're using a huge volume of data, of energy just to store and manage that data, but we just don't see it. And when we don't see it, we really struggle to understand that. And so from a digital product manager point of view, understanding and making this taking the steps that we can in order to lower the carbon footprint of what we're doing is really important. And then there are simple things that we can do. So not having bloated code in websites and apps or anything that's not necessary hanging around in there.

(14:17):
And it is always surprising to me when you look in the back of someone's website how there's a media library full of videos and images that aren't necessarily used on the front of that website. They're just being stored there, and actually they just need clearing out and deleting, and loads of plugins that are outdated and not used. People don't realise they have a cost to them because it's all information that's being stored on that host. So the latest estimations are actually that the global internet has a similar carbon footprint to the global aviation industry, which actually I think puts it into perspective in terms of actually how carbon-heavy it can be. Every prompt that we do, every email that we... Who's guilty of having hundreds of emails sat in their inbox that have been dealt with? Actually, we just need to delete them and get rid of them because they're being stored, and that has a cost to it.

(15:17):
So there are really simple steps to take, but being a mindful digital product manager is about thinking about how can we make this lightweight from the start? Can we use compressed images? Do we really need that video on there? D we need all these plugins or c'an we do it in a lighter-weight way? So we can design sympathetically from the start, but also we can go back and free up a lot of space and a lot of storage in existing sites and existing digital products as well.

Kiran Kapur, Host (15:50):
I think part of the problem with that is psychologically, if I go into a cupboard and I clear out three years' worth of old paperwork that I no longer need, I have a pile of paperwork that I can shred, and therefore I have something I can see. Whereas if I sit and spend an hour going through clearing out old emails, I can't see that I've done that. It doesn't seem as satisfying. And I think that is one of the problems with the digital world, isn't it?

Laurie Warren, founder of Canvas Consultancy (16:18):
Absolutely. Yeah. And the other disappointing thing is as quickly as you clear them, more come in. We're all guilty of it, but it's one of those key things that actually, as we're becoming more aware and we're talking about this more, it is something that, and it's in the curriculum, it's in the assessment criteria of a digital product manager, is actually the sustainability element of what we're doing and the decisions that we're making. So the first thing that we can do is actually start to understand what difference can we make with the decisions that we make when we are thinking about these products.

Kiran Kapur, Host (16:55):
It's really interesting because when we sat down to talk about digital product manager, I was sort of expecting you were going to tell me that one, it was a title. Two, there was perhaps a definite career path into it. And I'm sort of getting the view that actually it's skills that I need. Also, we've talked a lot about soft skills and a lot about planning, as in planning things strategically and sustainably. I'm not hearing a lot of technical stuff. So are there technical things that I need to know?

Laurie Warren, founder of Canvas Consultancy (17:24):
There are, absolutely. There's a technical side of it, and it will very much depend on the person, the role and the business because there will be some digital product managers who are actually managing that product themselves. And that does happen where they're also coding, they're also dealing with actually the technical build, but not necessarily. A lot of the time, a digital product manager is purely there, and they're managing the other stakeholders, so they will be communicating the vision for the product, and someone else will be doing the technical coding and development of that product, but it isn't always clear-cut like that. So there is definitely sometimes a need to have that. I myself am doing that, I'm coding, I'm building sites and managing it myself, but I'm also am having to reach out to external suppliers where needed. But there will also be digital product managers who are not getting involved in the technical side, although I do think it helps when you understand what it is that you're asking and how that needs to happen because you are much more able to manage the expectations.

(18:34):
But I do think it comes back down, I've said this already, to communication and being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes and communicate clearly what it is that you want from that digital product.

Kiran Kapur, Host (18:45):
Is this an area that you can see that AI... I mean, is AI already massively involved?

Laurie Warren, founder of Canvas Consultancy (18:52):
Yes, absolutely. AI is a tool though, as anything else would be. It's a tool that we are learning to use. It can speed up workflows. It can do bits and pieces for you. And like anyone in any role, in any of the marketing roles that we talk about, learning and understanding how to use AI is just as key in this role as it would be in the next. And being able to think about the areas it can help you. So maybe it will help you with your research, it will maybe help with writing plans out and speeding up various elements of the role, but it won't necessarily do it for you. There are some areas where AI is absolutely becoming key with digital products. People talk about AI being able to build a website from scratch now, or you might've heard of the term vibe coding, which is where we're using AI to create code for us.

(19:52):
And yes, that can happen and does happen, but it's not a complete replacement for most products. It's not necessarily replacing anything in that process in terms of creating a website on its own. Yes, you might be able to create a static brochure site with AI and put that out and it does the job, but there are big limitations in terms of the coding might not be bug-proof, it might not be completely cybersecure. When you then need to be able to bring add-ins to it, it gets quite complex and maybe expensive to start thinking about adding in e-commerce elements and anything beyond static sites. Then we talk about developing apps and you can create an app. A volunteer in a community business could use vibe coding to create a simple app and that can work, but it also will have its limitations once you start thinking about holding people's data, keeping that data secure and all of those things.

(20:51):
There are limitations and considerations to think about in terms of the way we use those AI tools for these sorts of things.

Kiran Kapur, Host (21:01):
Yes, I like the fact that you're pointing out that it is a tool. And also I suspect sometimes the sustainability side and using vibe coding may not always align.

Laurie Warren, founder of Canvas Consultancy (21:14):
No. And again, people don't realise you have your AI on your phone and the amount of people who will just dictate in, look up a recipe, ask it for an image or whatever that might be actually every single prompt is costing electricity, and think about how many times we may be prompt badly. So therefore we need to put six or seven more prompts in just to get the result out. So actually learning to use these tools and being able to prompt correctly from the start so that you make that workflow more streamlined, you can use it without having to spend lots and lots of different iterations of trying to get what you want. Because again, every prompt has a cost to it in terms of carbon. So what you were saying around vibe coding, yes, we can create things with vibe coding, but equally it can spiral very, very quickly in terms of how much we've actually had to try and do to create what the vision was in the first place.

(22:16):
So those skills are certainly things that I like to see being developed for anybody who's managing those digital products.

Kiran Kapur, Host (22:24):
Brilliant. Are there any other skills that we've not discussed that you think are really key to this sort of area?

Laurie Warren, founder of Canvas Consultancy (22:30):
What haven't we discussed? I think data. Have we discussed data?

Kiran Kapur, Host (22:36):
We haven't actually looked at data, and you're right. Data is really important, isn't it?

Laurie Warren, founder of Canvas Consultancy (22:41):
Yeah. I think you have to be someone who is able, not scared of data. I think data comes into any sort of role, but being able to also do the research and take that data back. So when we've got digital products, it's very easy to collect data in. So we've got all our analytics outbound behind the back of a website app analytics. Any sort of digital or online product, it's very easy to collect the user data and information back. And actually the skill there is in being able to read and interpret what that data is telling us to inform the next decisions onto whether that's to scrap that digital product entirely and move on to a new one or to actually start making developments to meet the user needs from what that data's telling us. So there's lots and lots of data that we can find.

(23:36):
It's really easy to get bogged down in Google Analytics; for example, can spew out so much information and being able to refine that down and actually work out what are the key bits of information that I need to look at and how can I use that to shape the next decisions for what we need to do.

Kiran Kapur, Host (23:55):
And I think the other thing you always tend to forget to talk about is the fact that there is some quite strong legislation and regulation around data collection and data holding.

Laurie Warren, founder of Canvas Consultancy (24:04):
Yes. Yes, there is. Yeah. And that comes back into AI as well and how we're using AI and the considerations around when you are collecting people's data, and you are using it in that way that you are, yes, adhering to the various rules and regulations and legislation around keeping people's data safe and secure. And there are major potential pitfalls in terms of websites and things that are collecting data and making sure that you've got the right software and security systems in place. There are a worrying number of websites that I deal with that are not being regularly backed up. They are not very secure. And it's often the first thing I say is actually we need to back this up and actually instal some security in it because they're often quite weak.

Kiran Kapur, Host (24:52):
Gosh, okay. That's really interesting. Okay. That wasn't actually something I thought necessarily was going to be still such an issue because I thought people understood that, but I suppose you can understand it and not know how to deal with it and will not know what to do.

Laurie Warren, founder of Canvas Consultancy (25:05):
True. True. Yeah. Yeah.

Kiran Kapur, Host (25:07):
Brilliant. Laurie, that was a really great overview of digital product management and how we really need the skills that are involved. Without wishing to plug things too much, if somebody was interested in this as a role or interested in understanding the skills that they needed, where should they go or where should they start?

Laurie Warren, founder of Canvas Consultancy (25:26):
Well, I think they should start at Cambridge Marketing College and come and have a look at our website and learning zone, which is a digital product in itself, isn't it, in terms of the learning zone and how that works. But if anyone is interested, they can contact me directly, or I'm sure they can come to the college because we do run a digital product manager apprenticeship, which is a fantastic course and goes through all of those skills needed for a digital product manager, soft skills and the more technical skills as well. So yeah, without plugging too much, come and have a look.

Kiran Kapur, Host (26:05):
Brilliant. And I promise we never ever do a hard sell at the college, but I do like occasionally to let people know what we do.

Laurie Warren, founder of Canvas Consultancy (26:12):
One of the other, I suppose things to think about when we're talking about roles is actually, which we haven't discussed yet, is the movement towards a bit of a hybrid role as well in that we're seeing digital products combined with offline products as well. And actually that is now becoming more than the role of a traditional product manager because you've got so much of the digital side in there. So things like, let's give the example of a smart fridge that will be able to tell you to order more milk when the milk runs low. Actually, that's part of the product manager of that manufacturer of that fridge. But actually the app and the digital side that goes with that product is becoming more and more digital. And we're seeing more and more of that actually in terms of, so these digital product management skills aren't necessarily someone who's just purely looking after a digital portfolio. That there's a lot of crossover, and it's what we call the internet of things, where actually we're seeing sort of smart wearable technology.

(27:12):
So you've got the watch itself, but also you're thinking about the digital product that goes alongside that because it wouldn't work without it. And there's a lot of roles where there's a big crossover as well and actually the digital product management skills are becoming more and more I think valuable in the workplace.

Kiran Kapur, Host (27:32):
I absolutely agree with you. Laurie Warren, thank you so much for that overview of digital products, the level of tact that one needs to work in this environment and helping me understand just how big an area of marketing this really is. So thank you very much indeed.

Laurie Warren, founder of Canvas Consultancy (27:47):
You're welcome. Thank you.