How Metalab does design-led product management with Megan O'Rourke - Head of Product @ Metalab

Path2Product: Welcome back for another lesson in product management. On today's episode, I'm joined by Megan o', Rourke, Executive Director of Product Management at metalab. She brings nearly a decade of experience working across dozens of products and teams. In this conversation, we cut through the noise and get to the fundamentals of alignment, communication, prioritization, problem solving, and understanding users and their context at a deep level. If you've ever wondered what truly defines great product managers, regardless of the environment they're in, this episode is packed with clarity, insight, and some incredibly practical wisdom. Let's jump in. Hey, Megan, welcome to the podcast.

Megan O'Rourke: Hey, thanks for having me.

Path2Product: Yeah, absolutely. I'm excited for the conversation. I'm excited to hear more about what Metalab does. So, but before we, um, get into everything, for the listeners who haven't met you or maybe don't follow you on LinkedIn or anything like that, could you give a brief description of what you do today and kind of what Metalab does?

Megan O'Rourke: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, hi everyone. Nice to meet you. My name is Megan. Most folks call, uh, me Mego, so feel free. Um, I'm the Executive Director of Product Management at Metalab, so I lead our PM practice. I support some of our higher profile clients. I get to meet with new and interesting clients all the time and try to stir up new partnerships for our teams to work on. And, uh, I spend a lot of my time just thinking about how we shape and build teams that build great products. So a quick background on me. My, my journey actually started in advertising. I, um, cut my teeth at an agency called Crispin Porter Buguski, uh, and they were very much known for very bold and disruptive ideas. And so while I, I was not on the creative team, I definitely appreciated being part of the creative process and it really instilled in me a, ah, passion for design and creativity and, and the detail craft. Um, but eventually I moved away from advertising and kind of the one and done sort of campaign world. Something that felt a bit, a bit more long tail and that brought me to metalab, uh, in 2016. So I'm actually coming up on nearly 10 years, I think is a real testament, especially in agency land, to just the type of work that we do, the really interesting clients with whom we get to work, uh, and the amazing roster of folks and talent on the Metalab team. So, yeah, that's a little bit about me and my journey. Talk about, like, what is Metalab actually do for those who don't know?

Path2Product: Yeah, absolutely. Because I'm not going to lie, when I first Saw Metalab. I'm like, is there an association with Meta? And like, I don't know if you get that all the time, but that's kind of funny.

Megan O'Rourke: We have. Yeah, well, you know, maybe there was a cease and desist in there and so, um, yeah, so Metalab is an end to end digital product agency. So if you were to go to our website, you'd see just a very simple explanation of what we do and that's we build interfaces or we make interfaces, which I love. You might think it's like a bit reductionist, uh, but it really boils it down to our core software and I think it kind of is a nod to our Canadian roots, which are just very humble. Um, but yeah, but we essentially we design and we build interfaces which ultimately drive product experiences. And we're very much design led. So we have an emphasis on core product design, but we also have really awesome talent across. Uh, we have a full branding team, uh, research and strategy, engineering, of course, product management, uh, and we partner with a range of companies. So like literally everyone from early stage, first time, or maybe experienced founders who need help going 0 to 1, which is always fun, uh, or maybe scaling up an mvp. And then some clients come to us with the need to help work on like a North Star vision for their product. Um, some come to us for like just an, an overhaul of maybe an existing product or portion of. So it's, it's really quite varied and that's part of what keeps the work interesting, both for myself and then our larger team is no two projects are the same, two products are the same. Um, and at the end of the day it's really just about like we're building digital experiences that are really amazing and get built and get to see the light of day.

Path2Product: That's very cool. So I know in a lot of product circles there's this debate between being product led and being sales led. And you mentioned that Metalab at its core is very design led. So could you share more about what that means and how that plays out in practice?

Megan O'Rourke: Yeah, I would say at our core we're all kind of designers at heart, but we have a true talented design function and they're really at the forefront of all of our projects. So as a service agency the core service that we are providing is product design. So um, unlike sales team who might be driving a feature roadmap or certain promises that you're selling through to customers, we're in a position like as an agency, we're hired by organizations to often accelerate uh, or deliver that world class design experience. So for us that can take shape of like design is there from the conversation starting with our sales. So if we're, if we're talking to interesting um, customers which for us are the clients, the product companies, that conversation is being had with myself, a design leader and someone from our partnerships team to make sure that even just how we're structuring the work and approaching the opportunity is very much through a design and a creative lens, not just a scoping conversation. And then what comes m through the delivery of the work, it's our designers who often are out front and center leading workshops and really influencing the roadmap, the features, the experience. Um, because I just deeply believe at our core like solving a customer need and a business need, uh, is ultimately delivered through like a great experience. So of course there's trade offs and there's conversations that come with you know, managing a scope and delivering the work and the feasibility of tech. But we, we really try to position our designers as leaders in those conversations and, and the other functions uh, are really supporting um, that design vision.

Path2Product: Yeah, no, I love that because even as like a, I started my career in product as a UX researcher so I think I have an appreciation for design and research and some of the adjacent product functions to the PM that other PMs might not have. But uh, I think like design often gets slept on as something that is just a visual uh, discipline and you use the word experience a lot and I think the, the X part of UX often gets overlooked of like what is the overall experience that you're designing, not just the pixels on the page. So uh, I'm sure that's that um, or I guess that's something that you might deal with or like what do you hear from clients when they're expecting your agency to come help? Do they, do they kind of get it or do you have to kind of coach through that?

Megan O'Rourke: Sometimes it really depends. We, what comes top of mind is like we were recently working with an organization like a fast growing um, startup that was all engineers on their team, uh, which isn't uncommon. Right? Like you've got a founder, you've got a team of engineers that focuses on building quickly validating and then we'll worry about what it looks like later. Um, so we often, we often find clients come to us kind of when they're at an inflection stage of okay, they've like figured out product market fit but they haven't quite landed like a delightful user experience or one that like people, people feel is um, feels really effortless or, or easy to navigate. Um, and so oftentimes clients will come to us at that stage and some have design acumen and some honestly don't and they look to us to really help guide them through that process. So occasionally we'll have design clients, ah, who might even have a design background themselves. And um, and then there's a little bit more of like a design acumen and understanding the process. And, and I think for some folks, like, it can be uncomfortable, right, because there's, there's divergent design thinking and we're like, okay, we're going to go broad and we're going to explore, we're going to try out all these different options. Um, that, that doesn't ne. Feel like we're immediately moving toward shipping. But it's an important part of the process that when we educate clients on how we're going to operate, they come along for the ride and they see the value of going divergent, um, and exploring, yeah, different design patterns or interactions that can like, truly elevate the experience. And for many clients at that stage of inflection, like that experience is what becomes a bit of a differentiator. And it takes it from uh, you know, maybe a minimum m. Viable product. Sometimes you hear a minimum lovable product. And we often think of like, well, that, that can be a differentiator at that moment where like design is a core part of the experience. Like we can't, we, we just philosophically like can't extract the two.

Path2Product: Yeah, I, I agree with you. I, I've said in many conversations that it seems like the more that code is getting democratized with AI tools and, and you know, in, in general, like, roles seem to be consolidating. It's design and taste that uh, that really set people apart. Right. So instead of competing on features or copying competitors, it's really like how do you differentiate that experience to where someone's going to choose you over someone else because of the way you make them feel or how easy you make their life?

Megan O'Rourke: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Like when I, um, yeah, when I think about what gets our, our clients like lit up in calls over demoing work, it's, it is that like, design element and that's the differentiated part of the experience that um, yeah, becomes more and more important as soon as, you know, everyone has access to these tools that you can just create a pretty run of the mill onboarding experience. It's like, okay, well how are you going to create a differentiated Onboarding experience that actually meets the needs of your particular customers, you know, that you know what they need. And, um, we can use that as an input to make sure that the type of experience that we're putting forward actually meets that particular user's need rather than it just being something that. No shade on Claude. I love Claude. Uh, but yeah, like now anyone can create an onboarding flow, so it's becoming more and more important to have. Yeah, that, that like kind of tastemaker element to it. Um, not that democratizing design is a bad thing. It's just shifting the emphasis toward taste and curation rather than maybe generation 100%.

Path2Product: So I am curious. I know we've talked a lot about what Metalab does and kind of being design led and what that means. But as the head of product, what does that mean in terms of like, as you view what Metalab's product is like, how do you view that as the product leader?

Megan O'Rourke: Yeah, it's a great question because product at Metalab is like, it's tricky when it's a service provided. So I'd say like, just looking at what does product management even mean at uh, Metal Lab, it's not what you'd find in house. So, like, we don't have growth PMs or platform PMs. Like the PMs on our team, they're generalists. They flex based on the type of work, the client, the stage of the product. Um, and yeah, I'd say, like, what doesn't change is that there's, there's like an inherent need for PM specifically to. I always say, like, they're responsible for creating the conditions for, for great work to happen. Like the conditions for the team to succeed both in the product and the team and the client experience. So what that looks like in practice is our PMs. Let's say, like on a Z to one, they're working with, uh, founders on really validating the market, shaping the roadmap, building the plan for how that all comes to life. Like, they are, they are the founder's partner in doing that very much like hands on IC work. Um, and then on the other hand, we have some projects that, you know, maybe we're working with a mature organization or we're more like up leveling an existing product. That PM's role might be more in terms of like clarifying requirements or untangling, you know, stakeholder priorities and needs. Um, and so what, what product looks like can vary, but it kind of sits in between a bit of prod, like classic product Management and a bit of project management depending on the scope of the client. So it does, it does vary. Um, and I recognize too like clients don't come to us for product management, they come to us for design as they should. Um, but I'm a firm believer that what makes clients stay in working with us is the experience of how we work and work together. And PMs are a big part of shaping that. So metaphors can vary from air traffic control. Like sometimes it's a bit more behind the scenes, a bit more operational, and sometimes it's a bit more of a, you know, uh, conductor of an orchestra where we're out front and, and kind of making sure that we're all marching to the same beat. But yeah, either way, like the product function is ultimately responsible for making sure that we're all pointed in the direction.

Path2Product: Yeah, I think that that alignment piece, uh, never changes. Right?

Megan O'Rourke: No, like, I mean there's, there's so many parallels. Like it's, it's such a different flavor than, than an in house pm. But many of the principles stay the same. Like communication is at its core, stakeholder management. Whether they're internal stakeholders or for us, our client stakeholders, it's still stakeholder management. They're still storytelling, they're still buy in, they're still navigating pivots and changes and priorities. And while the scope management side might be a bit different for us because of, you know, where we would be an external agency, um, there's still, you know, prioritization that happens every day as a pm. So certainly a lot of parallels, but I'd say a slightly different flavor.

Path2Product: No, for sure. I teach a lot of aspiring PMs and I tell them that, you know, you'll see a lot of noise on the Internet, that product management is so different everywhere that you go. And I think the environment and the circumstances are different. But you shine light on the point that I always try to coach them on is that at its core, if you look at the fundamentals of what a product manager does and what product management is, those core tenets don't change. Right? You have discovery and delivery, and then in between you have everything. You just said of stakeholder management, buy in alignment, like planning, prioritization. And so like those things really never change. And it's just interesting to hear from your perspective where you're not an in house team, but you're kind of bringing um, in your teams to kind of uh, jump into another organization's kind um, of world and figure things out and help Create value through uh, whatever stage of design or design problem that they face.

Megan O'Rourke: Mhm. Yeah, absolutely. And it, it's varied and it's fun and that's why I think a lot of folks enjoy the variety that comes with agency. There are certainly trade offs right? Like we don't get to see it through years worth of cycles. We don't necessarily have visibility for especially large, large orgs like you know, what different areas of the product we might not have visibility into. But what it offers is, is variety. And also like uh, at bats, like one of the, one of the things I think is so special about agency PMs is in a given year like you might work on 1, 2 or 3 Z to 1 products. Like you might be bringing multiple products to market or. Yeah, um, working with a number of clients to like you know, translate uh, their, their new branding into a product and helping build a design system from the ground up or part of trans, like a transformation effort. And this is happening multiple times a year and I just can't think of you know, an in house experience that would enable so many reps in such a small period of time. And I think that's something that, that makes us so good at. What we do from design to product to engineering is like we're constantly going through these different types of cycles and engagements with clients that um, yeah, maybe an in house PM wouldn't have as many types of reps in that type of work in such a small period of time.

Path2Product: Yeah, that's definitely food for thought for the listeners because I hear that from a lot of product leaders that I respect highly. Is that the thing that separates good PMs or average PMs from great ones is reps and at bats and um, it sounds like your PMs get that um, pretty frequently.

Megan O'Rourke: They do. And it's stressful, it's hard. But there's also so many great learnings that we get to apply from one product to the next. So it only gets better with time.

Path2Product: That's really cool. So um, as you look across your client base, uh, one thing that struck me was you know, with the need for profitability for a while investment um, kind of dried up and people were like super focused on retrenching. But it seems like Metalab's doing really well. And I'm curious, where are some of the areas that Metalab's uh, clients are saying, hey, we really need your help here because either we pulled back too much of our internal resourcing and now we're lacking here, or there's new challenges that we don't have the competency to deal with. Like what are some of the things that you're seeing come up that's opening opportunities for your organization?

Megan O'Rourke: Mhm. Yeah. I'd say there's probably like three or four main moments that a client would come to work with us. And one that's particularly top of mind, especially with emerging technologies, is really having help with creating a clear vision for the future. So some clients come to us with a sketch on a napkin, which is fun. Uh, sometimes we're working with big enterprise who might have, you know, years less of roadmaps behind them, but as they're looking to the future and they're thinking like okay, we need to, we need to pivot or we need to have uh, something that we can really work toward in terms of like a two to five year product vision and not just like a strategy deck that sits on a shelf. Metalab's anti, anti decks. Uh, we're very, and, and that's part of that design LED thinking is like we're, we're big believers in like having the tangible prototype in your hand that tells that. So I'd say the first, the first grouping of client needs is really like clients coming to us for help with future vision. And they want to have that aspirational state that they can socialize around their organization and say okay, we're all pointing towards the same North Star and all of these different business units or squads within the organization understand directionally where we're going and they can prioritize their efforts against that. So I say that's the first one. The, the second would be kind of like raising the bar on design. So we kind of talked about this inflection point of like okay, you've got a viable product in market, but you need to differentiate it somehow. And that differentiation might be through the actual experience of the product. So client has found product market fit, they need to uplevel the experience and they want to go from that MVP to the mlp, the minimum level product. Uh, so that's an area that we often help translate that next iteration and help them scale. So like we're defining systems and polish and interaction patterns and um, rather than these kind of one off experiences so that as they continue to scale their product they're building on like a solid foundation and then the third is, is really going Z to 1. So it's always fun and a big challenge when clients come to us, uh, to act as like their, their in house product team. So they might be, uh, a founder with either few or a couple of engineers and they need help bringing that idea to an mvp. So we'll staff up a team with strategy, research, design, product. Like when we'll handle that tip to tail and help them ship, uh, a first version and then often help them scale up a team to take that on in the long tail. So I'd say those are kind of the main three and maybe the fourth one would be related to that upscaling in terms of design, but just really like modernizing legacy experiences. So we'll work with partners oftentimes like very large organizations who, big established businesses. But um, maybe they realize like they're not keeping up with modern expectations or leveraging emerging technologies. And so that's an opportunity for us to come in and kind of inject some, some life and some love and some, some design thinking into what might be, um. Yeah, like a trailing experience.

Path2Product: No, it's very cool. So with, with AI kind of swallowing the world like software did you know, a couple decades ago, um, and still is today, how is that impacting your client's world? And are you seeing more of an uptick in like AI centered projects?

Megan O'Rourke: Oh yes. And we have for like a long time. I feel like we've actually been working on AI for like the better part of a decade and in the last.

Path2Product: Oh wow.

Megan O'Rourke: Uh, two years. Have gotten more requests than. Yeah, in the, in the last 10 in terms of that being a focus on an emerging tech. And it, it varies. Like we, we see clients will come to us typically with like one of two asks. There's the first being like, how can we like integrate AI into our product? What's kind of a layer of AI here? And I think that's, that was a bit more in the past couple years, whereas more recently it's help us design an experience that's fully AI powered. Like that is the driving force and the differentiator. And I think for us like in some cases the, the value for the business and the user is like, it's really obvious. Like we might say, yeah, let's add an intelligence layer or there's a competitive advantage here. But also there's also times in which it's not so clear. And I think probably lots of people, especially in the PM role, they feel that pressure. You see that on forums online, there's a strategic directive like we need AI, but why is that a leadership mandate? Is that driven by the board? Is that shaped by a competitor to shift a product that had AI slapped on top and so now we need to go provide something similar. Um, and so yeah, it's become a topic not recently, but um, more generally whether or not we're evaluating AI products or just any sort of feature product in general. Our chief Design officer, Sarah, uh, Vienna, she has this hard hitting question that I love. If we're ever in a design crit and there's a feature being proposed, she's the first one to ask, does this even deserve to exist? And it's just like, oof, yeah, you better have some solid rationale for why. And so we've long been asking that during design crits and reviews and evaluating priorities and features as they take shape. And so now we're just evaluating that uh, a bit more with a lens on AI. So continuing to ask ourselves, like, does this product deserve to exist? And like, what, what place does AI really have in this product? Like, are we solving a real problem? Like, let's just ask ourselves that question. Are introducing like new or meaningful value here? Or we just react to a bit of a hype cycle, which I think is, is always a fair question to ask. And so, um, yeah, I think at its core it's like AI for AI sake. As with any, any trend or technology, like it can be a distraction. But certainly AI when thoughtfully applied and leveraged. Like, and for us that means is it delivering on a business need? Is it delivering on an actual user need? There's absolutely magic there. So yeah, certainly we're seeing an uptick in terms of that being an ask and more. So just as it being a, uh, driver in a product and no longer just a layer of a feature.

Path2Product: Yeah, and those are exactly the PM fundamental questions you should be asking. Right. For anything is like, is it going to create value for the business and for the customer? Is it actually solving a problem? Is it actually doing something worth doing? Or are we just doing it like you said, AI for AI sake. And uh, I find myself having asked that question as heads of sales or founders or others are like, hey, we should do this thing. And it's like, yeah, but for what reason? Like why, why would we do that? And like how is that helping us meet our objectives? And yeah, so I, I totally, um, empathize and that totally resonates with my experience.

Megan O'Rourke: Yeah. And I just encourage people to never stop asking those questions. Like it, it can be really easy to just execute on a directive when there's so much energy and it's a, it's like there's just so much momentum around that and it doesn't have to mean that you're a naysayer. It just means that you're forcing the objective questioning and discussion that I think every product decision maker should, should have. So it's, it's not necessarily a bad thing. I don't think people should feel any shame or be perceived as digging in their heels. But like people are looking to product managers to ask the hard hitting questions and the critical questions to um, make sure that yeah, we're focusing on the

Path2Product: right things 100% and I think any good business leader would appreciate that too. So I know it could be kind of scary, but it's, it's a valuable question set to ask.

Megan O'Rourke: Yeah. And, and maybe it's, it's yes, but not right now. Or maybe it's yes but not on this. Right. Like yeah, it's, we're certainly not anti AI. It's. But uh, we love it. But it's, yeah, it's important to, to be objective. Of course.

Path2Product: Yep. So kind of along that same vein, right. What are some of the underrated aspects of bringing AI uh, into existing products? So, so you're not going 0 to 1, but it you have an existing product, people are like on the hype wagon and they're like we got to do this. But what are some of those unique challenges you found in those scenarios with clients?

Megan O'Rourke: Mhm. I often feel like it comes down to like what is the experience of using an AI product? Like what does it feel like as a user, uh, to use AI powered product. And ultimately whether that's enhancing the experience and building trust or the risk of like, like eroding, uh, eroding the experience or trust. So we, we talk a lot at my lab about like designing with humanity. I feel like that's, that's probably a common thing right now is like we don't want to lose our, our human touch and you know, the fact that we, we care deeply. So um, one of the things that, that we often do as we start to approach our, our design projects is starting with just experience mapping and grounding ourselves back into like user needs. So we're walking through the product journey step by step and asking not just like what are they doing but like what are they thinking, what are they feeling? And it's that emotional context that we feel like really shapes everything we do. So I'll actually bring it back to that, like that question from Sarah, um, of like does this even deserve to exist? Being able to challenge ourselves and our clients, like are we solving meaningful problems? Would this be valuable without AI as an element within the product. Um, and then more tactically, is AI the right tool for the job here? Those critical questions of is it actually making the experience smarter, is it faster, is it more impactful? And then the risks associated with that if we get it wrong, if we're doing something low stakes like content tagging and we mess that up, not a big deal. But if it's a part of the product that affects trust or confidence or accuracy or reliability and we don't get that right, then there's a risk of like, erosion in terms of the customer experience. So that's why I think even bringing it back to that question of like, does this deserve to exist? We're often in the position where we are the ones challenging our clients and our partners to think critically about that and try to present alternative solutions or experiences that kind of meet that, that, that desired effect in terms of how to actually leverage AI. Yeah.

Path2Product: Ah, I love that There was recent, a recent experience, uh, I had where we were getting some push for we need agentic AI, uh, just as a blanket statement. Right. And it's like, well, what does that mean? And I think there's certain, um, archetypes inside of an organization that can get frustrated with some of those questions, but I think it is viable just kind of reemphasizing what we' already said to ask those questions to come to, to come back to, like, what is that objective? What value are we trying to create? Not doing something for something's sake? Um, because you know, we get a lot of pressure to just go and do stuff. And I'm sure, um, as a, as an external agency, you get probably pressured, like, hey, we, we have these ideas of what we want to do, um, and, and you got to kind of reel them back into reality. So I, I'm sure there's similar experiences that.

Megan O'Rourke: Yeah, I mean, certainly, like, as an agency, we are here to provide a service. Um, but part of that service is not saying yes to everything. It's like it's, it's challenging those assumptions. It's really challenging those stakeholders and those needs. And sometimes I think we're actually in a, in a position of, of that's maybe easier than sometimes having that conversation internally where it's like, no, we, we were hired on as this objective third party and if we're here to execute on every wish and desire that comes from our part, like, they're not getting the true value of what they're off, they're what they're after. So sometimes I think we're in a fortunate position in that our clients might be more receptive to being challenged versus if it's, you know, your boss who's saying, do this thing. You know, there's inherently a different type of pressure that applies there.

Path2Product: Totally. I've seen that in my time as a PM where different consultants have come in and it's like, you know, part of. Part of me gets a little bit jealous. It's like we, you know, we've said similar things in the past. It's like now you have this outside entity, but to your point, it is, it is more objective because it's not. No one's trying to push an agenda. Like, you're coming in. Your. Your pay is not on the line from like a performance bonus standpoint as like an internal employee. So I can see where that. That can become an advantage to where, um, to where you do have that leverage to push back and be like, this is why they brought me in. As for. For. For this very reason.

Megan O'Rourke: Totally. Absolutely.

Path2Product: That's cool. Well, Sarah, thanks for. For taking some time to kind of unpack what, what Metalab does and some of the things that you're seeing. I know. Um, I always enjoy hearing what different trends are inside of organizations and different perspectives on. On product life. So before we go, um, if, if someone is interested in working with Meta Lab or connecting with you, how, how can, how can they do that?

Megan O'Rourke: Yeah, best place to, to start is check out our portfolio@metalab.com um, we're also pretty active on Instagram sh team for, for keeping the vibes high so you can see what work we're. We're often publishing, um, because we're really proud of the work that we do. So metalab.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram for those regular updates and feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn as well. Happy to chat with folks.

Path2Product: Awesome. Well, I'll drop those links in the show notes, so if you're listening, go find those in the show notes. Connect with Megan, connect with Metalab and, uh, thanks for listening. So, Megan, thanks for joining today and, um, I appreciate the conversation.

Megan O'Rourke: Thanks so much. John.

Path2Product: Thank you for joining us for another episode in Lessons in Product Management. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. Before you go, don't forget to rate and review the show. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcast. Go over and find us on the path to product YouTube channel. Make sure to subscribe and like the video there as well. And I will see you next time for another episode in Lessons in Product Management.