Is it normal for a Product Owner to lay out specs for how a feature should work?

I thought that was my job as the ux designer to figure out the best way to solve a need. But I’m getting handed projects where the PO, and sometimes the senior designer has laid out exactly what should happen (components used, flow, etc) to design a feature. It’s really frustrating because I don’t know if I’m supposed to be speaking up on what I think or just do the UI work I’m asked to.

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If you are mid-level, then 1 + 2. If you are asked to do only 3 after showing that you understand then start spending that creative energy looking for a job in a diff place.
It’s somewhat common in immature product teams to have PMs think they are the brains, and the designers the hands. If they are not flexible, bad sign.
As to the senior designer, I’d ask them 1:.
Maybe they’ve been burnt by jr designers that thought themselves geniuses and were incapable of building a shippable feature since they had no concept of the design constraints the team/tech has to work under. In other words, if you’re going to pitch everyone on your revolutionary idea that doesn’t use their existing patterns/flows/components, you better have a really incredible design that demonstrably offsets the design/dev/usability costs of doing things differently in your one little corner of the platform you’re designing.

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Ask instead for user stories, acceptance criteria & tech requirements. That is what they should be giving you. The puzzle of how to best solve the problem with that information is what we do.

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Do I :

1. Ask if there’s room for interpretation? (Also who do I ask, the PO or the senior designer? I’m mid level, new, and really scared to overstep or challenge too much)

2. Come up with two versions of the design and show them both?

3. Just do exactly what the specs outline to do?

PMs job is to manage the roadmap and provide ideas. UX is in charge of research, journey maps, wireframes, etc…

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