The biggest problem I face during these interactions is how to convey my train of thoughts effectively to designers. I often tried to give them a verbal and written product description. If this description is for a complex application, say for instance a game, giving verbal and written description gets challenging. Most of the times I dealt with this situation by researching about competitors products. This is where I started making bigger mistakes. As a product manager it is OK for you to understand and see what the competitors product looks like, but a designers job is creative. If you give him the slightest idea of competitors product, you are completely curbing his train of thoughts. Anything after that would be influenced by these designs. I often saw designers making refinements to an existing product rather than creating something completely new. And then your product becomes just one more in the crowd.
Explain the functionality and features of your product clearly to the designer using wire-frames. If possible, choose a designer who is closest to the target audience of the product. This will help him in coming up with a better design. Once the requirements have been conveyed, ask for functional flow diagrams, followed by wire-frames(not same as given by client), and finally mock-ups. At each step you need to agree upon 2 or 3 iterations. For example, an iteration of functional flow diagram is first version, followed by feedback. There needs to be at least 2 iterations for each step. After the final mock ups are completed, then compare with other similar products and propose refinements to it.
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