What is product design?

October 6, 2023

Product design and User Experience (UX) both involve designing experiences that meet user needs

Product Design - covers business strategy and product goal setting
UX Design - stays laser-focused on the design process of creating captivating, user-centric experiences

Product design

Product design is about the relationship that the designed product has with the user
Product design addresses competitive context
That includes user experience design, as well as product strategy and go-to-market strategy planning
Product designers don't only focus on UX design
They need to assess whether a proposed solution is feasible from a business perspective
Asks how much will design and development cost?
Will the product support our business goals?
What's the business impact and return on investment?
Product designers must work with cross-functional collaborators like product managers, researchers, and product marketing managers
They want to deliver a product that delights users

Product design matters because it helps drive product strategy along with larger business goals
Product designers help define which goals matter, for the user and business
Product designers get more leverage in creating a better user experience and a better product
Good product design also helps drive the success of a company
The impact of an effective product designer is a good product and a good business

Set Goal - the company leadership decides on long term business goal with input from the product team e.g optimize a marquee product
Do Research - product designers conduct strategic research, or support researchers doing it. They can assess the industry using SWOT analysis (template) and user interviews (template)
Perform analysis - work with functional partners to help distill research findings into a clear picture of the future. Approach user pain points (template)
Do product strategy and planning - product team proposes a strategy to reach the business goals, an action plan (template) for the first 6 months, as well as long-term spanning two years
Execution and product launch - the team works together on the project while tracking efforts towards the long-term goal. At this point, the product designer plays more of a UX designer role

User experience is the relationship a user has with the technology or environment around them
Good UX design involves understanding how users interact with a product, technology or service
As a craft, UX design often doesn't need to focus on business strategy
UX designers primarily care about the experience the user has with your design, whether digital interfaces or physical hardware
Good UX design helps solve users' problems with user experiences that are human-centered, inclusive and accessible
The best UX designers create useful and usable designs that attract and engage users

Conduct user research - gain deep understanding of users' behaviors
1. Methods are task analyses (template)
2. User interviews
Design - structure your information architecture (IA) and build wireframes and prototypes
Test and iterate - test your prototypes with users and use their feedback to adjust your design.
1. Explore a lot of different design directions
2. Repeat if it's not a good direction
3. Double down on directions where you see something promising
Implement - designers land on a design solution, then build and release it
1. Start process all over again based on responses to the user experience