What Is Product Design?

The definition of product design describes the process of inventing, creating, and iterating on products that solve user problems or address specific needs in a given market. The key to successful product design is understanding the end customer, that is, the person for whom the product is being created. Product designers attempt to solve real problems for real people by empathizing with and understanding the habits, behaviors, frustrations, needs and wants of their potential customers.

Product design

UX designer

User experience and interaction designers focus on improving the product based on how their research into user behavior indicates that people will get the most satisfaction from using the product.

Graphic designer

The most artistic work in product design is creating graphics, icons, logos and other visual elements of a product. Their scope is as broad as choosing a color scheme to as narrow as tweaking individual pixels.

Motion animation designer

If the product experience includes elements that move be it smooth transitions or a user controlled avatar these specialists work on this extremely complicated part of the design.

User survey

In a large enough product design organization, they focus exclusively on understanding customers. Conducting interviews, conducting usability studies, presenting prototypes and mockups for feedback, and creating demographics and personas that fall under their purview.

Data analyst

These designers focus on user research and other data to identify ways to improve the product’s appearance, feature set, and visual aesthetics. In other words, their primary role is scientific, but they are also designers.

Overview of product designer’s workflow

Brainstorming: After the initial brainstorming phase, you will need to create a series of preliminary sketches sketch and other presentations to outline your design ideas.

Design: Once your preliminary ideas are approved, you will begin creating detailed designs; typically this means computer-aided design software as well as creating technical specifications that detail everything.

Prototype development: The next stage of the process involves the development of a prototype of the final product, which may include 3D design, sketches or state-of-the-art computer software, depending on the complexity and difficulty of the project.

Prototype testing: During the final stages of prototype testing, you will need to make important decisions related to the design, such as budget constraints and in some cases environmental impact as well as health and safety regulations.

Conclusion

Product design is a much broader, more strategically important role than most people realize. It is not just a process to improve the appearance of a product. You evaluate problem validation as well as creating, designing, testing, and shipping solutions.