# What is Product Design?

If you’re a Product Designer like me, I reckon you’ve spent at least a good part of your life trying to explain to your parents and friends exactly what it is that you do. Just answering “I’m a Product Designer” is not enough and it actually raises more questions than it answers.

Product design is the process of identifying a market opportunity, clearly defining the problem, developing a proper solution for that problem and validating the solution with real users.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTageuhPfAM

To make things even more complicated, there’s a widespread misconception that design is all about aesthetics. Most people don’t seem to understand that*it’s about solving problems*instead. Unlike art, aesthetic in design does not play the lead role, but supports the main purpose-functionality.

It also became pretty apparent to me that it’s not that easy to describe what we do to people who aren’t familiar with it, not even if you quote Steve Jobs.

## Design Thinking as the foundation of the product design process
Design thinking is a method for the practical resolution of problems. Originally coined by David Kelley and Tim Brown of IDEO, design thinking has become a popular approach to creating products. This approach encapsulates methods and ideas of human-centered design into a single unified concept. According to Tim Brown:

> “Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology and the requirements for business success.”

Good designers have always applied design thinking to product design (whether physical or digital) because it’s focused on end-to-end product development, and not just the “design phase” part.

## The role of a Product Designer.
Let’s try an experiment. Walk around the teams in your room and ask a developer, a PM, a UI designer, a UX designer, and maybe a QA engineer what a product designer does. Now formalize your findings… I bet you will find they all vary and some may even be shocking. This may be the right time to get your teams together and host a fireside chat to discuss what a product designer actually does.

It’s not uncommon in many organizations to have different opinions as to what a Product Designer does. I have worked for some of the biggest organizations, and even there it was a grey area. If you really get into it though, it makes sense: product design and the whole digital design ecosystem has moved and evolved so fast in the last two years that role specifics can confuse even the most seasoned designer.
This confusion may be attributed to competing and complementary niche roles. Specialists in UI design, UX design, information architecture, UX copywriters, mobile designers, web designers, interaction designers, animation designers, and so on, can often be lumped together or crossover in responsibilities.

I hold the role of Director of Product Design at [aeqdigital, a digital product agency in Vancouver, BC](https://aeqdigital.com/) , and I like to consider myself akin to a conductor of the digital orchestra. In my experience, product designers typically come from one or many of the listed specialist roles and have adapted to another, then another, building out their toolkit over many years (and late nights) to become the holistic, data-driven, results-based, pixel-perfect, bleeding-edge technology masochists that we are. Although the role is still much in flux as the industry changes day by day,this is my attempt at conveying the breadth, wealth, and utility of this sadly underestimated role.

## A Product Designer has many names.

You may have heard of titles like:
* Experience Designer (XD)
* Information Architect (IA)
* Interaction Designer (IX)
* Experience Architect (XA)
* User Interface (UI) Designer
* User Experience (UX) Designer

And many more

Truth is, a Product Designer may be responsible for some or all of the above. Some of these title also overlap in responsibility.

## Solving problems with design.
[Product design is about problem-solving](https://aeqdigital.com/services/digital-product-design/) , and product designers seek to improve the experiences of products by solving complex design problems. If you look at your Product Designer as someone that makes your solution look presentable, look again. They are there to help you identify, investigate, and validate the problem. Ultimately, he or she is there to craft, design, test, and ship the solution.

## Types of Product Design
There are 3 core types of design when it comes to Product Design:
* System Design
* Process Design
* Interface Design

They all play an integral role in the entire user experience because they all serve a different purpose. Let’s walk through an example.

Design starts with a problem. For our example, let’s say the problem you have is hunger. In our example, the solution you decided to hire to solve your problem is to buy groceries from a grocery store. There are other obvious and not so obvious competitors you can hire to solve your problem. They include:

* Food Delivery
* Restaurants
* Food Trucks
* Convenience Stores
* Vending Machines
* Protein Shakes
* Gaming
* Netflix
* Books
* The Internet
* Sleep
Competition is often something a designer has to consider because you have to create unique value with your solution. For our example, let’s use grocery stores as your solution.

### System design

A grocery store is an example of a system design. It is one of many systematic solutions built on the model of exchanging currency for goods. This system provides value by offering the user a vast selection of goods and trades cost for effort since it requires the user to plan, gather and prepare their own food.
While we are here, let’s take a look at some design competencies such as Information Architecture.

While we don’t notice it most of the time, grocery store aisles are designed to balance business needs and user needs. Items are deliberately organized and placed for affordance to maximize sales. For example, candy may be placed near the entrance during Halloween for easy access and to boost sales. And it may not be a wise choice to place cat food and canned tuna in the same aisle for fear of confusion between the two objects.

Another consideration in your design is the user. Here’s an example you can find in a grocery store. Observe the height of the customers and the placement of the cereal with consideration of business needs (but maybe not the users’).

### Process design

Traditional lines (image)

Stop & Shop Scan It (image)

Self-checkout (image)

The grocery store acts as a system that gives you the option to choose your foods to take home, there are still processes within the store itself. One of those processes is the transaction where you exchange your money for goods. If you breakdown the process here, the store needs to take a count of what you’re buying and charge you appropriately. In most modern grocery stores there are a several examples of this process.

There is the traditional process where the user waits in line for the grocer to scan their items and conduct the transaction. Another process may involve the user doing a self-scan of their inventory and performing that transaction with a machine. Variables of this process can include a scanner to help expedite the process which lets the user scan items as they add it to their cart.

### Interface design

Even in a grocery store, there is interface design for a user to interact with. Whether you are in the assisted checkout line or in a self-checkout line, there is interface for totaling your items and price. In the example above, the self-checkout UI needs to have a level of intuitiveness so a customer can scan all their items, coupons, loyalty card, and enter their payment method.

Breaking down each one of these tasks will reveal the complexities behind each phase of the checkout. For example, what happens if the item doesn’t scan? How does the user find or input the item into the system? How should items be sorted? The design can determine the interface’s usability, reliability, efficiency, and speed.

There are thousands of deliberate decisions that goes into the design of the grocery store system and we see different variations of them from brand to brand. Each decision is designed to smooth out the experience. If these decisions are not made with the intent of making the user experience frictionless, a user will hire a different system to solve their problem such as take-out.

## Product Design Artifacts
These are the objects and deliverables of a Product Designer. It’s the conglomeration of our efforts and work. Artifacts a Product Designer produce include:

### JOURNEY MAPS

Recent Journey Map by Jon Knickerbocker (HubSpot Senior Product Designer)

Journey maps are an exercise in telling a user story as they progress through a task or process. Great journey maps document the triggers and motivators and the post-experience to tell a complete story of a user journey. It breaks down the complex emotions a user may go through to help identify pain-points and opportunities. They are created by conducting workshops with different stakeholders and users through a series of moderated questions and tasks.

### WIREFRAMES

Wireframes are low-fidelity mock-ups to quickly draft solutions for testing and serve as blueprints for higher fidelity designs. Often drafted with paper and pencil, low-fidelity mock-ups are great for ideation because it keeps the investment low. Bad ideas can be quickly scrapped since they are low commitment and cheap, allowing for rapid iterations. It’s a perfect tool for the fail-fast model which can be read about in the Lean UX book (a great book for any budding product designer.)

### PROTOTYPES

Sharon Monisharaj — Power Paper Prototyping
Prototypes are mock-ups created with the purpose of testing. Prototypes can vary in fidelity — from paper prototypes to simulated, clickable designs. The goal is to test the solution through a series of moderated sessions to gather user feedback. It’s paramount to recruit the correct user segment and to utilize the proper methodology to gather unbiased data. Catching data and issues in the form of information architecture, usability, discoverability etc at this stage will help produce a more user-friendly solution when it is implemented.

### HIGH-FIDELITY DESIGNS

Waze app
This is the final mock-up of your design. After the solution has been vetted by your users, this design should resemble the final product when it is coded and implemented. These designs serve as the blueprint and guidance for your dev team. They should communicate layout, color, typography, padding and all the fine details down to the last pixel.

These are just a handful of the artifacts and tools a Product Designer employs to solve problems.

We don’t just use design to make things look pretty. We use design to solve problems.

## Product design is not purely aesthetic.
They do so by using a variety of skills:
* Animating
* Prototyping
* Coding
* Research
* Visual
* Interaction design
* Psychology
* Business strategy

## Present a product designer with a solution, and they will tell you what’s wrong with it.
A Product Designer will never commit to one idea from a client or a manager. Instead, they will explore various alternatives to solve a single problem. Using analytics and gathering existing user data are critical to finding the right solution, as is employing cross-functional teams from every corner of the business to help brainstorm as many solutions as possible.

### The designer process.
Product Designers use wireframes and prototypes to validate their designs.After user validation, they will provide several fully baked low-fidelity concepts (more wireframes, and workflows) that will aim to solve the problem at hand. With a clear strategy for how, when, and what to A/B test, the build and release plans will become evident.

## A product designer will design the solution until the problem changes.
During active sprints, Product Designers will join the development team to see through their solution. UI audits, micro interactions, App Store requirements, you name it, are all part of the Product Design process. On smaller teams, Product Designers will also work with marketing and stakeholders to ensure the story is consistent with the product through the development of social assets and websites.
What I find most personal is that Product Designers will often take part in the continuation of a product long after the first version has been released. They will follow up on data and metrics to continue validating their design, possibly until the end of time.

## A marketing mindset.
One of the major areas of work that is often overlooked in the role of the Product Designer is branding. It is part of the Product Designer’s job to ensure the product is designed on brand; if the product doesn’t deliver what the brand promises and what the stakeholders have asked for, users will not stick around. Trust me on this one.
Product Designers are therefore regarded as the caretakers of the business’ foundation. Any such discrepancies will ultimately cause the product to fail. As such, it’s of utmost importance for the Product Design team to work closely with the Marketing team.

## Product design is constantly changing.
This is an ever-evolving world. We all feel it. That which was extraordinary yesterday is mundane today and stale tomorrow. Product design is still trying to figure out its place within this highly reactive space. Hell, half the platforms we have to design for today didn’t even exist a couple of years ago. And you can be sure there will be even more in the years to come with even more complex experiences to discover and create solutions for.
Product design is thus adaptive, agile, and flexible. As Product Designers, we need to understand that while good, well thought through design is timeless, nothing is forever and we need to be open to whatever change may come our way.

A strategy I enjoy deploying is preparation. By understanding and keeping up with industry standards and the latest tech and tools, I’m easier able to tackle new ideas and iterations. Microinteraction prototyping using/InVision Studio/is an example of a tool I recently started to learn, along with my design team where we learned the basics together. We currently spend any free time between projects playing around so that the following week we all have something cool to show each other. So far it’s been a lot of fun, and one of the meetings each week that I actually find myself looking forward to the most. I encourage all Product Design teams out there to consider following our lead. It’s an excellent way to stay apprised of the latest developments and to continuously hone your skills. If we deem the new process a great value-add to our team and also to our clients we start assimilating it into our design process–– we win and clients win.

## Product design today.
We’re just starting to wrap our heads around Product Design, and that’s ok because this industry and the technology behind it moves so fast we are running to keep up with it. New capabilities in codeless prototyping, microinteractions, animations, and work tools like the aforementioned/InVision Studio/not only allow us to push the limits of product design but also the capabilities of the tools we used to create and show them.

Unfortunately, product design has classically been seen as purely aesthetic./“Make it pretty,”/they say. This is a perception we have to change. We are the architects of the user experience! And as such, it is our responsibility to educate those around us, above us, and under us, about what it is we actually can and should be doing.

When you hire a Product Owner, you likely do so because this person is well-versed in a wide range of disciplines; they understand some front- and backend coding, timing, budgeting, business valuation, analytics, management, etc. In many ways, this is how you should be thinking about hiring Product Designers. Sure, they might have a beautiful portfolio, but can they be a key player throughout the entire product development process? A good Product Designer should know a bit of animation, prototyping, coding, user research, visual and interaction design, market validation modeling, customer scenario, and journey mapping modeling. They should know when to deliver wireframes, and when to deliver pixel-perfect mockups. They should know when to use animation, and when to prototype. They should know how to validate a product hypothesis, communicate and gather data on what the user wants, and aggregate this data into business intelligence information to the stakeholders. Last but not least, they should know how to convincingly communicate their solutions.

## Product design is evolving.
In my time at/aeqdigital/, we’ve gone from a handful of mainly Visual Designers to a full-stack team comprised of Product Designers, User Researchers, Prototypers, and UX Copywriters.
We’ve gone from being at the end of the product development and design cycle (/“We need buttons on this new feature we’re going to launch”/) to the very forefront (/“We want to investigate all the possible ways of enabling our users to interact and explore our product”/). In a nutshell, you could say that we’ve truly gone from being a cursory consideration as the beauticians of the product to the curators of that which matters most—the user experience.

## The process should morph to fit the project
When it comes to product design process, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. The process employed should be tailored to fit the project’s particular needs, both business and functional. Here are just a few factors that can affect the design process:

* customer’s needs or preferences;
* how much time you have (the project’s deadline);
* project’s budget (for example, a limited budget won’t allow you to conduct a lot of interviews).

A process tailored to the capabilities of the business and of users is most effective. Thus, use what works the best for your project, get rid of the rest, and evolve your design process as the product evolves.

## Product Design is not a linear process
A lot of product teams think design is a linear process that starts with defining the product and ends with testing. But that assumption is wrong. The phases of the process often have considerable overlap, and usually there’s a lot of back and forth. As product teams learn more about the problem being solved, the users and the details of the project (especially the constraints), it may be necessary to revisit some of the research undertaken or try out new design ideas.

## Product Design is a never-ending process
Unlike more traditional forms of design (such as print design), the design process for digital products isn’t a one-time thing, and designers should never assume they’ll get everything perfect right from the start. Implementation often reveals gaps in the design (for example, bad assumptions about product usage, which are hard to predict without shipping the product).
To design successful products, teams need to adopt a process of continual improvement. Iterative design follows the idea that design should be done in repeated cycles: It’s a process of constantly refining and improving the product based on both qualitative and quantitative feedback data from your users. This is a great opportunity for designers to see the bigger picture, improve their work based on user feedback and make the product inherently more valuable to users.

> “A product is never done, but only evolves. Product design is a process of constant iteration and refinement. Through the cyclical process of data analysis, getting feedback from real users, and testing, the product team will constantly refine it’s solutions.”

## Product design is comunication
While doing great design is one thing, communicating great design is equally as important. The best concepts will fail if they don’t get approval from the team and stakeholders. That’s why the best product designers are great communicators.

# Resources
## Apps and tools
* [Prototypr: The Latest UX Design News, Prototyping Tools, and Designer Deals](https://www.prototypr.io/home)
* [uxdesign.cc](https://blog.prototypr.io/u/8863cbbfbca7?source=post_page-----15c488824c81----------------------)
* [Planet UX](https://blog.prototypr.io/u/ee02f00137a1?source=post_page-----15c488824c81----------------------)
* [https://sidebar.io/](https://sidebar.io/)

## Articles
* [A Comprehensive Guide To Product Design — Smashing Magazine](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/01/comprehensive-guide-product-design/)
* [Understand your future role, be a product designer - UX Planet](https://uxplanet.org/understand-your-future-role-be-a-product-designer-dc3ad0e70f5f)
* [The Complete Guide to the Product Design Process](https://www.dtelepathy.com/blog/design/the-complete-product-design-process)
* [Explain it like I’m 5: What is a Product Designer?](https://medium.com/hubspot-product/explain-it-like-im-5-what-is-a-product-designer-121aad98c047)

## Books

## Courses
[DesignerUp: Learn Product Design and Front-End Web Development Online](https://designerup.co/#courses)

## Webinars

## Videos
* [Speedee Service System - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTageuhPfAM)