Product Design: Definition, Process & Salary
Up until recently, the term product design was used only in relation to something material and often found in a retail store. However; the product design process now also applies to digital products: websites, web apps, and phone apps.
Product design is the process designers use to match user needs with business goals to help brands make consistently successful products. Product designers work to optimize the user experience in the solutions they make for their users, and help their brands by making products sustainable for longer-term business needs.
The key to successful product design is understanding the end-user customer, the person for whom the product is being created. Product designers attempt to solve real problems for real people by using empathy and knowledge of their prospective customers’ habits, behaviours, frustrations, needs, and wants.
Product Design and Design Thinking:
Design thinking is crucial in product design and problem-solving. It’s simply a set of cognitive, strategic, and practical procedures used by designers in the process of designing, and to the body of knowledge that has been developed about how people reason when engaging with design problems. The Three Phases of Design Thinking are: empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test.
Product Design Process:
Product discovery: We frequently wonder whether our products will be successful or not. Discovering new products reduces the risks connected to the viability of our ideas.
To put it in a simple way, product discovery is the process of challenging your ideas by identifying the customer’s needs and pain points before selecting the most effective approach to address those issues.
Product discovery seeks to answer these questions:
1. Will consumers be eager to purchase the product?
2. Will our customers find it simple to use the product?
3. Can engineers put our ideas into practice?
4. Will stakeholders support our ideas?
User Interviews: User interviews are guided interviews where a researcher asks existing or potential users questions to gain an understanding of their preferences, thoughts, and feelings. They are a great opportunity to meet your users, understand and start to design for them.
Customer Journey Map: A customer journey map is a visual storyline of every engagement a customer has with a service, brand, or product. The creation of a journey map puts the organization directly in the mind of the consumer, so they can see and understand their customer's processes, needs, and perceptions.
User Flow: A user flow is a chart or diagram showing the path a user will take in an application to complete a task. Product teams build user flows to intuitive design products, present the correct information to users at the right time, and allow users to complete desired tasks in as few steps as possible.
UX Design: User experience (UX) design is the process design teams use to create products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users. UX design involves the design of the entire process of acquiring and integrating the product, including aspects of branding, design, usability, and function.
Wireframes: Wireframing is a way to design a website service at the structural level. A wireframe is commonly used to layout content and functionality on a page which takes into account user needs and user journeys. Wireframes are used early in the development process to establish the basic structure of a page before visual design and content is added.
Prototypes: A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process. It is a term used in a variety of contexts, including semantics, design, electronics, and software programming. A prototype is generally used to evaluate a new design to enhance precision by system analysts and users.
User Testing: User testing is a process that is used to test the interface and functions of a website, application, mobile app< or service. Specifically, this user testing review is taken up by real users who perform uat testing process in realistic conditions.
These are the main responsibilities and activities of product design. However; a product designer would still take in charge many tasks such as competitive analysis, gather feedback from product users, and research materials and techniques.
Product Designer Salaries:
According to glassdoor.co, the average salary for a Product Designer is £51,404 per year in the London Area. The average additional cash compensation for a Product Designer in the London Area is £4,755, with a range from £972 - £23,251. Salaries estimates are based on 926 salaries submitted anonymously to Glassdoor by Product Designer employees in the London Area.
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