UX design and research is a complicated business.
When I say that, I’m not specifically talking about the methods and processes involved in the research itself—although many are quite complex, which makes the results they deliver so fascinating. In this article, we’re leaning more into the wide range of, let’s call them ‘partner practices’ and how confusing they can seem when laid out next to each other.
Because of the overlaps between design and research practices and methodologies and their separations into several specialities, there’s constant questioning of how and if any are different from their counterparts or whether they’re all just the same thing with different name tags.
As UX researchers, we can tell you that they are, indeed, separate entities, however blurred the lines may look. That said, some (if not many) of these practices contain a selection of their counterparts as part of their methodologies, and many cannot exist without each other.
To delve into product design, as we’re about to today (the digital methodology deriving from industrial design), we’ll explain the differences between those practices that look so similar and how they all come together in an ideal world to create the perfect process.
A quick look into (a few) similar and connected UX research methodologies
Let’s try and break down a few major players into their simplest form of what they’re designed to do:
- Product Design (today’s topic) – Product designers create a specific marketable product that solves users’ problems.
- UX Design – UX designers focus on building a product, service, or system that delivers an intuitive, enjoyable, seamless, and flawless system for its users.
- User-Centric Design – Creating specific products for a target audience that fill a gap in the market or provide something new.
- Service Design – Enhancing the user experience of a product by honing in on the finer details of touchpoints and interactions, delivering the highest quality and overall experience aligned with users’ needs.
- Interaction design – A subset of UX design, interaction design focuses specifically on how users interact with a product and its features rather than the product as a whole.
- UI design – UI design (user interface design) focuses on the product’s look and feel, graphic elements, interface, and navigation (incorporating additional graphic designer/visual designer roles).
- Design Thinking – A process that encourages innovation to provide new, groundbreaking ways of problem-solving and product development.
- UX Research – Exploring how users think, feel, act, and behave to provide the best experience within products, services, or systems.
- Product Research – Exploring how users would engage with or embrace a product to estimate its value to them, its providers, and whether it has value in the marketplace as a commercially viable product.
- Product Discovery – The first step in developing a product: exploring what to build or add to an existing product.
- Market Research – Exploring existing products, organisations, market trends, and how users interact with them at a sales and marketing level.
As handy a quick-look guide as that may be, with such simplified explanations, almost everything on that list can and may overlap at various points in a project.
For example, you can’t design a great product without discovering what your users want, need, and expect (UX research and UX design). So, you need to conduct various research studies to build your design around (product design). If you want to build something that will change the world, you’ll need to attack it by encouraging out-of-the-box thinking and innovation (design thinking) while ensuring it’s flawless in its operation (service design). And if your perfect product is going to deliver your business goals successfully, it’s got to be viable and achievable (product research, market research, and more design thinking). Oh, and it’s got to look good (UI design), be high quality (we’re back to product design), and operate seamlessly (interaction design). Oh, and you’ll need some form of project management to pull it all together.
In this example, we’ve delivered a single product that could utilise every one of our ‘different’ practices in one way or another. They are all different, yet they can all overlap or include one another. The key differences are in the details, which you’ll only find if you dive a little deeper into each and every one of them.
With so many elements and methodologies involved in bringing a digital product to market, there’s no wonder that a product designer job description can vary so much from one organisation to another. If you can track down the unicorn ‘full stack designer’ who claims to have all those skills? Bag them up, and don’t let them go.
Ultimately, UX design and research are at the heart of each of them, and the myriad methods and studies we implement cover practically every area of user needs and expectations. Having said that, without a product, there would be no design process or need for research. What is it they say? No man is an island?
So, bearing all that in mind, let’s do just that and dive deeper into today’s topic: product design.
Understanding Product Design as Part of the UX Process
Definition
Product designers focus on delivering a digital product that solves specific users’ problems, providing a solution based on user research.
Both product designers and UX designers focus on the operation of their digital products. A product designer focuses on the design, development, and launch of a product that solves a problem for its users. A UX designer focuses on the product’s smooth and intuitive operation, providing an excellent user experience.
Importance of UX in Product Design
When it’s done well, nobody notices. The product’s operation is seamlessly intuitive. When done badly, it creates frustration, pain points, and disappointment among its users, causing real damage to the brand and organisation. Good product design flows through the entire product cycle, from idea to delivery and future updates.
The Process of Product Design in User Experience
The product design process features steps similar to those of the design thinking process (which could create more of the confusion we spoke of earlier) but with some significant differences and additions.
1. Define
For a product to succeed, it needs a solid strategy based around the stakeholders vision and their business goals. What, why, and who are you building the product for (a great time to develop user personas)? How will it grow and evolve? And can it provide the success they expect or hope for? Taking that leap without proper research is never a good idea, so the next step is…
2. Research
User research, as we said, should be at the heart of product design and development. Conducting studies into what your target users want and need (surveys, questionnaires, interviews, etc.) and market research should confirm an appropriate market gap, validating your goals are viable.
3. Ideate
With a positive plan and user research as your guide, it’s time to brainstorm all possible solutions using user flows, journey maps, and storyboards. From this point, you can start to uncover potential pitfalls, put possible solutions in place, and narrow down your ideas into your selection of the most hopeful models.
4. Prototype
Prototyping tools allow you to build functioning versions of your products at every level, from paper processes to digital wireframes. For your early card-sorting style options—those that require few technical skills—their simplicity is their beauty, keeping the process moving quickly. As you narrow down your product choices, you can consider complex options using more sophisticated tools, where your UI designer can introduce options for what user interfaces might look like and the key UI design focuses.
5. Test (and iterate)
Prototyping provides simple and variable user testing options, and feeding the results back into the mix creates the cycle of iteration UX is built upon. At this point, usability testing will narrow down the iterations until you’re confident you’re close to a perfect product.
6. Develop to Launch
During the development process, your final prototypes will be converted into a finished product, applying the UX design focuses and the product’s final UI design. When you believe you’ve got everything sorted, you launch your product. Well done, but hold back on the celebrations; there’s still plenty to do.
7. Post-launch
Gathering user feedback to make improvements is vital post-launch. Whatever you learned in your soft launch or through user testing, dispatching your product into the wild is when the real testing starts. It’s essential to react quickly and efficiently to its operation, acceptance, perception, reviews, and criticisms, as your reactions will be judged and essential to your brand’s success.
Summary
Despite any confusion, product design and UX go hand-in-hand in providing design solutions for digital products. Product designers focus on delivering a truly user-friendly—successful—product with a strong visual design built on a base of user research and solid data. User experience designers focus on its intuitive and flawless operation.
Product designers tend to wear many hats, carrying out all kinds of hard and soft skills to cover such a wide range of expectations. That said, the same goes for any UX researcher and designer. With so many user, marketing, and business needs to meet and so many UX tools to understand and utilise, current UX roles consistently demand multi-skilled and versatile team members.
Our user research experts are available to help you get closer to your customers. If you would like to arrange a no obligation call, get in touch by emailing us at hello@ux247.com or share your requirement using the form below.