Musings on Product Design

Karen Huang
Jul 28, 2017 · 3 min read

The UX course I am currently taking asked us to reflect on product design. For me, this is one of the most challenging projects of the class thus far. It’s not hard to put words to paper (anyone can bullshit). But it’s hard to formulate meaningful thoughts on a subject I feel immensely unqualified to judge. I, with my limited consumption of digital applications and products, don’t know what I don’t know, so how can I judge whether a product is great, good, or even good enough?

In my study thus far, most definitions define product design as solving problems (see #3). That is awesome — truly. As a visual designer whose designs focus on CTAs that convert or on ads that generate high CTRs, I find this especially enticing. I understand the importance of the bottom line — the revenue and profit I help generate pay my salary. But it’s sometimes discouraging to design pretty things only for the ultimate goal of sales. I guess that’s why I am taking a UX course — ha!

Another class reading defines good products as creating habits, great products as inspiring emotion, and amazing products as indispensable. Sounds awesome — who wouldn’t want to create experiences that are at once useful and delightful, even addictive. Well, sometimes that ease of use can be a negative.


Let’s talk about social media. What started out as a way of forming connections even without physical proximity has turned into a mechanism for shallow exchanges of pleasantries through likes, mentions, retweets, and follows. And that’s not even the worst part. At worst, it allows some of us to express downright ruthless comments with the ease of one push, without the need to recognize those at the receiving end as someone real. Well…some of them are bots. And even I, who is now railing against this, have been hypocritically guilty of this (even if mostly through retweets).

So easy…too easy…to retweet

Enough with social media. We’ve all been there and done that.


Let’s talk about another product that is so easy to use it is addictive: Amazon. 1-Click buying, along with 2-day free shipping, have been the death of me. I buy almost everything from Amazon — from Mexican candy to toilet paper (fitting right?) And I probably don’t go more than a week or two without ordering at least one item.

That orange CTA beckons me.
Do you spot a trend?

And sometimes, because it is so easy and because who doesn’t want instant gratification, I don’t even check the prices! I just need to see that beautiful blue PRIME text.

Crazy for PRIME!

Now that I’ve gotten used to 2-day free shipping, I don’t even give products without that beautiful blue label a second look.

And while on Amazon taking the above screenshots, I just saw this:

More instant gratification

It’s probably my lack of self-control that’s to blame. But I can’t imagine I am the only person who is addicted to Amazon. And I believe this addictive behavior was all intentionally designed for.

Karen Huang

Written by

Designer. Lover of British cop dramas, period pieces, and Victorian literature.

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