Beyond screens and prototypes

How the last few years have shown me that we, designers should acknowledge that users do more than interact with the products they design

I promise this won’t be another debate about UX Design vs. Product Design. There are plenty of posts on that topic, like UX vs. Product Design vs. UI: The Never-Ending Battle by Maximilian Speicher.

Instead, I want to touch on something broader — a facet of our work that often gets overlooked, especially in fast-paced environments. Designers are usually so focused on creating beautiful, functional products that we sometimes forget that users experience much more than just our designs.

With more than ten years of experience in the field of design, I’ve been privileged enough to work on dozens of projects for different organisations and industries; working on multiple product launches and leading design from the ground up (from 0 to 1) as well as exploring how to improve and optimise various existing products. Still, it’s only after spending the last few years working as a lead experience designer in my role at Slalom, a professional services & business consulting company where we partner with other organisations to deliver improvements to them and their customers, that something has become clearer than never before…