What is product design? What does the day to day job look like for a product designer? What is the difference between UX design and product design? How can I become a product designer? What are the skill sets and knowledge required?
These are the questions people usually ask. I have been asking these questions and I always get different answers from different people.
Now I have become a product designer myself. Here is my understanding of product design(er).
Product design = X% business analysis and product strategy + Y% UX design + Z% UI design and graphic design
The percentage of each category depends on what kind of company you work at.
Generally speaking, in startups and small businesses, people wear many hats. You can be hired as a product designer/UX designer, but you will find yourself also work on business analysis, product strategy, UI design, UX research, graphic design, UX content writing, etc.
For big companies and design agencies which have big design departments, people usually specialize in one area, such as PID (product interface designer), IA (Information architecture), UR (user research), ExS (Experience strategy, & IxD (Interaction Design), CX (Customer Experience), etc.
In the UX field, what you do does not depend on your role title (some companies say they are hiring a UX designer but actually they are hiring a graphic designer), but depend on the company you will be working at.
When you apply to a job
Read the job description carefully — but sometime this information can also be misleading since they are just copied from somewhere else
Really get to understand the company when you do interview, including
- The company’s products and their business model
- The size of the company
- The size of the design team and role of other members (do they have a VP of design, a dedicated PM, business analyst, UX designers, UI designer, graphic designer, etc)
- Company’s design culture
- Who is the direct manager of the role
- Why are they hiring
- Clarify the things described in the job description
- Ask the interviewer what kind of work/project you will be working on, if possible
Product designers are much closer to the business side than UX/UI designers. This is one of the reasons product designers get paid higher. So get ready to do business related work and deliver business documentations.
Team members a product designer work with on a daily/weekly basis
- Business stakeholders/high level managers (depend on the size of the company)
- Engineer — designer and developer usually work hand in hand through the whole design process
- PM and BA (or you do part of their jobs)
- Marketing / sales team
Areas a product designer’s job might cover
- Data analysis
- Business analysis and strategy
- Product strategy (e.g., project timeline, predicted product impact and performance)
- Research (including business research and product research)
- UX design
- UI design
- Interaction design
- Graphic and visual design
- Prototype
Tools a product designer might use
- Excel
- Google sheet, Google slides, Google doc
- Data analysis tool such as Google Analytics
- Adobe XD, Photoshop and Illustrator
- Figma, Sketch, etc
Finally, product design/UX design is a very new industry and they are not well defined. Different companies have different definitions and therefore different job requirements. You have to be flexible in what you do because of the nature of your job.
So here are what might take to become a product designer
- Be adaptable and flexible
- Business knowledge and skill sets
- Design knowledge and skill set
- Problem solving and design thinking ability
- Critical and creative thinking ability
- Collaboration and communication skill
- Leadership
- (most importantly) Passion
