My transformation from being a UX/UI designer to a Product designer

👋 Hi！I’m a product designer on the road of metamorphosis 🐛

I’ve been working in the software industry for about 6 years. During the times I’ve been accumulated all sorts of knowledge from various industries, different design styles for various target audience (or simply client’s wishing pool XD) I feel like I’m capable of dealing with 80% of the projects requirement, functional optimization, executing user interviews or even communicate and negotiate with local or foreign clients’ stakeholders. So being swimming in the project based company for 6 years, I finally come to a decision to stop snorkeling, and step into a sea with certain depth XD!

First, there are a couple of reasons for my stepping into the product based company：

(1) I want to keep listening to users’ feedbacks instead of only facing short term data.
(2) I want to verify if my design solutions meet my expectations, solutions that I initially planned based on my judgement from the data first provided.
(3) Basically I was a little bit tired of designing B2B cases (Sorry! I get tired even if the B2B cases vary from case to case), and I want to get in touch with B2C product a bit more.
(4) I want to understand how to run a digital product persistently, and how many business strategies will clash with designs and need to make choices.
(5) I want myself to become a designer with more depth.

🏊‍♀️ The moment I find out I’m not an equivalent swimmer here : I will change from being a sprint swimmer to a deep diver!

When I first step into this product pool, I immediately notice the depth difference. God! Can I swim? Am I not a great swimmer? How can my past experiences help me here? How many more styles or paths do I need to explore through my own strength?

🥊 Below are my first few clashes at diving:

1st Clash_Data Transparency：

• The company faces all aspects of click rate, conversion rate, download rate and uninstall rate, and further sorts out the context and reason behind the data.
• The company treated revenue with transparency, so the design solutions are in a closer contact with how the product can be improved and operated.
• The company’s vision and expectation are also treated transparently, so the execution team felt closer to every step of the way the company paves in the future.

2nd Clash_Grounded Data：

• Facing actual target audience to do user interviews and closed up observations. No need to acquire the needs from stakeholder or customer service personnels.
• Facing internal and external test subjects, I can feel the distinct difference between “testing functionalities” and “testing needs”.
• Any kind of report is presented through some sorts of data, if the report is based on 5 points in total, data vs assumption is around 4:1–3:2.

3rd Clash_Understand Survival：

• There are multiple design methodologies that can be applied at different product at different stage, every product has its suitable methodology at a certain stage.
• Every PO is kind of like a Operational Strategy Analyst, they need to calculate resources, estimate budget expenses, approximate retrievable profit, then come up with a coping business strategy.
• Every product at different stage has its own priorities, especially after understanding revenue, profit target and market opportunities, we can prioritize our tasks with grander view and certain maturity.

About the difference of the required design skills — Preface :

• Because of the various demands for project based companies, and the variety of scales, we only give examples of designing a new product rather than renewing one, and to study the difference between work flows and acceptance criteria.
• The example below does not reflect that all project based or product based companies are of the following mode, I’m just listing my observation based on my personal experiences.

[UX/UI Designer] and [Product Designer] each requires what skills：

UX/UI Designer (Project-based)

(1) Understand client’s requirement：Understand the client’s PRD, discuss the working hours estimation with PM, and further discuss if there’s phase 1 or 2 needed to finish the project.
(2) Product study：Understand the general functions required under different industries, do the competitor study and adopt their merits, internalize them and come up with an appropriate design solutions for the case.
(3) Understand the user：Understand the target audience’s behavioral adaptation, functional preferences, and if there are different roles in users.
(4) Diverse design styles：To be able to drive different design styles that suit the image of that particular industry or enterprise branding, and meet the user’s expectations as well as the color guideline within the design industry standard.
(5) Switching roles：Respond to project’s needs to play the applicable role sometimes as a researcher, UX designer, UI designer, and work collaboratively with different design roles.

Product Designer (Product-based)

(1) Understand product’s requirement：Understand PM’s PRD, try to comprehend PO’s product profit estimation sheet and business strategic documents, QA’s test plan, BD’s DB documents, and further calculate attentively a profitable and appropriate design solution or structure.
(2) Collect competitor data：Sort out competitor’s design methodology, business strategy and corresponding user interface.
(3) Understand TA’s persona profile：Based on the Persona Profile Analysis our researcher created, make reasonable assumptions what kind of requirement our user needs and their behavioral pattern.
(4) Create product value：Study how to break the encirclement through fluent usability, think about our product advantages, communicate your ideas and product knowledge to stakeholders (marketing team), so they can translate those ideas into campaign languages and product branding image.
(5) Practicalize data：Based on the result of A/B Testing, Usability Testing to conduct user analysis, observe their error point, error rate, prioritize optimizing tasks and the scale of its risks . Finally come up with time suitable and probable optimization items.
(6) The room for future improvement：During the product incubation process, we should keep the stakeholders involved to discuss future prospects, so we can leave room for improvement while designing, so the future optimization can be implemented more easily.

About the difference between work flows — Preface :

• The example I list here is based on my personal experience at my previous project based company, they basically run scrums and agile sprints, but the work flows can vary from different companies work method.
• Even though the required tools and roles are also embedded in a project based company, but that doesn’t necessarily means they have rooms to make long term plans and studies.

Project Based Work Flows

Product Based Work Flows

After all this talk, what do I expect from myself in this company?

After joining in, I find myself stepping into a bottomless sea, there are many things to learn about including data observation, market trends, different design methodologies to be applied at different product stage. I’ll have to utilize diverse methodologies to break the market encirclement, all this has lit up my passion for design all over again!

I think I’ll keep diving in. Let me follow the rare coral reef, beings I have never seen, to polish my diving skills and broaden my view. I have more opportunities to face the actual end users, I can do constant problem finding, refine my design methods, and move forward following my own pace. After all, “Moving Forward” is above all the main key here!

Training Method

(1) Understand business operational model：Understand our market opportunities and entry point, grasp the chance to create corresponding product position and design image.
(2) Constantly learning user behavior：From making behavioral assumptions of our TA, to tracking points after launch, or customer feedbacks, to keep learning new knowledge about our users.
(3) Finding moment for optimization：Understand our user’s common paths, obstacles, error routes for improvement, or simply designing for a better experience.
(4) The ability for data observation：Understand what the data has said or implied, learning to analyze its crux, and using the data to reason back an appropriate design solution.
(5) Using design methodology effectively：Propose an appropriate design methodology that echoes back to the needs from the product team and its bottleneck, and lead the team to find probable solutions collaboratively.

🤓 Oh well! All the above are my personal observations in the short period of time working here at the time being. After all, I have only been stepping into this pool for about 7 months or so, hence I’m still in the image of this Utopia bubble. Who knows what deeper discoveries I’ll find in the future, or what else blockages I’ll face waiting ahead? I’ll keep you guys posted!

If you like my article please clap for me, that‘s a big encouragement! And if you have friends who are also considering step into the product pool, please share this with them, I hope it helps😉