Author: UXPin

Successful products aren’t just built—they’re designed and managed with precision and collaboration. Two of the most crucial roles in this process are the product designer and the product manager. While both professionals work toward a common goal of delivering a product that meets user needs and drives business value, their roles, skill sets, and day-to-day responsibilities differ significantly.

Understanding these differences is essential for anyone involved in product development, from designers and developers to stakeholders. For designers looking to move into management or professionals who work closely with design teams, grasping the nuances of each role can enhance collaboration and ultimately contribute to more impactful product outcomes.

To bridge this collaboration gap, many teams turn to UXPin Merge, a technology that enables designers and developers to work seamlessly by using the same code components across the design and development process. With UXPin Merge, product designers and managers can create and test consistent, interactive designs that reflect the final product, simplifying communication and reducing handoff errors. By fostering a shared visual language, UXPin Merge empowers teams to work more efficiently and deliver user-centered products faster. Request access to UXPin Merge.

Reach a new level of prototyping

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What is a Product Designer?

A product designer plays a pivotal role in creating the look, feel, and functionality of digital products. They focus on crafting user-centered designs that are both visually engaging and functional, ensuring that every element of the product serves a purpose aligned with user needs and business objectives. Unlike specialized roles like UI or UX designers, a product designer typically wears multiple hats, blending skills across research, visual design, and prototyping to deliver cohesive, end-to-end product experiences.

Key Responsibilities of a Product Designer

The responsibilities of a product designer cover a broad spectrum of tasks, often extending beyond pure design to include strategic input and collaboration with cross-functional teams. Typical responsibilities include:

• User Research: Conducting interviews, surveys, and usability testing to understand user needs and pain points.
• Ideation and Prototyping: Developing early design concepts, wireframes, and interactive prototypes to test functionality and gather feedback.
• UI Design: Creating visually engaging interfaces that follow brand guidelines while focusing on usability and accessibility.
• Interaction Design: Defining how users will interact with various elements in the interface, ensuring smooth transitions, animations, and intuitive flows.
• Collaboration: Working closely with product managers, developers, and stakeholders to align design with product goals and technical constraints.

Ultimately, a product designer’s goal is to create a product that not only looks great but is intuitive and easy to use. This requires balancing user needs, business goals, and technical feasibility to deliver a product that adds value to both the user and the organization.

Key Skills of a Product Designer

To fulfill these responsibilities, product designers need a wide range of skills that enable them to design, test, and refine their work efficiently. Some of the most critical skills include:

• UX/UI Design: Proficiency in user experience and user interface design, including principles of layout, color theory, typography, and accessibility.
• Prototyping: Ability to create interactive prototypes that demonstrate how users will navigate through the product.
• User Research: Skills in conducting and analyzing user research to inform design decisions.
• Communication: Strong communication skills to effectively present design concepts and collaborate with cross-functional teams.
• Problem-Solving: A strategic approach to solving design challenges that may arise from technical or business constraints.

Tools Commonly Used by Product Designers

Product designers rely on a variety of design and collaboration tools to bring their ideas to life. Here are a few commonly used tools:

• UXPin: Known for its end-to-end design capabilities, UXPin enables designers to create interactive prototypes, collaborate with stakeholders, and seamlessly hand off designs to developers. UXPin’s design system features are particularly valuable, as they allow designers to maintain consistency and scalability by using reusable components.
• Figma: A cloud-based design tool widely used for its real-time collaboration features, making it easy for teams to work together on the same design files.
• Sketch: A vector-based design tool known for its simplicity and ease of use, particularly for UI and UX design tasks.

What is a Product Manager?

A product manager (PM) plays a central role in guiding the product’s direction, ensuring it meets both user needs and business objectives. Often referred to as the “CEO of the product,” the product manager takes on a strategic role, overseeing everything from product vision and development to launch and continuous improvement. While product designers focus on the how of the user experience, the product manager focuses on the what and why, aligning the team around a shared vision and clear objectives.

Key Responsibilities of a Product Manager

Product managers are responsible for bridging the gap between business strategy and execution, which involves coordinating with design, development, marketing, and sales teams. Key responsibilities include:

• Product Strategy and Vision: Defining the product’s purpose, setting long-term goals, and shaping a vision that aligns with company objectives and user needs.
• Prioritization and Roadmapping: Developing and maintaining the product roadmap, prioritizing features, and determining the sequence of work to maximize impact and value.
• Stakeholder Communication: Acting as the primary point of contact for cross-functional teams, gathering input, sharing updates, and managing expectations across departments.
• User and Market Research: Conducting research to understand user needs, market trends, and competitive landscapes, ensuring the product’s value and relevance.
• Metrics and Success Tracking: Defining and tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate product success and inform future decisions.

The ultimate goal of a product manager is to create a product that aligns with the company’s goals while delivering real value to users. To do this effectively, a PM balances strategic priorities, development constraints, and user feedback.

Key Skills of a Product Manager

The diverse responsibilities of a product manager require a blend of strategic thinking, communication, and analytical skills. Essential skills for this role include:

• Product Strategy: The ability to shape a product’s direction based on company goals, user insights, and market analysis.
• Prioritization and Decision-Making: A strategic approach to making choices about what goes into the product, often requiring tough calls on feature inclusion, timelines, and budget.
• User Empathy: A deep understanding of the target audience and their pain points, helping to make user-centered product decisions.
• Communication and Stakeholder Management: Strong interpersonal skills to align cross-functional teams, manage expectations, and advocate for the product.
• Analytical Skills: Ability to interpret data, measure success, and apply insights to inform product changes or future direction.

Tools Commonly Used by Product Managers

Product managers rely on various tools to help them plan, prioritize, and communicate effectively with their teams. Some of the most popular tools include:

• Jira: A project management tool favored for its ability to track progress, manage sprints, and organize tasks, helping PMs coordinate with development teams.
• Trello: A visual task management tool useful for maintaining high-level overviews of project status and prioritization.
• Asana: A collaborative tool that enables product managers to assign tasks, track project milestones, and align team members around a shared plan.

Key Differences Between Product Designer and Product Manager

Product designers and product managers play distinct yet complementary roles in product development. While product designers focus on the usability and aesthetics of the product, product managers concentrate on the overall strategy, roadmap, and alignment with business goals. Understanding their differences in skill sets, tasks, goals, and success metrics can help create a more effective collaboration between the two roles.

• Skill Set: Product designers focus heavily on design skills, such as UX/UI design and prototyping, to ensure the product is both visually pleasing and intuitive. Product managers, on the other hand, rely on skills in product strategy, prioritization, and communication to align the product with both business goals and user needs.
• Primary Focus: Product designers concentrate on the user experience, crafting interfaces and interactions that are easy to navigate and align with brand standards. Product managers focus on the larger product vision, ensuring the product meets company objectives and is developed within time and resource constraints.
• Day-to-Day Tasks: The day-to-day activities of a product designer typically involve wireframing, prototyping, and iterating based on user feedback, while product managers spend much of their time on strategic planning, coordinating with stakeholders, and prioritizing the development roadmap.
• Project Goals: For product designers, the primary goal is to create an effective, aesthetically pleasing product that resonates with users. Product managers aim to create a product that aligns with business strategies and delivers measurable outcomes, such as increased engagement or revenue.
• Success Metrics: Product designers measure success through metrics like usability, visual consistency, and overall user satisfaction. Product managers, however, are often evaluated based on key performance indicators (KPIs), user engagement, and the business impact of the product.
• Tools Used: Product designers use design tools like UXPin, Figma, and Adobe XD, whereas product managers rely on planning and analytics tools like Jira, Productboard, and Google Analytics to manage the product lifecycle and gather insights.
• Collaboration Points: Product designers and product managers frequently collaborate to align design with strategy, exchanging insights to refine the product based on user feedback and technical feasibility. This collaboration ensures that user-centered designs are also aligned with broader business objectives.

By understanding these distinctions, companies can better leverage the unique strengths of both roles, fostering a balanced approach to product development that combines strategic insight with thoughtful design.

Key Areas of Collaboration

1. Ideation and Concept Development
   • During the early stages of product development, product designers and product managers collaborate closely to define the product’s vision. The product manager brings insights about user needs, market trends, and business objectives, while the product designer contributes ideas for how the product should look and feel to achieve these goals.
   • In brainstorming sessions, designers and PMs exchange ideas, mapping out potential features and user journeys. This collaboration ensures that both strategic and design perspectives shape the product from the outset.
2. Prototyping and Validation
   • As ideas solidify, product designers begin developing prototypes to bring the concepts to life. Product managers work alongside them to validate that the prototypes align with the roadmap and priorities, providing feedback based on user requirements and business objectives.
   • Prototyping platforms like UXPin are particularly valuable here. With UXPin’s interactive prototyping capabilities, designers can create high-fidelity, interactive prototypes that PMs can easily review and test. This shared visual model reduces misunderstandings and allows both roles to spot potential issues early on.
3. User Feedback and Iteration
   • Once a prototype is ready, gathering user feedback becomes essential. Product managers and product designers work together to analyze user feedback, which informs iterations and improvements.
   • Product managers interpret feedback through the lens of overall strategy, while designers focus on usability and user satisfaction. This collaborative analysis ensures the product remains user-centered while also meeting broader product goals.
4. Design System Consistency and Development Handoff
   • Consistency is key to delivering a polished, cohesive product experience. Designers use design systems to maintain uniformity across components, layouts, and interactions, which helps reduce inconsistencies during handoff to developers.
   • UXPin Merge bridges this design-development gap by allowing designers to use code-based components directly within the design tool, meaning the components used in design are identical to those in the final product. This not only keeps the design consistent but also reduces friction in handoffs between product design and engineering, as both designers and developers work with the same source of truth.
5. Roadmap Alignment and Continuous Collaboration
   • Throughout the product lifecycle, designers and product managers engage in continuous collaboration to ensure alignment with the roadmap. Product managers keep designers informed about any changes in priorities or timelines, while designers communicate updates on progress and design decisions.
   • Tools like UXPin facilitate ongoing collaboration by centralizing design assets and feedback, enabling both roles to stay in sync even as the product evolves.

Challenges in the Product Designer and Product Manager Relationship

While collaboration between product designers and product managers is essential for building successful products, it’s not without its challenges.Here are some common pain points in the product designer and product manager relationship, along with tips to overcome them through effective communication and alignment.

1. Conflicting Priorities
   • Product designers often prioritize user experience, focusing on elements that make the product more intuitive, enjoyable, and visually appealing. Product managers, however, may prioritize features that fulfill business objectives or meet tight deadlines, even if it means making compromises on certain design elements.
   • Example: A designer might push for a more detailed onboarding experience to improve user engagement, while a product manager may want to launch with a simpler flow to meet time constraints.
2. Balancing User Needs with Business Goals
   • Designers advocate for the user, striving to address their pain points and create seamless interactions. Meanwhile, product managers must ensure that the product supports business goals, such as revenue targets or cost efficiency. This can lead to tension when a design solution benefits users but doesn’t directly align with immediate business objectives.
   • Example: A product manager may want to add a feature that drives sales, while a designer might feel this addition clutters the user interface, making the product less user-friendly.
3. Communication Gaps
   • Product designers and managers sometimes lack clarity on each other’s constraints and workflows. Designers may not fully understand business pressures, while product managers may be unaware of the time and effort needed to execute certain design elements.
   • Example: A product manager requests a new feature without realizing that the design team needs extra time to ensure it’s consistent with the product’s visual language, leading to frustration on both sides.
4. Scope Creep and Misalignment on Feature Prioritization
   • Scope creep happens when product managers or stakeholders continuously add features or adjustments, often late in the design process. This disrupts designers’ workflow and can compromise the quality of the final product. Misalignment on feature prioritization also arises when designers and PMs have different views on which features should take precedence.
   • Example: A product manager might push for last-minute feature changes to meet a client request, while a designer struggles to adapt the design without compromising usability.

Tips for Effective Communication and Alignment

1. Establish Clear Goals and Priorities Early On
   • During the planning phase, product designers and product managers should work together to define the project’s goals, priorities, and non-negotiables. Setting these guidelines from the start helps both roles stay focused on a shared vision, even when adjustments are needed later.
   • Tip: Use collaborative project planning tools to create a shared document or roadmap, outlining key milestones, goals, and design expectations.
2. Emphasize Empathy and Understanding for Each Role’s Constraints
   • A mutual understanding of each other’s priorities and constraints can improve empathy and reduce friction. Designers should be encouraged to consider the business side of their decisions, while product managers benefit from understanding the design team’s creative process and challenges.
   • Tip: Regular cross-functional meetings and open discussions can foster this understanding. Consider holding “role reversal” sessions where designers and product managers explain the complexities of their roles to one another.
3. Implement Regular Check-ins and Feedback Loops
   • Frequent check-ins allow both designers and product managers to stay aligned as the project progresses. These can be weekly or biweekly sessions where teams discuss updates, adjust priorities, and resolve any emerging conflicts. A structured feedback loop also ensures that both roles have input before significant changes are made.
   • Tip: Use collaborative tools like UXPin, which allows product designers and managers to review interactive prototypes, making feedback more visual and immediate. UXPin Merge can also reduce back-and-forth by ensuring that design components reflect the latest codebase, minimizing misalignment.
4. Create a Decision-Making Framework for Prioritization
   • A decision-making framework helps teams assess feature requests and prioritize effectively based on criteria like user impact, business value, and design feasibility. This framework empowers designers and PMs to evaluate requests objectively, minimizing conflicts around prioritization.
   • Tip: Agree on a priority scoring system or criteria checklist that both roles can use to evaluate features, making it easier to reach a consensus on what goes into each release.
5. Document and Communicate Changes Promptly
   • Scope changes and new requirements are inevitable, but they can lead to frustration if not communicated promptly and transparently. Having a process for documenting and communicating changes ensures that designers and product managers are aligned on expectations.
   • Tip: Use a shared tool or document to track changes, providing updates to the entire team so everyone is aware of the latest priorities and requirements.

The Role of UXPin in Facilitating Collaboration

UXPin supports this collaborative relationship through design tools like UXPin Merge, which allow designers to work with actual code components. This helps maintain visual and functional consistency across designs, ensuring that what’s designed is what’s developed. Additionally, UXPin’s interactive prototypes offer a realistic preview of the product, helping product managers visualize the user experience early and align it with the strategic direction.

In short, the collaboration between product designers and product managers is vital to building products that resonate with users and fulfill business objectives. By blending strategy with user-centered design, and leveraging tools like UXPin to streamline workflows, designers and PMs can achieve a balance that brings their shared vision to life. Request access to UXPin Merge.

We’ve looked at various trends and technology to make predictions for the future of product design. Rather than put on a tinfoil hat and talk about flying cars, we’ve focused on how current tech will evolve and identified some real opportunities for product designers and developers to innovate.

This article explores six key topics: AI, voice user interfaces, code-to-design innovation, humanity-centered design, and smart cities. The opportunities for product designers are immense, with fully interconnected cross-device and platform systems required for the next decade and beyond.

Code to design is the future of product development–and it’s already here. Bridge the gap between design and development with a single source of truth from UXPin Merge. Visit our Merge page for more details.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

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AI-Driven Design Systems

AI will become integral to design systems, allowing teams to automate processes, optimize user flows, and create smarter interfaces. By 2025, design systems will incorporate AI to facilitate dynamic component generation. UXPin’s AI Component Creator, for example, already allows designers to generate custom UI components based on high-level design briefs or even user data, speeding up prototyping while maintaining accuracy and consistency with the system’s code.

AI will assist with generating and managing components, ensuring they adhere to brand guidelines and usability principles. Designers can focus on high-level strategy while AI fills in the details, making processes more efficient.

Multimodal and Voice Interfaces

By 2025, designers will need to focus on multimodal interfaces that seamlessly integrate voice, gestures, and touch. Voice User Interfaces such as those in Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa will become even more advanced, allowing for more complex interactions that go beyond simple commands.

Designers will have to blend traditional visual UIs with voice and gesture-based systems, ensuring smooth user experiences across multiple interaction modes.

VUIs will be particularly important in industries like healthcare and automotive, where hands-free interactions are becoming standard. AI-powered voice interfaces will also offer more personalized user experiences, adapting based on user habits and preferences.

AI-Assisted Prototyping and Testing

Prototyping and usability testing will benefit from AI-powered automation. Tools like UXPin Merge and Maze already leverage AI to streamline the design-to-development process, helping with theming, customization, and code-backed component generation.

In addition to automating prototyping, AI will also assist in usability testing. Tools like Maze, which use AI to analyze user interactions, will provide immediate insights and suggest design improvements. Designers will have access to real-time feedback, enabling faster iterations and more user-centered solutions.

Advanced Personalization with AI

Personalization will go beyond tailored content to offer more profound user-specific experiences. Designers will use AI to create custom UI components based on real-time data and user behavior. This will allow product teams to deliver personalized experiences at scale, where interfaces can adjust to individual preferences in real time.

This level of AI-driven personalization will ensure that products feel intuitive and engaging for diverse audiences. Design tools will harness AI to dynamically change layouts, navigation, and other key elements based on how users interact with the product, ensuring a seamless and adaptive experience.

Ethical and Sustainable Design Practices

By 2025, ethical design and sustainability will be non-negotiable components of product design. Tools like Adobe’s Sustainability Toolkit and platforms promoting ethical AI will guide designers in making responsible choices, from minimizing carbon footprints to ensuring inclusivity. AI tools can assist in flagging design decisions that may lead to ethical concerns, such as bias in algorithms or lack of accessibility in interfaces.

AI will also help teams make sustainability-driven decisions by optimizing design resources and reducing data-heavy interactions. Designers will have the tools to balance innovation with responsibility, ensuring their products contribute positively to both users and the environment.

Immersive Experiences with AR and VR

Augmented reality and virtual reality will continue to grow in importance by 2025. Tools like Unity and Blender will be essential for designers looking to create immersive 3D experiences for industries ranging from retail to healthcare. Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, and designers will need to adapt by learning new skill sets for creating interactive, multi-dimensional experiences.

AR/VR interfaces will become more intuitive as AI enhances interaction design, making these experiences feel more seamless and natural. These technologies will be integrated into everyday products, from virtual shopping apps to immersive training platforms, creating new avenues for user engagement.

Future Product Design With UXPin

Traditional UX design methods and workflows are slow and cumbersome. The design-to-code process is inefficient and doesn’t facilitate the speed and accuracy required to meet modern technologies and demands.

UXPin Merge and code-to-design are the future of product development. The streamlined design methodology enables anyone from inexperienced solopreneurs to multinational enterprises to prototype and test ideas with code-like fidelity and functionality.

Reasons why code to design enhances product development:

• A single source of truth between designers and engineers from a centralized repo reduces the inefficiencies and challenges of design-to-code workflows.
• Realistic prototypes improve testing so product teams can identify better opportunities and solve more problems during the design process.
• Realistic, interactive prototypes mean stakeholders can accurately visualize the final product resulting in meaningful feedback and increased confidence in the design process.
• Code to design results in faster time-to-market with better quality and fewer usability issues, allowing startups to compete with enterprise organizations.

Take your product design process into the future with the world’s most advanced end-to-end design tool. Visit our Merge page.

Ever wondered why some digital products feel intuitive, while others leave you lost and frustrated? The key is effective digital product design.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll demystify the process of designing digital products, emphasizing the importance of user experience, prototyping, and iterative development. We’ll also highlight common pitfalls to avoid in product design.

Key takeaways:

• Product design is a process of creating an interactive interface of a digital product that aligns with user needs, business requirements, and technical constraints.
• Product designers are people in charge of creating the design of a product. To do this job, they can get a degree, attend courses and/or read books about product design.
• Product design has 5 distinctive steps, but it’s not a linear process; product designers may go back to certain steps if they uncover new insights.
• One of the step is prototyping – creating an interactive mockup of a product that shows behaviors and user journey prior to building the product in code.
• Successful product design puts emphasis on UX writing, manages errors, keep users in the center, and takes iterations seriously. An example of successful product design is Apple.

Our goal is to provide a definitive resource for anyone passionate about creating digital products that truly enhance people’s lives.

Design products 10x faster with our revolutionary Merge technology. Drag and drop interactive components to build a fully functional prototype that behaves like an end-product and follows your design system. Discover UXPin Merge.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

Discover UXPin Merge

What is Product Design?

Designing digital products is all about creating a solution that addresses a particular need or problem that people have. To do this, designers should follow this product design process:

• Learn about target users – who are they? How do they behave? What do they like and dislike?
• Identify challenges that users face.
• Brainstorm potential solutions to these challenges.
• Figure out how your product might fit into the audiences’ lives.
• Test your design, gathering feedback from people who might end up using it. 

To gain a deeper understanding of product design and discover the steps involved, read our dedicated article: What is Product Design? 

Product Designer vs UX Designer

Product designers and UX designers both have important roles in the development of a digital product, but while they share some common interests they’re quite separate functions. 

A UX designer is mainly focused on how the product feels to the user. In the early stages of a design project, they study users’ behavior and try to understand their needs and motivations. 

A UX designer’s goal is to create a seamless and intuitive user journey, so they think carefully about how each step flows into the next. They want to ensure the user can accomplish their goals in the easiest way possible. They even incorporate principles of cognitive psychology into their designs to make digital products more usable. 

On the other hand, a product designer has a broader role that includes not only the user experience but also the business goals and technical constraints.

They are involved in all aspects of product development, from the initial idea to the final implementation. They look at the bigger picture, thinking about how all the pieces fit together to create a coherent whole. This includes how the product looks (user interface), how it works (interaction design), and how it fits into the larger market.

In short, while UX designers focus on the user’s journey and experience, product designers consider the entire product from a holistic perspective, including the business and technical aspects. They both aim to create products that users love, but their approach and focus areas are slightly different.

To learn more, read our comparative piece on the specificity of a UX designer’s and product designer’s work. if you are interested in a role of product designer, check out how to become a product designer.

How Do You Create a Product Design?

Here are five steps you can take to create your product design.

Step 1: Empathize with your users

This is arguably the most important step in product design. Understanding your users goes beyond knowing their demographics; it’s about empathizing with them. This means finding out about their needs, habits, frustrations, and desires as these all relate to your product. 

To do this, conduct interviews, surveys, or observe users in their natural environment. The more you know about your users, the better equipped you are to design a product that fits seamlessly into their lives.

Step 2: Identify the problem

Once you understand your users, the next step is to identify the problems they face, which your product could help solve. 

This is where you convert the insights you gained from empathizing with your users into a clear problem statement that captures the main issues your users are experiencing. 

While the statement needs to be clear and specific enough to provide guidance, it shouldn’t be overly prescriptive – it’s essential to allow room for flexibility and creative thought. 

Step 3: Ideation

This product design step is all about brainstorming as many ideas as possible. No idea is too wild or too mundane. Let your creativity flow, and try to think of every possible way to solve the problem you identified. 

Tools like mind maps, sketches, or storyboards can help visualize these ideas. And don’t worry about practicality or feasibility – the goal is quantity, not quality. The more ideas you have, the more raw material you have for the next step.

Step 4: Prototyping

Now it’s time to turn some of those ideas into tangible, testable, mini-versions of your product – also known as prototypes. 

Start with paper prototypes such as rough sketches. These let you quickly see how your product might work without investing too much time or resources. 

Once you’re satisfied with the basic function, you can progress to high-fidelity prototypes. These are more detailed and interactive, and they give a better representation of the final product.

Step 5: Testing

The final step is where you’ll see if your product actually solves the problem it was designed for. 

Give your prototypes to actual users, watch them interact with your product, and listen to their feedback. 

Remember, this step is about learning and improving, not about proving that you’re right. Don’t be discouraged if there are issues; instead, see them as opportunities to refine your product.

Check out our “How to Design a Product in 5 Steps” article to learn more about this topic.

Best Tips on Product UX Design

These pointers should help to enhance the user experience of your product.

Don’t ignore UX writing

UX writing creates clear, useful text for digital products. It helps to reduce confusion and enhance navigation. Here are five essential UX writing tips:

1. Keep copy short and simple: the aim is to convey the necessary information in as few words as possible.
2. Prioritize accessibility: make sure your text is easy to understand for all users – avoid jargon or colloquialisms. 
3. Use visuals and formatting for clarity: If images can explain your ideas better than words, use them instead. Also, break up large chunks of copy into shorter and more scannable lists. 
4. Use an active voice: it makes your writing easier to understand. 
5. Play it straight: try not to be too clever or humorous.

Test your designs – always

It’s essential to always test your designs. This ensures your product not only looks good but performs well and meets user expectations. 

You can use a variety of testing methods. Gather feedback from users representing your target audience, use online platforms to gain access to lots of remote users, or conduct in-person panels for detailed insights. 

Early testing catches issues when they’re still easy and cost-effective to fix. Just as importantly, it helps you stay laser-focused on delivering an excellent user experience, ultimately leading to a product that users will appreciate and love.

Regularly observe user behavior

As a designer, it can be tempting to assume users will intuitively understand your product. To avoid making this mistake, observe their behavior consistently. Monitoring users’ interactions can uncover unexpected behaviors or misunderstandings, which act as a reality check.

Tests don’t have to be extensive. You can run sessions with as few as 5 users to spot 75% of issues. But ultimately, testing will improve your product’s intuitiveness and user-friendliness.

Deal with user errors

Product design involves two key steps in addressing user errors:

• Helping users when they make a mistake.
• Analyzing these errors to fine-tune the user experience – For instance, if a user misses a required field when completing a form, a clear error message should guide them. But if many users can’t recover from a given mistake, the design needs revisiting.

Remember, users have varying tech skills and devices, so a minor hiccup for one might be a major obstacle for another. The designer’s role is to minimize these barriers, ensuring a seamless experience for everyone.

Introduce changes gradually

When you have several changes or improvements to make to a product, it’s best not to introduce them all at the same time. 

This is because if you make too many alterations at once, it can be hard to determine which changes are successful and which ones may need further tweaking.

To put it another way, if you adjust just one or two things, you can observe whether these changes fix the issues they were intended to resolve and if users understand and find them beneficial. This approach gives you a clear picture of each change’s effectiveness.

We’re discussing more tips on product UX design in our dedicated article. Give it a read: Best Tips on Product UX Design.

Best Tips on Prototyping for Product Design

A prototype is a simple model of your product that shows its basic functions and can help turn your product ideas into reality. Here are some tips to make the most of this important design stage.

Decide what to show with your prototype 

Before you start designing your prototype, follow these important steps:

1. Agree on what features your prototype needs to have.

2. Get a clear understanding of what the key stakeholders expect to see from your prototype. 

3. Discuss the product features with developers and identify any potential technical issues.

4. Think about whether the prototype can realistically be made into a full product and if it could be a real business opportunity.

Gathering this information upfront can give clarity to your prototype designs, saving time and resources. 

Turn to rapid collaborative prototyping if you’re under time pressure 

If you’re working to tight deadlines, rapid prototyping can help you get to the testing stage much quicker. 

The idea is to create a workable model of the product in as little as a day. While the resulting prototypes are usually simpler and less polished, the emphasis is very much on iterative design – the cycle of building, testing, refining, and repeating. 

It helps if team members work together using a digital whiteboard and a collaborative product design tool like UXPin with its Merge technology, which lets you prototype with reusable components. This makes it easier to bounce ideas off each other and come up with a workable design much quicker. Discover UXPin Merge.

Select your fidelity

When deciding how detailed and close to the final version your prototype should be – a characteristic known as ‘fidelity‘ – you need to consider who you’re showing the prototype to and what stage of the design process you’re at.

Low-fidelity prototypes, like simple sketches or basic wireframes, are sufficient for an internal design team review. They’re usually enough to help your colleagues visualize ideas and spark discussion.

High-fidelity prototypes are more polished – how they look and behave is closer to the final product. These are more suitable for gathering feedback from your target users.

Mid-level fidelity prototypes can be shown to stakeholders or team members who are neither part of your design team, nor target users. The level of detail these prototypes contain is somewhere between low and high fidelity. 

Test your prototypes with actual users

Testing functional designs with your colleagues can be helpful, but there’s a real chance they might miss issues that actual users would face.

That’s why it’s essential to test your prototypes with the people who’ll end up using the finished product. 

As we mentioned in the previous section, before testing, you need to decide whether you’re using a basic, low-fidelity prototype or one that’s more detailed and closer to the final product. This decision influences what kind of feedback you’re looking for and what you want to learn from the test.

It’s also helpful to identify your end users’ personas and the scenarios in which they might use your product. This helps you understand the context of use and plan your tests accordingly.

You can test in person, which allows for more detailed feedback as you can observe users’ reactions and ask questions. Or you can use online platforms that allow you to reach a larger number of potential users.

To learn 5 more prototype product design tips, check out this article: Prototype Product Design – 9 Tips.

Best Examples of Digital Product Design 

Apple

Apple stands out as a shining example of a company that designs with diverse user needs at heart, constantly refining its products for increased accessibility and usability.

• For people who have vision problems, Apple provides features like voiceover, zoom, and Braille support. These help users understand what’s on the screen or in the environment around them.
• Subtitles are made available for those with hearing impairments, covering everything from videos to conversations. Apple also produces bespoke devices aimed at helping these users hear better.
• Apple has features like voice navigation and devices that can be controlled with eye movements to help individuals with limited mobility. This means users can navigate their devices without touching them.
• Cognitive challenges are met with thoughtful designs that help filter out distracting background noise and visuals.

Discord

The communication platform Discord was initially designed to make it easy for gamers to interact. It’s since expanded and now allows users to discuss a range of topics, helped by a design that’s simple enough to use without distraction, while also offering enough depth to cater to specific user needs. Features include:

• The ability to join or create ‘servers’ or chat rooms. These can be large, public groups, or smaller, private ones.
• The creation of ‘channels’ within servers. This helps keep discussions on different topics separate and organized.
• Direct messaging and ‘pinging’ (notifying) individual users for quick, private communication.
• Users can choose to communicate via voice or text.
• The customizable user interface allows you to personalize text, emojis, usernames, and icons to reflect your preferences.

TikTok

The hugely popular social media app has revolutionized the user experience with its unique design. 

This includes a full-screen feed for immersive viewing, clear interactive features, an endless stream of short, personalized content, and features that support diverse user needs. 

These design elements, combined with added accessibility options like auto-captions and photosensitivity warnings, have made TikTok a globally popular and user-friendly app. And its success underlines the importance of thoughtful product design.

We’ve only discussed 3 out of 5 best product design examples, you can find the remaining ones here. 

Reasons for Bad Product Design with Examples

Aggressive popups

Popups that appear immediately on a website can be a big turn-off for users. Before they’ve even had a chance to explore what’s on offer, they’re being asked to sign up for a newsletter or download something, which can be disruptive and off-putting.

It’s important to remember that people visit your site seeking answers, often with limited time and attention. Being bombarded with popups can quickly ruin their experience and lead them to seek alternatives. 

Of course, that’s not to say all pop-ups are bad – just that timing is crucial. It’s better to let users engage with your content first before trying to persuade them to sign up for additional services or promotions.

An overly complex navigation

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a popular platform that provides a wide range of cloud computing services, but it’s really difficult to navigate.

When you click on their products tab, you’re hit with a ton of choices which can feel overwhelming, especially on a mobile where you have to keep scrolling. This can frustrate users, making it hard to find what they need. 

Even though AWS’s design is aesthetically pleasing, the tricky navigation could be improved to enhance the user experience. This would stop visitors from leaving the site in a huff because they can’t find what they’re looking for.

Stigmatizing certain user groups

Product design can unintentionally stigmatize certain user groups, particularly older people. 

Take walking canes for example. Once upon a time, these were carefully crafted to look like fashionable accessories – as well as being sturdy and functional. But today, devices for seniors often look unattractive, signifying frailty. This can discourage people from using them.  

Large-button phones for visually impaired people feel similarly outdated. Rather than designing ‘special’ products like these that make particular groups feel ostracized, we should make all products more inclusive, allowing for customizations like adjustable font sizes. That way, everyone will feel comfortable using them. 

We share more bad product design examples in a dedicated article: Bad Product Design. 

Product Design Degrees that Help you Land a Job

There are three main avenues that lead to a career in design, including product and UX design roles:

Bachelor’s Degree at a University

Studying for a design degree at a university can give you an advantage over others in this competitive field. 

Universities offer comprehensive courses on all sorts of specialisms, including color, typography, layout, and idea communication. They also foster skills in giving and receiving feedback, which are highly valued in the professional world. 

You could also consider degrees in programming as they allow you to understand the technical constraints that could influence product design.

One of the main benefits of a design degree is that it can potentially lead to higher pay.

But it’s worth saying that to get on a course you’ll need to have built a solid portfolio of work. Other potential obstacles include the fact that design degrees are expensive and take a long time to complete – often between two to four years.

Do-it-yourself

Self-learning can be a viable and flexible route – as long as you have plenty of discipline! 

Books like Don Norman’s ‘The Design of Everyday Things’ provide essential insights into human-centered design. But product design is complex, and involves more than just reading; learning from industry experts through mentorship, internships, or online courses can be invaluable. 

Networking is also key. Be sure to maintain connections with classmates and industry contacts, as they might prove helpful in the future.

Some helpful resources include:

• Nielsen Norman Group
• CenterCentre
• Codecademy
• The Shape Of Design
• The UX Design Process Book Bundle

Bootcamp Courses

Design bootcamps offer a fast-tracked learning experience in your chosen field. 

These programs can be undertaken in-person, online, or through blended learning, and some even offer scholarships or deferred payment options. 

Whether you’re a recent graduate or a professional seeking a career shift, bootcamp courses can effectively introduce you to the field and bridge knowledge gaps.

Here are some courses you can look into:

• Become a UX Designer from Scratch
• Design Thinking: The Beginner’s Guide
• User Research – Methods and Best Practices
• Accessibility: How to Design for All
• Mobile User Experience (UX) Design
• Conducting Usability Testing
• UI Design Patterns for Successful Software
• UX Management: Strategy and Tactics 

For more detailed guidance on product design careers, read our article on product design programs.

Top Books about Product Design

These four titles are essential reading for anyone interested in the field of product design.

‘Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products’ by Nir Eyal

Eyal’s book offers valuable insights into creating products that attract and retain users, focusing on his four-step Hook Model used in many successful products.

‘Lean Startup’ by Eric Ries

Ries’ guide to creating value-driven products is a must-read for designers, teaching them to rapidly prototype, test, and iterate designs for optimal alignment with business strategy and user needs.

‘Laws of UX: Using Psychology to Design Better Products & Services’ by Jon Yablonski

Yablonski’s book stresses the role of human psychology in UX design, offering a practical guide on applying psychological principles to build intuitive products, illustrated with examples from popular apps.

‘Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products That Create Customer Value and Business’ by Teresa Torres

Torres’s book highlights the importance of ongoing innovation in design to ensure that products and services remain relevant and valuable to users.

Read detailed review of those books and others here: Product Design Books that Will Push Your Skills Forward.

Master the Art of Designing Digital Products

Designing digital products balances functionality, aesthetics, and user needs, making it a diverse and complex field. 

In today’s digital era, the importance of designing intuitive, engaging products can’t be overstated. As a designer, every detail of your work could impact someone’s life. 

Hopefully, this guide has given you plenty of insight into digital product design, empowering you to create digital products that aren’t just useful and nice to look at, but lead to truly enriching experiences. 

Use UXPin with its Merge technology to build a realistic and clickable prototype of your product. UXPin Merge allows you to use a single source of truth for designers and devs, so it makes product design collaborative from the start. Release products faster with Merge. Discover UXPin Merge.

The quality of design is about more than offering a visually-appealing interface; it has a direct impact on the product’s commercial success. According to McKinsey & Company, using design thinking methods leads to a 35% increase in revenue. It also prompts a 56% increase in return compared to businesses that put product design in the back seat. But what does it take to get product design “right”? This is what we’re going to cover in this part.

Release products 10x faster with powerful design technology – UXPin Merge which makes it easy for designers to prototype with ready-made UI components that are fully interactive. Discover UXPin Merge.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

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How to Design a Product? – 5 Steps of Product Design

Irrespective of your design process, you must ensure it circles around usability. Below are the five steps of product design that you should follow as you roll out solutions. 

Bear in mind that – while it’s divided into stages – design isn’t an iterative process, so you engage in all of these actions on an ongoing basis as you refine your product.

Step 1: Empathize

Showing empathy is the first and, arguably, most crucial step of product design. It requires a deep understanding of your users, their experiences, and their needs. Essentially, you and the design team set aside your own assumptions and personal biases.

There are plenty of methods you can use to learn about your target users. For instance, you can collect qualitative data directly by asking them questions in surveys or interviews. Alternatively, you can decide to ‘sit back’ and observe how users interact with the product or service uninterrupted, in their natural environment. This can be done through unmoderated usability tests.

What to do if you’re designing for a group of users who seem inaccessible? Talk to experts in the field who can help you better understand the most common needs and problems in the niche. It’s not uncommon for designers to pair up with psychologists, sociologists, or even anthropologists. By doing so, you learn about the social and cultural background of the users, making your solution even more user-friendly.

Useful Tools and Resources:

• Learn about desirability, feasibility, and viability.
• Learn about UX research.
• Learn the business value of design.

Step 2: Define

The second step in learning how to design a product is creating a clear problem statement. At this stage, you use the insights gathered during the ‘Empathize’ phase and define the challenges you seek to solve with your product.

The statement needs to be:

• Human-centered. Focus on the user’s perspective, emphasizing their needs and goals. The statement should resonate with the target user.
• Balances between specificity and flexibility. While it should be specific enough to provide guidance, it must also guarantee enough flexibility to encourage creativity and innovative solutions. This helps designers have a clear direction without constraining their ability to generate ideas.

Problem statements can be short or take on a descriptive form. Some teams use the Point of View Madlib, which is a sentence that follows the template:

[User X] needs to/does [explanation of the action] because [the insight]. 

Others use 2-4 sentences to define the challenge and any unique circumstances. 

Here are some examples of well-defined problem statements:

• We’re seeing an unexpected increase in people abandoning the signup process. Customers say that they’re frustrated with the number of forms they need to fill in to create an account. We need to streamline the sign-up process.
• New customers say that they can’t understand our pricing scheme without asking customer support for help. The “pricing” page has a significant bounce rate because they don’t know how to easily compare features between tiers.
• Streaming platform users say that they are missing a filtering option or – if it exists – they can’t find it. They can’t eliminate movies that have an IMDb score lower than 7/10 and have to check each rating movie by movie, on their phones. 

So, the Define step of product design zeroes in on a specific, user-centric issue statement. When designers grasp the issue they’re trying to solve, they’re more likely to create a solution that helps people.

Useful Tools and Resources:

• Learn about creating personas.
• Learn about problem statements.

Step 3: Ideate

Ideation, the third step in product design, inspires new ideas. The prior two stages—empathizing and defining—provide a solid basis for this phase. With this information, designers can question preconceptions and explore alternate problem-solving techniques.

Sketching facilitates this process, allowing designers to visualize ideas and iterate on concepts. 

It’s a good idea to turn to techniques like Google’s Crazy 8s and the 4-step Sketch exercise. They set time limits for each brainstorming session, which boosts your team’s focus (and, ultimately, productivity). 

After developing ideas and exploring them, you start eliminating those that aren’t viable. By the end, you’ll agree on the one idea to proceed with next. 

Next, you frame it as a user story. It’s quite similar to the previously mentioned Madlib problem statement, and follows the template below:

As a [user], I want to do [X], so that [Y].

For example:

“As a customer, I want to pay through the app, so that I don’t have to reach for my credit card every time I complete an order”.

It helps articulate the goal and defines an actionable task. Knowing the ‘what’, designers can now focus on the ‘how’.

As you can see, designing a successful product comes up to a lot of preliminary research, way before you create the first wireframe. The product design process lets you discover industry-changing breakthroughs by challenging the status quo. Tried-and-true methods like user stories help design teams create a clear roadmap for the prototyping step, discussed next.

Useful Tools and Resources:

• Try out Google’s Crazy 8s.
• Run the 4-step Sketch exercise.

Step 4: Prototype

In the product design process, the prototyping stage helps turn ideas into the first tangible, testable collateral. By developing scaled-down prototypes, design teams can check potential solutions and identify any limitations or problems the product might face. This step ensures the end product meets user expectations. 

Prototyping can be divided into two types: low-fidelity and high-fidelity.

Low-Fidelity Prototypes

Low-fidelity prototypes are simple, hand-drawn, or basic digital wireframes without color or content. They enable UX teams to visualize screen layouts, test navigation, and assess user flows. For example, a typical eCommerce checkout flow with a cart, delivery, and payment module can be represented as a low-fidelity prototype. 

According to the Nielsen Norman Group, low-fidelity prototyping helps designers iterate faster and facilitates stakeholder buy-in. Also, it encourages a focus on functionality rather than aesthetics.

High-Fidelity Prototypes

High-fidelity prototypes incorporate color, content, interactions, transitions, and animations. This assists in creating a more immersive user experience. In essence, they closely resemble the final product. And since they’re more relatable to users and stakeholders, they’re also likely to make the design feedback you collect more valuable.

What’s more, high-fidelity prototypes are great at pointing out usability issues. Remember that they might be missed or unaccounted for in low-fidelity versions. 

One powerful tool for creating high-fidelity prototypes is UXPin Merge. It enables designers to work with coded UI components, which can be imported from Storybook, NPM, or Git repositories. Using UXPin Merge, even small design teams can create life-like prototypes that adhere to design system guidelines. The imported components look and function like those in the final product, which helps streamline the prototyping process.

Useful Tools and Resources:

• Learn about high-fidelity prototyping vs. low-fidelity.
• Learn about interactive prototypes.

Step 5: Test

The fifth and last step in successful product design is the testing phase. Designers or evaluators rigorously assess the efficacy and viability of the product. This stage is a key ingredient of iterative design thinking, letting designers spot problems and brainstorm how to refine them.

The main goal of the testing phase is to determine how well the prototype solves the identified issue. It doesn’t involve implementing or synthesizing research. Instead, the focus lies on employing the most appropriate research methods. These approaches help gather detailed feedback, insights, and document findings.

While various usability testing methods exist, they can be roughly narrowed down to two categories:

• Moderated tests. These involve direct interactions between the facilitator and the participant. Users are asked to complete a task, like downloading a PDF report from the user panel. They might either be asked to comment on what they’re doing at each step, or asked questions by the facilitator.
• Unmoderated tests. These exclude the facilitator’s presence, but the participants still get a list of instructions they are to follow. 

The good news is that usability testing doesn’t require a large investment. According to Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group, you can spot as many as 85% of all issues by testing with just five users! 

Better yet, evaulating your product design doesn’t have to be limited to structured usability testing sessions. You can also do so asynchronously, for instance, by sharing a prototype and asking users and stakeholders to comment directly on the design.

They can place a pin on any elements that they want to comment or ask about. This makes it easy for users to comment either on the overall user experience and product ‘feel’, or zero-in on details like buttons or images.

This is possible with a tool like UXPin, which lets you design and collect specific user feedback directly on the prototype. This means fewer errors in the final product.

Useful Tools and Resources:

• Learn how to run insightful usability testing
• Learn how you can use fully functional prototypes in usability testing 

Getting the Product Design Process Right

There isn’t a single, one-size-fits-all answer to the question of how to design a product. Each product enters the market at a different time, and its target users have their own, unique challenges and goals. Still, regardless of any external factors, the key lies in following a well-thought-out product design process. 

Creating the right solution is about diving deep into the needs and emotions of your users. Before you create a first wireframe – even the most simple one – it’s important that you clearly define your users’ goals and know how to best serve them.

Also, remember that product design is a collaborative process. A large part of your success depends on whether your fellow team members – designers, product managers, and developers alike – can all work towards the same objective. Here’s where using prototyping tools like UXPin will do wonders, allowing you to design, collect feedback, and handle developer handoffs all with a single tool.

Powering UXPin with its Merge technology will speed up prototyping for you for about ten fold. Why? It makes it simple to bring your dev’s component library to UXPin and build prototypes that are fully interactive and easily translated to code. Discover UXPin Merge.