Product design – by the name itself, you might have guessed what it is all about. However, product design is more than just the creation of products. It is a comprehensive process of identifying a problem, conceptualizing solutions for the problem, and creating the product. Moreover, the product should be functional, user-friendly, aesthetically pleasing, economically feasible, and most importantly, it should meet the needs and desires of the target audience.
The current trends in product design depend on the current problems, needs, and preferences of consumers, as well as the capability of technology to create these products and the business requirements to achieve success.
Product design is not an easy task. Hiring a product designer is usually practiced by a web design company in the UK to take a product from conceptualization all the way to production. But if you are interested in the key design areas of product design, we prepared this article guide just for you.
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Important Areas of Product Design
Most people often misunderstand that product design is a single job description – but it is not. It is a complex process involving multiple design areas – namely user experience (UX) design, user interface design (UI), and industrial design.
User Experience (UX) Design
As its name implies, UX design focuses on the experience of the users. This design area of product design aims to provide easy-to-use and positive experiences in using products or services. How does the customer feel? And how easy is it for the user to accomplish a desired task? These are two main questions relevant to UX design.
The UX design process usually follows these steps:
- Research: Through different research tools, such as interviews, surveys, and analytics, UX designers can understand the user’s needs, behavior, and preferences.
- Analysis: In this step, the UX designer can analyze the data based on research and identify key opportunities to improve user experience.
- Conceptualization and prototyping: After identifying opportunities, UX designers conceptualize ideas through brainstorming, sketching, and/or creating prototypes.
- Testing: This step gathers insights and feedback from real users who have tested the prototypes.
- Implementation: Once usability issues are identified after testing, UX designers work with the development team to address the issues found and improve the product based on feedback.
- Evaluation: This step evaluates the success of the changes made by analyzing users’ feedback and metrics, such as conversion rates or task completion rates.
Note that UX is an important key design area of product design. According to a Statista report, 94% of consumers are more likely to purchase a product from a business that provides a positive customer experience service.
User Interface (UI) Design
Typically centered on digital products, UI refers to the visual and interactive elements, such as buttons, menu bars, and icons, that help users to navigate the products with ease. UI is also an important design area for product design since a good UI can increase user engagement.
According to a Forbes article, a well-designed user interface can increase the conversion rate or the percentage of users who take a desired action up to 200%. You can say that UX and UI go hand in hand since aesthetically pleasing and easy-to-navigate controls or menu results in a better experience for the users.
Industrial Design
Nowadays, UX and UI mainly focus on digital or intangible products, such as social media platforms, websites, and online shops. This is the main difference between UX and UI in industrial design, as the latter is mainly involved in tangible products.
Industrial design is the process of creating and developing a product that satisfies the needs and wants of the target audience. As there is an increasing demand for products that will answer the needs and wants of people, the number of industrial designers gradually grows each year, with an estimated $2.4 billion market size in the U.S. alone.
Final Thoughts
Product design is the process of creation of products starting from their conceptualization up to manufacture. The three key design areas of product design are UX design, UI design, and industrial design. While UX and UI mainly focus on digital products, industrial design is responsible for the creation of tangible products for consumers.
These key design areas also follow the process of product design, which starts from conceptualization all the way to production or manufacturing.
