Product Design vs. UX Design

In terms of IT, design means much more than just creating visuals for a digital solution. Specifically, while the concepts of UX and UI design have long been familiar to anyone who is at least a little involved in software product development, the "product design" term is a relatively new one. Based on its name, we can already make a preliminary conclusion that the work of product designers involves something more than creating a visual for a product, but what exactly? Let's figure it out right now.

What Is UX Design?

UX design is everything that is aimed at the end user getting a certain experience/impression from interacting with the interface of your solution. Its quality can be measured by whether the user manages to achieve the specific goal, and how easy and pleasant it is for him/her.

Usually, the UX design process includes the following stages:

• End-user research;
• Building information architecture;
• User flow creation;
• Creating visuals;
• Ensuring the convenience and accessibility of the created solution.

Let's dwell on these stages in more detail.

Key Elements of UX Design

So, below we will consider the above stages (elements).

• End-user research. It all starts with a survey of the target audience representatives to understand their needs, desires, and pain points. Then they are provided with raw prototypes for testing so that specialists can identify typical problems and imperfections in their concepts.
• Building information architecture. The next step of UX product development is to build low-fidelity wireframes that demonstrate the hierarchy of the product’s elements and functions. After that, designers build an information architecture, which implies dividing the content into categories that simplify the search for information.
• User flow creation. Now, everything is ready to recreate the sequence of steps that the user must take to achieve the goal with the help of a specific product. After the main steps are reproduced, microinteractions have to be implemented – we mean system feedback that improves the quality of the user experience. Additionally, the product is analyzed in accordance with the WCAG 2.0 guidelines – this is necessary for its accessibility for people with disabilities.
• Creating visuals. At this stage, specialists create the visual part of the user interface including the color palette, icons, typography, etc., and also ensure consistency with the previously created templates.
• Ensuring the convenience and accessibility of the created solution. To assess the convenience of the created solution, designers usually use a heuristic approach. Also, they check compliance with the required WCAF 2.0 level. If significant deficiencies are detected, the product is returned for optimization.

Why Is UX Design Important?

UX design services are primarily focused on ensuring end-user satisfaction with the product – that is, it means that the product is comfortable to use and intuitive, and, in general, allows users to quickly complete the tasks assigned to it. In the long term, a properly created UX design can provide a boost in business revenue, an expansion of its consumer base, an increase in competitive advantage, a reduction in the expenses on regular business operations, and many other things. Ultimately, it is important to understand that all this is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the product success.

UX vs. UI Design

Many people don’t understand the user experience vs design difference. However, while UX product design is aimed at creating a positive user experience when interacting with a product, the UI design is about creating a certain, aesthetically attractive appearance and conveying specific feelings to the end user through it.

What Is Product Design?

Now, let's talk about product design: it is a much more comprehensive term than UX and UI design. It ensures that users do not just enjoy dealing with a specific software solution – instead, they should help the owner of this solution achieve specific business goals through this interaction.

Key Elements of Product Design

To better understand the product design vs UX design difference, we suggest, as in the previous case, to consider the key stages of the first term.

• Planning. It starts with comprehensive market research: analyzing its trends, identifying competitors’ advantages and disadvantages, defining the target audience, etc. After that, specialists must align the client's business goals with the collected information and develop a product roadmap (this is performed in collaboration with other project team members).
• Ensuring end-user focus. Now, having information about the target audience at hand, specialists can create user personas by using their demographics, behavioral patterns, pain points, needs, etc. After that, they begin to build user flows and optimize them through testing.
• Interface design. This stage of the product design process involves creating medium-fidelity prototypes that not only describe user interactions with individual interface components but also contain microinteractions and visual detailing.
• Interaction with the project team. Typically, product designers work in teams that work according to the cross-functional methodology – here, they are encouraged to work closely with specialists from other areas. This allows them to reach alignment on goals and their achievement. At this stage, they use prototypes, which, as their details are agreed upon, specialists optimize into a full-fledged product design.
• User feedback analysis and optimization. Finally, the completed solution is presented to end users (depending on the stage of development, these can be representatives of a focus group or real users) to obtain and process their feedback. After that, the obtained insights are gradually implemented through optimization of the presented version.

Why Is Product Design Important?

Its importance is hard to overestimate: product designers collaborate with other members of the project team throughout its life cycle, thereby ensuring the joint achievement of the goals set by its owner. Even though, as in UX design, the convenience of the user’s interaction with the product also plays an important role, it is perceived as something more global – something that is aimed at solving specific problems within one business.

UX Design vs. Product Design: the Differences

From all of the above, we can conclude that the main goal of product design services is to create a comprehensively successful product: that is, one that surpasses its competitors in some way and satisfies the client's business needs, the specifics of their business niche, the needs of the target audience, market trends, etc. This, in turn, imposes on product designers the need to participate in all stages of product development.

As for UX design, its task is to make the product user-oriented, without covering or only partially covering the business aspects declared by the product owner. Thus, without thinking about the need for product design and implementing the UX design stage only, you can lose sight of the factors that hinder the long-term product’s viability on the market (in particular, this often happens with startups and projects with a non-standard approach to solving ordinary problems). 

Conclusion

Now, knowing the difference between the two above concepts, you can understand who exactly your team needs – a UX/UI service provider or a product designer. Whichever option is closer to you, you can always contact us, and we will select a specialist according to your project requirements or assemble a team that will accompany you from collecting project requirements to its launch and optimization.