Hi, today I would like to tell you what the difference is between outwardly very similar professions. they have similarities, but in essence, they are completely separate and different.

Why is product design important?

If we talk about the product – it's an in-depth study of the whole thing. That is, we build the best customer journey, we test the product, we study the metrics and feedback, of course, we match it all with business requirements so that the product was attractive to the client and the business was satisfied. This is why product design is so important, with multiple levels of detail, that the customer or the user is satisfied and gets or solves their problem with the service.

What is the role of a product designer? How does product design differ from UI and UX design?

The difference between a UX UI designer and a Product Designer can be significant, or they can be quite similar. In my experience, I have seen small companies link these two different professions and as a result, the designer has to take on more work.

Let's break it all down who the product designer is - a person who changes a thousand suits in his work. He knows exactly what kind of research to resort to at different stages of the product, how to build hypotheses and test them, actively uses design thinking in his work, and he also interacts very closely with the entire team and even the department. This guy is great with language and is able to explain and defend complex things to the team and the manager. So in short, he's not often designing layouts and creating large component libraries, he's more focused on building better user experience, communicating with customers and managing the team, also responsible for marketing support, conducting tests, making diagrams and most importantly actively communicating with the team.

And if we talk about UX UI designers, activities are more focused on creating large component libraries, working closely with the front end and the back end, conducting and understanding what testing tools are good to apply in different phases, deep dive into the visual part and managing cognitive user attention, working with fonts and colors, user mapping, user research and prototyping.

How to conduct a successful product design?

Of course, we have to understand what stage we are talking about, and there are many technologies for working with the product. For example, we can start with the product

First method – the methodology of design thinking or design sprint: this methodology emphasizes the empathy of the user and is based on him, not a linear process. It is divided into five stages:

1. Empathize get to know the user's need, get into the user's shoes, field research, observations and surveys
2. Define - set a clear problem and describe the user's needs.
3. Ideate - after you have found the need, you can start generating ideas
4. prototype - Creating a cheap and early model of the product.
5. Test - get and generate feedback

Second method – there is also the double dynamic method, it is an iterative method which leads the team to new ideas. There are four steps, let's divide them into two columns

1. Searching

   1. discover the problem. We went through all the information we have, such as users' problems, feedback, etc., and now we need a detailed description of the problem.
   2. Next, we must distinguish the most important problems by filtering the data, and see what kind of problem the product solves

2. Design

   3. begin to design a way to solve the problem. We use prototypes and wireframes
   4. And testing the product.

Rhird method – and I want to highlight another cyclic methodology Lean UX: divided into three steps, and you can do it many times until the team reaches the result you set for yourself.

1. Think
2. Make
3. Check and applying this methodology should be based on some principles.
   • Focus on the features and functions of the design, don't get distracted by the nice features
   • Feedback from users and the team
   • Test in the real world
   • Turn ideas into the physical and test
   • First and foremost, about the users because the product is developed for them

How to eliminate problems related to research, design, and product launch/post-launch?

Throughout all phases of product development, we have to resort to different kinds of research, and different types of difficulties arise.

During primary design, for example, it is very important to gather as much accurate information as possible, since the foundation of a product should be aimed at the user of the target group, and this is where the importance of research in a product first becomes apparent, and quite a large part of the success of the service depends on it.

At this stage, and in general, at all stages, we most often encounter problems with budgets and a lack of proper respondents for research.

In order to overcome the main problems we have to resort not only to the resources of the company, but also to the professional community, social networks, friends, colleagues, and so on. If the person is potentially our user, then whatever he says may be quite useful for our product, and for users in the end

To sum up, the more time we spend on research, hypothesis testing, and in-depth and quantitative interviews, the better we immerse ourselves in the user's needs, get in their shoes and thus create a better product for the user that solves their problems.

This is why using different sprint design techniques to design a product is especially important to create a better experience