The Role of the Digital Product Designer
The product designer focuses on evolving products through methods and processes from industrial design. Product designers work collaboratively with other professionals to build artifacts that are sustainable from a business point of view, technically feasible, and desirable for people.
The radio in the image below comes from a well-known German company, Braun, whose minimalist design was influenced by the Ulm School (considered the post-war Bauhaus), and became one of the companies that most influenced contemporary design.
Designers can develop millions of kinds of products, such as brooms, radios, aircraft, cars, computer programs, or processes, like improving people's experience in a hospital. Some call this Service Design.
In this way, the product designer is a generalist who follows the entire production chain of the artifacts. Although the term has been used for many years by designers of physical products, it has recently gained strong traction among digital product designers.
An important book studied in design schools is PRODUCT DESIGN - Practical methods for the systematic development of new products. In it, the author presents universal methods for developing products.
Product Design (M. R. Baxter, 1998)
The product designer at technology companies
In a scenario where competition is one click away, technology companies that build digital products try to establish themselves or stay in the market by serving very demanding customers. As a result, the number of digital product designers has been growing rapidly.
The need for a product designer arises when it is essential for the product to be easy to use, ergonomic, aesthetically pleasing, and aligned with the market.
In this context, the product designer focuses on the user experience, seeking a deep understanding of the existing problem and developing a project with methods and techniques to find solutions that are desirable for customers, feasible to build, and sustainable for the business.
Main activities
The work of a digital product designer can follow many approaches, and responsibilities can differ from company to company. In general, the processes are similar to the double diamond methodology, starting with the stages of investigation and problem definition.
After these stages, the product designer starts sketching ideas so the solution proposals become clearer. Then the designer can test their hypotheses and evaluate how the customer experience is going. Finally comes the refinement stage, so the product reaches the customer with an excellent finish.
The product designer's work is collaborative, and in the discovery stage it should happen together with people who understand and make decisions about business and engineering. This professional needs to coordinate their design decisions with many other professionals and make sure everyone is aligned on the proposed solutions.
Coordination and negotiation come up often, because design has to meet many requirements: business rules, technical and time constraints, usability risks, legal or marketing risks, and several others depending on the nature of the problem.
Being a product designer day to day means talking with many people, helping define solutions as a team, and orchestrating the design process. Otherwise, the design may not solve the business problem, may be impossible to build on schedule, or may deliver a poor experience for the customer. Each area of a company has its own goals, and a user experience culture may not be well established, which makes persuasion skills urgent.
Scope of work
The product designer's scope of work has become common within technology squads, although it can take many forms and happen in many scenarios.
The main activities of the product designer are oriented toward the tasks users will perform in the product. Below, these stages are highlighted in purple in the diagram of the The Elements of User Experience (Garrett, 2002).
Moments when the product designer works
Many technology companies are now adopting the continuous discovery and continuous delivery model. Basically, this means there is a moment for researching and learning and another for building and improving, loosely translated as "Discovery" and "Delivery".
Behind the simplicity of that description, it is worth stressing that adopting this model effectively is not easy. It requires the engineering, design, and product teams to be aligned, with an advanced technology structure and mature processes.
Discovery
At this point, the product designer's role is to take part in Discovery together with the Product Manager, investigating users' pain points, needs, and problems, and analyzing business goals. This interaction is important so the designer deeply understands the problem and can generate several solution hypotheses.
The designer should explore problems by investigating their causes through qualitative and quantitative research, creating flows and diagrams, using facilitation techniques to generate ideas, and aligning with the engineers, vendors, or others involved.
Delivery
At this point, the product designer works alongside the squad, which is made up of engineers and analysts. This means turning ideas into high-fidelity interfaces and documenting them so engineers can build and deliver to the customer.
What did we conclude?
Although the term "product design" is not new, and the general concept of this scope of work is old, we have seen the design profession evolve and spread deeply through the digital product market.
It is worth remembering that this professional has also been called information architect, interaction designer, user experience designer, UX/UI, and other names. Responsibilities and focus can change over time and across places.
The big novelty I see is designers interacting with the Product Manager, a role that connects business, people, and technology so the company builds things people actually use. Read more about Product Culture and Product Discovery.
Comments