Product Design vs UX Design

 

What is Product Design?

Product design is a combination of approaches for designing a new product from the beginning to the end. The product design process involves every aspect i.e. from carrying out the market study, issue identification, building the product, and coming up with intriguing ideas.

 

With an aim to solve real-world problems, product designers look to create and provide solutions that are easy to use. Their topmost priority is to consider all the significant prospects of the product. This helps in creating the best design and obtains marketing success.       

 

What is UX Design?

UX design i.e. User experience design is useful in developing products that offer an important experience to the end-user.  

 

UX design process includes the design of the whole process. This process covers a method of obtaining and integrating products. In addition, this product will contain attributes of design, branding, usability, and functions.

 

For providing the best possible User experience, a UX designer will put himself in the shoes of the end user. This means that the UX designer will ask himself a few questions regarding product usability and performance.

 

Further, they also think from the user’s perspective thinking about the motivations and desire to accept a product to provide a lucrative and genuine design.  

You may find this interesting, How to Start a Web Design Business?

Product Design vs UX Design: Comparison in detail

As we mentioned earlier it is difficult to outline the exact difference between product design and UX design. But if we were to start, the main difference between Product Design and UX design would lay in the job role and responsibilities.

 

Let’s outline some differences,

#1 Designing Method

The working styles of product and UX designers are different. The main responsibility of a UX designer is to define how a product feels. They create interactive patterns and write product use-case.

 

On the other hand, product designers generally develop the feel and display of the whole product. In addition, they also provide information about the functions of a few specific parts of the product. Furthermore, they find a market scope and plan out solutions accordingly. While UX designers create a prototype for a user interface and record user activities using different testing strategies. These strategies usually involve email surveys and A/B testing.

 #2 Focus and Responsibilities

The responsibilities and focus of a UX designer are different from that of a product designer.  A product design engineer focuses on business needs. However, the UX designer is fully focused on the user’s needs.     

 

For example, the product designer is mainly concerned about the product design process compatibility with respect to other business targets. But, a UX designer is focusing on different usability issues of end-user.

 

Thus, responsibilities provide a significant point of difference between UX design and product design classified by intent.

#3 Skillset Requirements

Skillset is yet another important point for understanding the difference between product design and UX design.  Both UX and Product designers need high design skills. But, here are some instances where they share differences.

 

Product designer vs UX designer

• UX designers focus on User experience while product designers make decisions that are business-related.
• Product designers are usually making general decisions during the design process. So, they are bound to have skillsets such as UI designing, user research, and visual design. Whereas, UX designers must have a good understanding of prototyping tools and wireframes.

In addition, both UX and product designers must possess soft skills for making a successful design. These soft skills are curiosity, empathy, collaborative nature, Critical thinking, and so on.

 

So, if we use these soft skills we get to realize that a UX designer has to be a Critical thinker if not curious or empathetic. They must study thoroughly and also be capable enough to arrange data sets. Further, they also use UX Copy so they should have good writing knowledge as well.

 

Unlike UX designers a product designer should have curiosity. They should also have good logical and analytical thinking. In short, strategic thinking ability is a must for a product designer. This is mainly because product designers deal with both products and markets.

# 4 Tools Requirement

The tools are deciding factor in setting up the differences. In general, UX and product designers use the same software or tool. But, usage differs including different processes.

 

For Instance, Product designers use mind-mapping tools and sketching tools. Whereas UX designers use prototyping design tools or wireframe design tools.

 

The main goal may seem the same but the connection between product design and UX design shows that methods are different.

 

These were the differences between a UX designer and a Product designer which highlighted some essential points separating UX design and product design. Although, in many instances, we observed some similarities, which makes us wonder if there are similarities between product and UX design.

Source: Webbybutter