What is Product Design and Product Design Process?
Product Design or a product designer has many names such as
- UX designer
- User interface designer
- Interaction Designer
- Information Architect
- Experience Designer
The job of a product designer may entail elements from all of the above titles. Many of these titles overlap in their responsibilities. Product designing is ideal for people who want to break into the tech industry and especially for those who are always on the go for identifying problems in everyday life and strive to make a difference by finding solutions to these problems. To become a successful product designer there is a protocol and few product design process that needs to be followed.
- Part 1: What is Product Design?
- Part 2: The history of Product Design
- Part 3: Product Design process and Steps
- Part 4: Product Design Cycle
- Part 5: The best tool for Product Design
What is Product Design?
Product design is the whole process. A product designer is someone that will make the solution of a problem look presentable. It will help clients identify, investigate, and validate the problem and ultimately craft, design, and test the solution. The key to product design is to understand what the problem is, to analyses the problem and find suitable solution for the person or demographics for whom the product is being created. Product design consists in imagining and creating objects for mass production. It is about problem solving, and visualizing the needs of the user by bringing a solution.
The product designer will basically be a part of the entire design system. Product designers will first analyses the problem, assemble a cross functional team from every corner of the business by brainstorming as many solutions as possible. The product designers will also communicate with the user research team and derive a test plan. Once that is done, wireframing and prototyping is also done by the product designer to put it across the users for a quick validation.
Through the entire process, there will be many changes to the design which the product designer will be a part of until the final design is complete.
The history of Product Design
Product Design branches out to a very similar discipline called industrial design.
Industrial design is the professional practice of designing products which are used by millions of people all around the world. The industrial designers not only focuses on how the product looks but also on its functionality and providing great user experience.
Prior to the era of mass production, craftsmen heavily relied on manual labour. Due to all the hard-work and labour, fewer products were manufactured which ended up costing more. With the era of industrialization and machine age, mass production started and more and more bulk products were being made extensively and it became a worldwide production.
Once industries were producing products that were being used worldwide, manufacturers wanted to product something that were not only functional but also aesthetically appealing. Therefore, over the year's industrial designer branched put into a category called product designing. Product designers main aim is to make a product looking beautiful but at the same time very efficient and always keeping the users comfort in mind.
Product Design process and Steps
- Empathize : The first step is to understand the problem you're trying to solve. It's important to emphasize with your clients and understand their pain points and frustrations. Once you can go deep and understanding the problem through the user's perspective, it will help you create a meaningful design
- Defining the problem: In this stage, designers will analyses and observe the information gathered in the empathizing stage. The define stage will help the designers to gather and brainstorm great ideas to establish features and functions which will allow them to solve loopholes and problems.
- Ideate: It's time to ideate and Generate ideas. There are many ideation techniques which can be used which will help the designers investigate and test ideas so it's easier to find the best way to either solve a problem or provide elements to circumvent it.
- Prototyping: Once designers are ready with the idea, they can now begin using a tool to digitize their ideas. With the help of prototyping tools, the designers can see how their product will work, the user flow, the colour. It will be a visual representation of how the product will look in real life.
- Test: Once the product is ready, the product is tested. It goes to users and clients or stakeholders to be tested on and if there are any suggestions or rectification to be made on the product it can be done.
Product Design Cycle
The life cycle of the product is associated with marketing and management decision within the business. The products go through 5 stages. Each stage has its own cost, opportunity, risks, and individual products differ in the life expectancy at any given stage of the product cycle.
1. Development – The birth of the idea and the product. Here maximum funds are required to carry the operation.
2. Introduction – This stage is about developing a market for product and building product awareness
3. Growth – This stage means that the product has been accepted by the consumer and the market and its increasing the market share.
4. Maturity- Once the product has been in the market for a long time, the sales will level off. You need to enhance your product for it to sustain in the market
5.Decline – With the declining stage, the product has reached its peak. The companies can either repeat the cycle by developing new features into the product or finally call it an end of the era.
The best tool for Product Design
Wondershare Mockitt is a beginner friendly product UX Design tool that can be used to create prototypes easily without having the knowledge of coding. It is a great tool for creating and sharing prototypes with clients and stakeholders.
Let's look at some of its key features
- On Wondershare Mockitt, there are plenty of widgets, icons, logos and templates that can be used directly to create your prototype. This is a great way to save time and easy for beginners
- This software is compatible with Phones, Desktop versions, iPhone, iPad, web, etc
- Users can easily drag and drop the templates and other design options on the canvas
- The software offers Interactive Transitions and animated tools to make the designs look life like and interesting. Micro interaction, dynamic widgets, real time preview and other features are also available
- It's very easy to collaborate with your entire team, share the projects with other teammates and the teams can also edit the same project in real time.
Guide on how to make product design with Mockitt
To make a product design prototype on Wondershare Mockitt you have to follow these simple steps
1. Project Creation
Once you go on the Wondershare Mockitt website, you will find the Create button on the left. From there select the toolbar and click on Project. Once you click that, a new page will appear where you will enter the details of the product such as the size and which perspective you want to create in. You can also select specific screen such as iPhone or windows.
2. Dropping the widgets
With the blank canvas, you can now drag and drop the design elements from the sidebar. In the sidebar you will find tons of widgets, templates, logos and designs to choose from. You can also change the overall appearance of the widget. If you have made a change to the widget, you can save that by marking it and also reuse it for other projects
3. Interactive links for Prototyping
To create interactive links for the prototype, select the widget you want to add to the link and then drag the “light bulb” to the target screen. With this you will get an interactive high fidelity prototype.
4. Preview of the project
Once you are done creating the entire prototype you can click on the preview button and get the live preview on the interface. You can use this life preview to make a presentation and Wondershare Mockitt will offer a real interactive experience.
5. Share
By selecting the Share button on the extreme right, you will find that you can generate a QR code or link to send it to people. Click on copy and then start sharing the link. There is also an option of exporting the prototype in different formats such as HTML, PNG or SVG.
