How Product Design Is Steadily Replacing UX

Harnil Oza

7 years ago

Not until now, the term ‘product’ was only employed in relation to material things that were commonly found in retail stores. Thanks to the recent strides observed in the mobile tech world, it is now coming to mean digital products. Nowadays, apps are being regarded as modern products. No doubt, quite a lot has changed in the last few years.

In any app development project, the design is the most crucial feature needed to build great products. These days, companies are not only setting themselves apart but also gaining a real edge over competitors through product design. This is because many users across the globe are using apps to interact and collaborate with different companies. They have unarguably risen to become an effective means of communication.

The role of design in app development

By means of a competent app, quite a lot of things can be achieved today, including interacting with loved ones, watching the latest news, buying flight tickets, and so on. The importance of design cannot be underestimated especially when it comes creating great app products. In fact, at this stage, app developers must not in any way, relegate the importance of product design to the background. Apart from providing users with a real comfortable experience, the design factor is an essential element responsible for keeping your app ahead.

So, rather than viewing your app design as a UI/UX exercise, it’s time to see it as a product design exercise. In the design industry, there are three major job players, including UI designers, UX designers, and product designers. Many people are yet to understand the difference between these job roles. It is important to note that the logical development of product design in the era of modern technology cannot be actually understood without attempting to distill what of these roles really signify.

UI (User Interface) Designer

Primarily, UI designers are concerned with the general outlook of the product. These set of professionals are responsible for designing those interactive features, such as pages of an app. UI designers focus on ensuring that the features incorporated and developed by UX designers, such as the visual language, style guide, and every other logic developed for a product are included. Basically, they are to ensure that the logic offered by the UX designer is visually communicated in the user interface. These are the people who are responsible for how users view the product in its final version. They are also responsible for the creation of a unified visual language and style guide applied across the product.

UX (User Experience) Designer

This group of specialists is primarily concerned with the feel of the product. They also control how a product works. UX designers are focused on enhancing user interaction by making it function smoothly and coherently. When it comes to designing an app, this group of designers tries to analyze the website design from the viewpoint of a user. In order to ensure efficient and simple interaction among users, UX designers endeavor to squash out any potential problems they encounter. These muddles are resolved by:

Creating products’ logic and prototyping an interface via wireframes.
Performing several kinds of product testing, so as to be able to critically analyze user activities. Some of these testing methods include email surveys, eye-tracking, A/B testing, etc.
Formulating patterns of interaction and creating various product user scenarios.

Product Designer

Most designers who are generally involved with the development of the look and feel of the entire product are referred to as product designers. Many app development companies see product designers are people who specialize in championing users’ needs.

In essence, the term ‘product designer’ is a combined role for the disciplines mentioned above. Basically, product designers specialize in designing experiences. When it comes to understanding how certain features should function, or the look and feel of certain UI control, product designers tend to provide UI and UX designers with the real insight as to how things should be done.

Precursors of Design Evolution

Like any other craft, design and its components largely depend on the ingenuity of their handler. You are bound to develop a deeper bonding with the minutest details as long as you have the right skills. By so doing, you stand to participate more actively in the entire design process. Within the product development process, there is a generally positive trend of app designers that are adopting the most of the responsibilities.

Design Thinking

When it comes to app development India, one of the most recent approach designers employ is design thinking. A product is generally believed to be great when its goals are clearly reflected. Primarily, design thinking focuses mainly on providing designers with credible endwise solutions. To this end, many designers are increasingly applying this approach as part of their product design strategies. Before setting out to develop an adept product solution, it is essential for the designers to bear in mind the main business objectives. When it comes to building a competent product solution the following phases are involved:

Empathize: in order to develop a deeper understanding their users, designers need to conduct an extensive research on the users’ needs and preferences.
Define: based on the results obtained from the research, they try as much as possible to identify those problematic areas users encounter and then highlight relevant opportunities for innovation based on the users’ needs.
Ideate: formulate a range of potential solutions by exploiting the required innovative skills.
Prototype: in order to test the efficiency of their solution, designers need to construct a prototype. This will also help them to determine if they are indeed on the right track or not. In due course, other relevant ideas might begin to crop up.
Test: designers also seek to get essential feedback from their users so as to be able to properly refine their ideas to develop a better solution.
Implement: this is the final step of the entire process which also requires much effort. Here, designers try as much as possible to ensure that their solution materializes and meets users’ needs.

Collaborative Work

In order to ensure a cross-functional working environment with a higher scope of accountability, several top app development companies often try to bring designers and app developers together into the development process. Apart from bringing all members to work together, this also helps to create a congenial and collaborative environment necessary for the development of highly innovative apps.

Continuous improvement

Adopting an approach of continuous improvement is needful in any design project as it makes for a successful product. Based on the qualitative and quantitative feedback obtained from users, designers need to ensure constant refinement of their product.