A Complete Overview of Product Design

Product design is the process involving complete development, innovation, and designing a product that can used by customers and fulfills their needs. It involves different stages where the development of a product takes place. A product needs to satisfy customers’ needs and meet market requirements. Also, the design should be cost-effective and completely new and creative.

Always keep in mind that you are designing for people when creating products. Let’s look at how to define an optimal product vision, strategy, and design process in more detail.

A Complete Overview of Product Design

How to learn Product Design:

• Reading books that are based on product designing and developing interest in this field. Different publications print on different topics which can be used to learn about the basics of product design.
• Online classes and tutorials are available on the internet. One can surf the internet to find out more about this field.
• Attend workshops- whenever there is a workshop which is related to product designing are conducted you should take part in the same.
• Internships provide experience which can help you grow and learn different things.
• Project-based learning can be done in which you can work on a project and learn more about product design.

Design thinking has always been applied to product design (whether physical or digital) by good designers because it focuses on the entire product development process, not just the “design phase.”

Importance of Product Design:

• Product designing helps many industries and businesses to grow in the market. It plays a very crucial part in everyone’s life. It encourages creative thinking and innovation. New ideas contribute significantly to products and change the way they look.
• Positive impact on society.
• People’s perception changes the way they look at a product.
• It helps other industries to sell their product more easily.

Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that uses the designer’s toolkit to integrate people’s needs, technological possibilities, and business success requirements.

A Complete Overview of Product Design

Scope in Product Design:

• Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Here you get a chance to explore the field of innovation and designing. You also get experience as an entrepreneur and learn entrepreneurship skills while working in this field.
• Freelancing: Product designers also work for other companies as freelancing independently and offer them services like designing and creative ideas.
• Product management: product managers look after the overall process of product designing and provide a link between different groups like designers, engineers, sales and testing so that the finished product can reach the customer in the best way possible.
• Teaching and Education: Providing knowledge about the designing among school students. People who have interest in this field can teach others and help them to achieve there goals.

Step involved in Product Design:

• Selecting a product: It is very important to select a topic which is based on peoples interest, and which satisfy the needs of society. The process involves research, data analyzation and observation. Research should be based on and around that product so that more users are interested in your product.
• Ideation: After proper research on the product, try to make the product practical and user friendly by designing a basic idea of that product. Ideating involves different process-
• Problem statement: Before entering into the main part of product designing it is crucial to define problem statements and problem which are important to address are developed in such a way that it solve users problem.
• Involvement of all team members: All team members should be part of the process so that different ideas and solution are implemented properly. Everyone’s opinion are unique and help in overall development of product easily
• Idea validation: Ones all ideas are selected it should be written or drawn so that the product looks practical and easy to go forward in the process of development.
• Selection of material: Material selection is very crucial process in the development of a product. Materials are broadly classified into metals, semiconductors, natural materials like wood, ceramics and plastic. Before selecting a material for you product also keep in mind about its cost ,weight, properties, lifespan, availability and environment impact.
• Prototyping: Prototyping is the process in which a model of the product is made or designed which is in working condition and is complete replica of the finished product. It is very fundamental process in product designing which help to make a conclusion about a product and suggest what are the changes required to improve the product. prototyping can be analyzed to improve the user experience. Prototype can be giver to people so that they can give their feedbacks and suggest changes.
• Development: When all the above process are executed then its time to develop the real product and design the product to its fullest. Work on reviews and people feedbacks given based on your prototype model . Solve the problems which are seen in the prototype to improve people’s experience while they are using that product that will increase people’s interest in your product. designing should be done in such a way that it is cost effective as well as vey pleasing to customers. Show your creativity and innovate a completely different design which has to become center of interaction for all .
• Testing: Testing as the name suggest is done properly keeping in mind of the following condition:
  • Test the design, weather it is good for that product.
    Identify any defects and flaws in the designed product.
    Test the durability of the designed product.
    Test the designed product for different environment and cases.
    Check the quality of the product.
• Documentation: It is important to document your product and decide the other features of the design. There are some regulation which the finished product must met like safety, environment impact and other certification based on your product.
• Feedback: People feedbacks are very important. You can work on your design and improve if required. Identify the mistakes and try to work on that mistake.

What are the Design Process in Product Design:

The design process is a series of steps that product teams take from start to finish when developing a product. A solid, well-structured process is critical for two reasons: It assists you in remaining focused and on schedule. While it is impossible to provide a universal design process that applies to all projects, a general flow for designing new products can be described.

Prosuct Design Process

The following steps are included in this flow:

• Creating a Product Vision
• Product investigation
• User research
• Ideation
• Design
• Validation and testing
• Following-up activities

1. Creating a Product Vision:

The success of a product design project is dependent on developing a clear product vision and strategy prior to beginning the design process. Without a clear vision, teams may lack a common understanding of the product’s purpose, which can have negative consequences. A product vision serves as a guiding force, capturing critical information that informs the development team about the product’s goals. It aids in establishing boundaries and defining what the product is not intended to be.

• Develop a Value Proposition: The value proposition defines the product’s key features: what it is, who it is for, and when and where it will be used. The value proposition assists the team and stakeholders in reaching an agreement on what the product will be.
• Working Backwards: A simple technique known as “working backwards” adds clarity and definition to a product’s vision. As the name implies, the product team begins with target users and works backwards until it reaches the bare minimum of requirements to satisfy what it is attempting to achieve. While this approach can be applied to any product decision, it is especially important when developing new products or features.
• Establish Success Criteria: It is critical to have a specific business goal in mind for the product. If you don’t know what the business goal is and how success will be measured at the start of the project, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Defining explicit success criteria during this phase, such as expected monthly sales, key performance indicators (KPIs), and so on, establishes targets for evaluating progress. This also aids in the establishment of a more results-driven process.
• SET-UP a Project Kickoff Meeting: The kickoff meeting brings together all of the key players to establish appropriate expectations for both the team and stakeholders. It provides a high-level overview of the product’s purpose, who is involved in designing and developing the product, how they will collaborate, and what the stakeholders’ expectations are (such as KPIs and how the product’s success should be measured).

2. Product investigation:

Product investigation (which naturally includes user and market research) provides the other half of the foundation for great design once the product vision has been defined. Conduct thorough research before making any product decisions to increase your chances of success. Keep in mind that time spent researching is never wasted.

• Conduct User Research: A great user experience requires thorough user research. Conducting user research allows you to discover what your customers truly require. When it comes to product research, researchers have several methods to choose from.
• Users Interviews: Direct conversations is a well-known user research technique that can provide the researcher with a wealth of information about users. This technique can help researchers assess user needs and feelings both before and after a product is released.
• Online Surveys: Surveys and questionnaires allow the researcher to collect a larger volume of responses, which allows for more detailed analysis. Online surveys are frequently used for quantitative research, but they can also be used for qualitative research.
• Contextual Inquiry: Contextual inquiry is a type of field study in which the researcher observes and studies people in their natural environment as they go about their daily activities.
• Conduct Market Research: If you want to create a great product, you can’t ignore your competitors. To be competitive, you must understand what products are on the market and how they perform. As a result, conducting market research is an essential part of the product design process. Your ultimate goal should be to create a solution that will give you a competitive advantage.

3. User research:

Following research, the product team must make sense of the data gathered. The analysis phase’s goal is to glean insights from the data gathered during the product research phase. Capturing, organizing, and inferring what users want, think, or need can assist UX designers in understanding why they want, think, or need that.

4. Ideation:

During the ideation phase, team members brainstorm a variety of creative ideas to address the project goals. It is critical during this phase not only to generate ideas but also to confirm that the most important design assumptions are correct. Product teams use a variety of techniques for ideation, ranging from sketching, which is useful for visualizing how certain aspects of the design will look, to storyboarding, which is used to visualize the overall interactions with a product.

• Genearte Ideas (How users will interact with a Product):
• User Stories:
• Plan the Structure of the Product:
• Generate Ideas for how your user interface will look like:
• Validate Ideas
• Design Sprint

5. Design:

The product team should have a clear understanding of what they want to build after the ideation phase. During the design phase, the product team will begin to develop and implement concepts to solve the client’s problem.

• Prototyping: Prototyping must be a part of your design process if you want to provide a good user experience. A prototype is a working model of an idea that allows you to test it before constructing the full solution. A prototype typically begins small, with you designing a few key components of a product (such as key user flows), and grows in breadth and depth over multiple iterations as required areas are built out. A prototype’s finalized version is sent to development.
  • Prototyping
  • Reviewing
  • Refining
• Paper Prototyping: Many digital prototyping tools are available today to help us create prototypes with the least amount of effort, but sketching on paper remains the most important tool for any designer. This is because sketching allows designers to quickly explore a wide range of design alternatives without devoting a lot of time and effort to each one.
• Design Handoff: The design will be ready for production at the end of the prototyping phase. It is the point at which the designer passes the design to a developer for coding. A designer must clearly communicate to the developer how each piece of the design looks and works during the developer handoff. Multiple layers of information and detail must be conveyed, and designers and developers must be on the same page.
• Design Specification: Design specs are detailed documents that provide product information such as user interface design details (colors, character styles, and measurements) and information (flows, behaviors, and functionality). This document is used by a developer to put the design into production and build the product according to the designer’s specifications.

6. Validation and Testing:

The testing and validation phase assists a product team in ensuring that the design concept functions as intended. Product testing is an art form in and of itself. If you get it wrong, you won’t learn anything. If you do it correctly, you may receive incredible, unexpected insights that may even change your product strategy. Typically, the validation phase begins after the high-fidelity design has been fleshed out. This phase, like the product research phase, varies depending on the project.

• Testing with the Product Team (DogFooding): “Eating your own dog food” is a popular testing technique. Once the design team has iterated on the product until it is usable, testing it in-house is an excellent way to identify the most critical issues.
• Testing with Real users: The basic idea behind a usability test is to determine whether a product’s design works well with the target users. It is relatively simple to put a concept to the test with representative users: A product team will be able to see how the target audience uses the product once an interactive version of a product idea is in the hands of real users.
• Diary Study: A diary study can be used to examine how users interact with a product over a long period of time (from a few days to a month or more). Participants in the study are asked to keep a diary and log specific information about their activities during this time.

7. Following-up activities:

Just because a product is officially launched does not mean that the product design process is complete. In reality, product design is an ongoing process that lasts as long as the product is in use. The team will learn from their mistakes and improve the product.

• Metrics Analysis: Metrics can also reveal unexpected behaviors that are not explicitly stated in user tests. The product team must constantly monitor product performance to determine whether it meets customer expectations and whether improvements can be made.
• Feedback From Users: In order to avoid having to rework a product, it is best to incorporate feedback into the process. The product design process should include regular user feedback (in the form of online surveys or analysis of customer support tickets). This data will be used to improve the product.
• A/B Testing: When designers are unable to decide between two competing elements, an A/B test is an appropriate testing method. This testing method entails randomly assigning one of two versions to an equal number of users and then reviewing analytics to determine which version achieved the specific goal more efficiently. 

Tools used for Product Design:

• Computer-Aided Design design (CAD) Software: It is a software to create 2D and 3D model on a digital system it has many different features which can be used to design a model based on your interest accurately without any error. Popular computer aided CAD tools include :
  • SolidWorks
  • AutoCAD
  • Rhino
  • Fusion 360
• Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) Software: Complex tasks such as fluid dynamics, structure analysis, Multi physics simulations and Electromagnetic analysis can be easily be performed on this software.
• Project management software: The software provide a collaborative platform for managing different tasks, schedules, resources, and communication within teams. Examples are:
  • Basecamp
  • Notion
  • Jira
  • Trello
• Simulink: Simulink is used in various fields especially in the design and analysis of dynamic systems and simulating dynamic systems. Simulink provides an extensive library of pre-built blocks which can be used by users easily. It allows you to predict how a system will perform under specific conditions which is crucial for ensuring efficiency of model. It helps to test and perform real word experiments without actually performing it in real life and without spending on experiments .
• Keyshot: It provides real time rendering software which is fast as well as user friendly. It has very diverse and well defined library which include multiple textures and environments. Keyshot supports VR and AR experiences, enabling users to create virtual and augmented reality presentations which can help them to design a product more effectively and realistic. Alternatives of keyshot are:
  • Lumion
  • V-ray
• 3D modelling: 3D modelling is important process in product designing especially when you are working with complex task.3D modelling devices help to visualize the designing. Examples of 3D modelling software are :
  • Blender
  • sketchup
• Prototyping: Prototyping can be done using different software with personalization and efficiency tools which can be done to help in making prototype are:
  • Figma
  • InVision

Trends in Product Design:

People are entering into more environmental friendly products to minimize the effect on environment. Customers are attracted to simple and minimal designs and which entertain their interest. Try to designing products that are accessible to a wide range of users and add different subjects. Integrate technology in the designs that reflets modernization and unique designs.

Important points about Product Design:

• Market research
• Innovation is key
• cost management
• Trend
• Prototyping
• Testing

The Problem in Product Design:

• Competition: It is important to understand market trends and work on trending topics. Different sectors compete with each other to develop the same product. In that case product designers face a lot of competition. New ideas has to be presented to the customer to stand out in market.
• Lack of research: Product designers often face this problem. They do not have much knowledge about the product which certainly end up giving up. A proper research is very important before starting a project.
• Budget constraints: Product development and designing need a good budget to start working whereas most of the product designers do not have enough budget. This could result in failure .
• Inadequate resource: Most of the time people do not have enough resource to start their project and eventually manage to just satisfy customer needs.

How to solve and tackle problems in Product Design?

• Try to be unique and do not follow anyone.
• Try to research before starting a project
• Before starting your project, fix the budget.
• Use the free resources available on internet.

Advantages of Product Design:

• Competitive environment: There’s always a competition between different groups to create the best out of there product so that it can easily become successful and stand out among all customers .
• Personalization: The designer has full freedom to change the product design according to his choice and make the product more attractive.
• Increase Problem: Solving skills-while working with product designing it increases the creativity and problem solving skills .
• Scalability: It is developing field and well defined products are easier to scale among users. You can increase the popularity of a product by showing your designing skills.
• Creativity and innovation: Design thinking increases your creative thinking and ability to explore different, unconventional and innovative ideas.
• Problem solving skill: Working on different ideas and products increases the power of thinking and significantly increases you problem solving skills. It can be developed during designing a product.

Disadvantages of Product Design:

• Designs may be harmed if there are too many flaws.
• The high cost of design may have an impact on improvements.
• Reduced variety results in decreased consumer appeal.

Important things to remember for Product Design:

• To fit the project the process should be morph: There is no one-size-fits-all solution for the product design process. The process should be tailored to the project’s specific needs, both business and functional.
• The design of a product is not a linear process: Many product teams believe that design is a linear process that begins with product definition and ends with testing. But that assumption is incorrect.
• Product Design is an ongoing process: Unlike more traditional forms of design (such as print design), the design process for digital products is iterative, and designers should never assume they’ll get everything right the first time.
• The Design of a Product is based on communication: While creating great design is important, communicating great design is just as important. Even the best ideas will fail if they do not receive approval from the team and stakeholders. As a result, the best product designers are also excellent communicators.

Conclusion:

We have discussed about the product design, importance of product designing, scope in product design and what are the problems a designer face and their solution. What are process involved in it and the tools used in product designing which help to built more effective designs. you can also share your product using social media apps(Linkedin, Reddit, ProductHunt, FaceBook, IndieHackers, MakerLog, , Instagram and Twitter).

Frequently asked question(FAQ’s):

1. How to start a carrier in product design?

Start with learning basics of product design and refer books to known how it works and what are the scope in this field.

2. What are the challenges in product design?

some of the major problems are Budget constraints, tough competition and time management.

3. What are the stages of the product design process?

The key features in product design are research, ideation, concept development, prototyping and testing.

4. How can I stay updated on the latest developments in product design?

You can read newspaper which are related to product design or blogs which are published on regular basis on internet.

5. How to build connection with other product designers socially on internet ?

Follow people who are also interested in this field ,read their post and contact them socially and share thoughts.