Product Designer | Responsibilities and Career Outlook

Product Designer – With the growing importance of design everywhere, and with more and more companies working on strategies to develop products, and doing market research to solve users’ problems, Product design becomes a very crucial part of any product’s lifecycle.

Product design is a set of processes that collectively is about imagining a product and then bringing it into reality by designing it and iterating until the desired prototype is formed.

In this article, we will discuss What is a Product Designer, What is Product Design, Product Designer skills and what are the roles and responsibilities of a Product Designer.

Product Designer

What is Product Design?

Product design is a set of processes that collectively is about imagining a product and then bringing it into reality by designing it and iterating until the desired prototype is formed. It involves all the processes from imagining the product to creating a final prototype for the development team to work on.

Product designing is not just about designing a product but also researching the user’s needs, looking at the market conditions, and considering all this while designing a product to solve the user’s problems. Product Design can be considered as a combination of UI/UX design, research, Design Systems, interviewing users, and testing the final prototype.

What is a Product Designer?

A Product Designer is a professional skilled in UI, UX, and Design Systems who is responsible for designing a product prototype focusing on creating functional, aesthetically pleasing, and user-friendly products.

What does a Product Designer Do?

What a product designer does daily is that he or she would be working on ideas and trying to understand users, trying to understand business needs, work with Design thinking methods, for example, working on a User Journey map or coming up with Product Design Storyboards. A product designer works on wireframes as well as on the Design Prototypes.

They conduct A/B testing, email surveys to collect feedback from the user to ensure that the project aligns with the Company’s goals.

Skills Needed To Be a Product Designer

These are some of the essential skills required to be a Product Designer:

Product Designer Hard Skills:

• Design Tools Proficiency: Adobe Creative Suite (e.g., Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign), Sketch, Figma, or other relevant tools used for creating prototypes, wireframes, and mockups.
• Typography, color theory, layout, and composition.
• Conduct user research, including interviews, surveys, and usability testing.
• Apply design thinking methodologies to identify user problems.

Product Designer Soft Skills:

• Excellent communication skills.
• Empathetic understanding of user needs.
• Creativity to generate unique design solutions.
• Ability to work collaboratively in multidisciplinary teams.

Tools Used by Product Designers:

• Design Software: Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign), Sketch, Figma, Adobe XD.
• CAD Software: SolidWorks, AutoCAD, Rhino, Fusion 360.
• Prototyping Tools: InVision, Axure, Proto.io, Marvel.
• 3D Printing and Modeling Software: Blender, ZBrush, Tinkercad.
• Hand Sketching and Drawing Tools: Pencils, markers, sketchbooks, graphic tablets.

Product Designer Roles and Responsibility

These are some of the important roles and responsibilities of a Product Designer:

1. User Research

A Product Designer on daily basis has to work on consuming or researching user data. Product Designers use software’s like Hotjar etc. to understand the things like user demographics that would allow them to understand their user personas before they get into the product design strategy. Researching about the user helps product designers to understand who are they trying to communicate to and who are they trying to serve, therefore, it brings a lot of value in their work.

2. Creating User Personas

The role of Product Designers is also to create and understand user personas. In larger companies, product designers might already have user personas documents that are ready for them to learn and study but in smaller companies or in startups product designers would need to come up with the user persona and try to document them.

3. Creating User Journey Maps

Another responsibility of a Product Designer is creating and understanding user journey maps. User journey map is where product designers try to picture themselves as the user so they can picture the stages that a user goes through from the moment they find out about the product to the time they buy it or use it.

4. Developing Storyboards and wireframes

The next responsibility of a Product Designer is to develop Storyboards. Storyboards is a frame by frame composition of what your products going to look like from a user interface point of view. Storyboards includes what are the relationships between one interface to another and it gives us a blueprint of the product itself in a low fidelity wireframe version.

5. Designing and Building Prototypes

Product Designers on a daily basis also work on designing and building prototypes. Product Designer design and build prototypes to showcase their idea to get people and stakeholders and team members to understand their idea and the best way to do it is to demo a prototype.

6. Conducting User Interviews and Testing

Once the prototyping is done, oftentimes Product Designers would like to test it before going into a development production cycle and the best way to do that is really to test your product get some feedback. So Product Designers would run User Testing, User Interviews, A/B Testing etc. that would allow them to understand whether their design works or not.

7. Developing Design Systems

The role of Product Designers is also to develop design systems. Design Systems are required as the company or the brand grows and it becomes really important for product designers to have a library of reusable design components to make the workflow a lot more efficient. Design Systems helps designers to be consistent when they work with a team of other designers.

8. Collaborating with other teams

The final role or responsibility of Product Designers is to collaborate with engineers, with the marketing team and other designers to bring out the best in the product. Collaboration becomes a very important skill when working on a larger product because there will be a lot of input from different stakeholders and different perspectives making collaboration a very important part of the workflow.

Product Designer Salary and Career Outlook

In the India, the average salary for a Product Designer is about ₹12,32,800 annually. For example, on average, an additional cash payment for a Product Designers in India amounts to ₹1,01,000 that ranges between ₹51,000 and ₹1,90,700.

For instance, a Product Designer in the US can earn anywhere between $90,000 and $170k annually depending on their position, with senior Product Designers receiving even greater remuneration. Metropolitan states’ salary will be better because their living costs are higher. Nevertheless, you should always remember that this market is moving fast and depending on the growth of demand for Product Designers’ salaries might change over time.

The career outlook for product designers is promising, with increasing demand across various industries due to the growing emphasis on user-centered design.

Conclusion

Product design is a set of processes that collectively is about imagining a product and then bringing it into reality by designing it and iterating until the desired prototype is formed.

A Product designer is now a crucial part of the product lifecycle and from corporates to the startups, everyone is first working on the product design and then on actually building the product.

We hope that this article helped you improve your understanding about Product Designer and you got something valuable out of it.

Product Designer – FAQs

What qualifications do I need to be a product designer?

To become a product designer, typically a bachelor’s degree in industrial or product design, proficiency in design software, knowledge of manufacturing processes, and a strong portfolio showcasing design projects are required.

What is the salary of a product designer?

The salary of a product designer in India ranges from ₹300,000 to ₹1,500,000 per annum, with entry-level positions typically earning lower and senior roles commanding higher salaries, depending on experience, location, and industry demand.

Is UI UX the same as product design?

UI/UX design focuses on digital interface and user experience, while Product Design encompasses broader aspects including physical and digital product development, often with UI/UX design as a subset.

How can I become a product designer after 12th?

To become a Product Designer after 12th grade, pursue a bachelor’s degree in industrial or product design, develop design skills through practice and portfolio building, and seek internships or practical experience to gain industry expertise.

What degree is good for product design?

BA in Product Design.

Which entrance exam for product design?

In India, entrance exams for product design include UCEED (for IITs and other institutes), NID DAT (for NID campuses), and CEED (also for postgraduate programs).

Is there a future for Product Designers?

Yes, there is a promising future for product designers with the growing emphasis on user-centered design, innovation, and technological advancements at an annual rate of 25%.