What is Product Design: A Step-by-Step Guide

Let’s suppose you buy a new mobile phone. You love its sleek and slim design. The color attracts you more to the device. You find every button just where you want it, and the way the screen turns on is amazing. This may be the best mobile you have ever bought. But how is it so perfect? What is the secret behind its design that resonates with you so much? It’s all thanks to the efforts put into the product’s design.

Did you know that 90% of your customers form an opinion about your brand based on your product design? Yes, that’s how much it matters.

In this guide, we aim to explain to you what is product design. We’ll explain the steps to create a product design, too. Let’s dive in and learn more!

What is Product Design?

If a business wants to launch a new product, its top priority is its design. They decide this on the basis of their target audience through user research and more. But what’s important is the product’s main design:

• How will they represent their idea through it?
• How will the product meet a user’s needs?

A product’s design revolves around answering these questions. A product design isn’t just limited to one business. Once you design a worthy product, it can be used famously around the world, too. However, product design generally involves designing the whole body of a product.

Why does product design matter?

What is product design importance? Well, imagine you want to launch something new. Or you want someone to invent something new. One of the first things you’ll do is visualize what you want the product to do. You’d even want to make the product accessible. This is what the product designing stage is all about. When it comes to digital products, you can:

• Focus on enhancing the user experience. Happy clients equal more revenue!
• Help build a strong brand identity and reputation. This will automatically boost your company’s success.
• These days, everyone prefers eco-friendly designs. Modern product designs mostly focus on eco-friendly methods to reduce waste.
• Visualizing and experimenting with the product at the design stage allows you to make the product accessible. This allows your product to be available for everyone.

The product design process is simple. It can actually be fun. This is because product designing lets you be innovative and productive. You can work alone or with a team, conduct user research, and unleash your creativity. What is product design, if not an approach to solving worldly problems through creativeness?

How does product design work?

The product design process is easy to follow when done right. Here, we’re showing the six vital steps in designing a product. It’s most important for you to follow the steps in order. Let’s see what is product design steps to begin the process:

Step 1: Research

How do you know where to begin? This starts with research. When you consider product design, it’s specifically about user research. You wouldn’t know where to start with your product without it. You can conduct user research by:

• Creating a clear plan about what you want to learn about your users. This will help you start easily.
• Use tools that allow you to gather analytics, surveys, and test ideas. This way, you can collect some valuable feedback.
• Analyze this data and create notes from these insights. They can be a game-changer when you start designing your product.

After researching your users thoroughly, you’ll know what they want and how your product can meet their needs. After this, you can create a plan! Now you know what is the first step in what is product design.

Step 2: Plan

This step is where you’ll create a plan. After that you will know what is product design steps. Our aim is to design a user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing product. There isn’t much technicality involved here. We’ll just focus on creating the product’s concept. This is the time to brainstorm with your team members and get creative! You can plan better by:

• Make wireframes and blueprints for your product. If it’s software, creating low to high-fidelity wireframes can help you visualize your product’s design. You can also use tools for rapid prototyping to test your idea.
• Creating working prototypes can help you visualize the user flow and navigation of your product. This will help you identify potential issues in the user journey and fix them.
• Rapid prototyping will help you validate your idea. This can help you avoid costly mistakes after launch.

Fixing mistakes at the prototyping stage is much better than fixing them after you develop and launch the product. It does sound tempting to launch your product ASAP; we’ve been there, too. However, experience tells us how important it is to focus on validating your idea.

Step 3: Test

What is product design testing?

Testing your product design is vital before you move on to the launch. Businesses are generally in competition. This is why they’re eager to launch their products. You may think that you can fix bugs after your product is released. But depending on your product, it can be up to 30 times more expensive. It is always best to test during the early development stages. You can do this by:

• Gather a bunch of users to test your prototype. Conduct user interviews, surveys, and usability tests.
• After you conduct some tests, you’ll gain valuable feedback. Make valuable notes and points out of this.
• Since you’re still in the prototyping stage, you can easily adjust. Nowadays, there are several no-code tools. They let you edit your prototype in seconds.

You need to pay attention when you test. Try to focus on how your participants feel when they use your product. It’ll help you focus on the user experience of your product design. Emotional clues are worth noting.

Step 4: Iterate and Improve

Put that feedback to good use. What is product design best way to improve? The insights you gain from your testing page are like the key to your product’s success. When you prioritize a user’s needs, you deliver exactly what you need. You wouldn’t have to worry about sales anymore. Let’s see how you can improve:

• Feedback from users might be like,” It wasn’t so easy for me to find the home button.” Designers get too familiar with their designs. They often don’t see what’s in front.
• You can use this simple feedback to improve navigation and site architecture. It’s your responsibility to view your prototypes from different perspectives. You should make your product accessible.
• Start iterating your design and improving it until you have what you need. Conduct tests again. Keep iterating until you get to your goal.

Iteration and improvement pave the way for the final development. You’ll be able to make sure that there are no bugs. So, what is product design? It’s a fun way to innovate and get creative with your designs.

Step 5: Development and launch

In this step, UI and UX designers will work on designing. During this time, developers will get to work. You may wonder, what is product design time period? Depending on your product’s requirements, this could take a few weeks to even a year or more. Let’s see what you’ll do in this step:

• Find the best developers to avoid bugs during development. This will help you avoid issues later on.
• Let the UX designers get to work and ensure responsive designs. They’ll work on the visual details and interactions.
• When everything is done, and you’re satisfied with the complete product design, deploy it safely.

After everyone is done collaborating on the project, you’ll have to put effort into organizing a launch. Ensuring safe launch and deployment is key. Once you launch your digital product, you’re good to go, and your product design is complete.

Now you know what is product design and its process. To ensure that your product design comes out perfect, it’s essential to follow the key elements of product design.

What are the 5 key elements of product design?

There are a few key elements of product design that you need to follow for a design’s success. Your product needs to introduce something new if you want it to stand out. It takes seconds for clients to switch to a competitor if they don’t like your product. Let’s see what these 5 key elements are:

Functionality

This aspect covers the purpose of a product. How it functions and how easy it is to use matter a lot for users. In this element, you ensure the product’s usability.

Aesthetics

This aspect is about the visuals of a product. Its colors, shape, and imagery all matter. You have to create a balance between your users and representing your brand.

Quality

Your product’s quality represents your business a lot. No company wants to be known for bad-quality products. This element ensures that you deliver excellent quality.

Sustainability

Creating sustainable products does good for more than your business. Think about how it’ll resonate with your users and impact the world. Sustainable product designs are eco-friendly and reduce waste, too.

User Experience

How a user feels when interacting with your product significantly impacts their experience with your business. Product design should focus on delivering a good UX.

Following these five elements for product design can help you deliver a product that stands out. Not just because of its design or functions, it’ll also be eco-friendly and sustainable.

Are UI/UX design and product design the same?

We know all of this might get confusing. After all, all of this is just about designing. UX and product design tend to sound very similar. However, there are several differences between UI, UX, and product design. We’ll explain below how they’re different:

UI Design

You know that feeling when you regularly use an app, and it suddenly changes its button placements? At first, you feel a little frustrated, but later on, you get used to it. All these buttons, text, and element placements make up a User Interface. This is what a UI design is all about.

A good user interface helps with navigation. When it’s easy and straightforward to explore software, users leave happy. This also means that these users are likely to come back.

UX Design

Have you ever used a digital product or software and loved the way it performed? How it was good at loading things quickly and had the perfect colors. That product appealed to you because it didn’t crash and updated automatically. All of this was your experience with it.

This is what a good user experience or UX is. UX designers work on creating software that focuses on delivering the best experience.

Product Design

What is product design? Product design is the process of creating a product that completely caters to a user’s needs. It also focuses on representing a business. It covers aspects like the packaging, shape, and feel of a product.

So, now you know what is product design and how it’s different from UX and UI design. All three revolve around user needs. But each has a different approach. Every designer uses different software, methods, and tools in their processes.

What are some of the popular tools for product design?

Digitally designing your product is the easiest way to visualize it. This is especially useful when creating something with a new shape or entirely new look. Here are some of the popular tools we’re listing. These can help you create visual product designs:

Fusion 360

Fusion 360 is a unique design platform. It lets you create 3D models of literally anything. This platform can help you visualize and brainstorm with your product design.

• Allows you to simulate and test with various shapes. It’s a cloud-based platform that makes collaboration and quick iteration very easy.
• It lets you conduct motion studies and thermal analysis to test and optimize your designs. It is like a form of rapid prototyping.

OnShape

Maybe the products you want to design are a bit more technical, like machinery. This is where OnShape can do wonders for you. It’s an amazing platform for complex designs.

• Collaborate easily on this secure and smooth platform. It’s mainly used for mechanically computer-aided designs (MCAD).
• This software allows coding. You can even print your 3D designs. OnShape gives you full ownership of the designs you make.

CATIA

CATIA is a high-end platform. It’s also technical software that’s more useful when creating product designs for heavy machinery. Yet, it’s useful for some basic products, too.

• Allows analysis and stress testing for products. This allows you to properly understand the aerodynamics of your design’s structure.
• Gives you control over design modifications. This helps create models with details and independent components.

Figma

Figma is a popular tool for UI and UX design. But what is its importance in what is product design? This tool can help product designers in several ways.

• Maybe the product you’re designing isn’t that detailed. You’re in need of a rapid prototyping platform that allows quick collaboration and iteration. Figma is the best choice.
• Figma offers thousands of free plugins. They can be especially helpful in the initial stages.

Wrapping it up

You now know what is product design. Naturally, product design is a process that allows you to be creative. It can be a productive approach that allows innovation. It can focus on solving a lot of worldly problems, too. It’s important to follow the steps listed here. Prototyping and testing are two vital aspects you should never miss in what is product design.

At Linkitsoft, we prioritize planning, prototyping, and testing every product, app, or software before launch. We aim to deliver the best to our clients; this helps us pay attention to the usability and impact of our projects. If you have any product ideas and need help with the development, design, or launch, we’re here.

Consult us today; let’s discuss your requirements and give shape to your ideas. Waiting around won’t help. This is the technical industry. It’s a place where everyone is striving to get ahead. Allow Linkitsoft to take you to new heights today!

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