What is a Product Designer?
Product design is the process of creating a digital or physical product which aligns to the user's needs and business objectives. Product Design in tech refers to creating software products, while Industrial Design refers to creating physical products.
A product designer encompasses the whole design process from understanding the user with UX research, conceptualizing a product's structure with UX Design and designing a delightful experience with UI Design.
"At Slack, product designers are responsible for a whole host of things, from the UI to UX and beyond β sometimes all the way down to software sound effects. Itβs our job to make the product come together in a way that our customers will find delightful and simple to use.β
What does a Product Designer do?
A product designer's responsibilities include:
- Communication: His first mission is to create a product which aligns to the business objectives. He will communicate effectively with engineers, product managers, and founders.
- UX Research: His second mission is to create a product which aligns to user's needs doing interviews, research users, and influence the product features to build.
- User Experience/UX Design: His third mission is to create a unique functional user experience based on this knowledge. He creates interaction patterns and writes product usage scenarios based on these findings, with wireframes, and low-fidelity mock-ups to review and validate with team members.
- UI/Visual Design: His fourth mission is to translate all of this into a visually clear and appealing experience creating high-fidelity mockups using tools like Figma and sometimes implement the designs (UI or Design Engineer, Front End).
A product designer's scope differs depending on the type of company. As a founding designer, you will take on all these hats which is ideal to start a product, launch an MVP and create the first product and design team. In a bigger company such as Microsoft, you can be a Product Designer on a specific feature squad, or need deeper expertise to join the Research for Visual Design team.
What are the skills required to become a Product Designer?
The following hard skills are looked out for in a product designer role:
- UX Skills: Wireframing and prototyping, conducting research, and testing product features. Prototyping tools can include Framer, Principle, or Figma.
- Visual Design Skills: A sense of aesthetics, and some knowledge of the tools used in visual design. These can include Figma, Sketch, or Adobe Creative Suite.
- Tech Savy: Learn how to code basic products to communicate effectively with engineers always helps. Develop data visualization techniques to make complex data legible and useful for a range of users.
- Project management experience: Having some practice seeing the bigger picture of a process, being able to strategize, and knowing how to execute a vision can be very valuable.
Soft skills are also an essential aspect of the role:
- Communication and written skills to effectively collaborate with team members, lead user interviews, share your insights and impact the product roadmap.
How to become a Product Designer
In order to become a Product Designer, you need to gain relevant skills and experience:
If you're in your studies, you can join a Bachelorβs degree in industrial design, Product Design, Human Computer Interaction, User Experience, Interaction Design.
If you finished your studies or considereing a career change, you can gain relevant skills with with free resources to get started. There are plenty of online courses from Udacity, SuperHi, Ironhack, Memorisely, Uxcel, UX Beginner and more. Then, you can join a more intensive bootcamp such as Career Foundry, IronHack, Flatiron or Design Crew.
While gaining skills, make sure you gain real-world experience with internships, or freelance missions. Demonstrated experience working in product or service design or using design thinking to solve problems will land you more roles than any certification.
Build a portfolio, with one or two specific case studies that you worked on.
How much does a Product Designer make?
UX Design Institute reports an average salary of $102,000, with junior product designers designers earning around $72,000, mid-level designers about $100,000, and senior designers approximately $129,000.
FAQ
What is a Product Designer vs. UX Designer?
- A product designer encompasses the whole design process from understanding the user with UX research, conceptualizing a product's user experience with UX Design and designing a delightful experience with UI Design. A UX designer designs with a focus on making products pleasant to use and navigate, and generally has a more narrow focus than product designers.
How much does a Senior Product Designer make?
- UX Design Institute reports an average salary of $129,000 for senior designers approximately in the US.
- Levels.fyi reports an average Senior Product Designer salary range in United States from 139β―462 β¬ to 268β―089 β¬.
