UX Design vs. Product Design: Key Differences

Quick Summary: If you want to develop a product but are confused between choosing a UX designer or a product designer, you should explore design vs product design and know the differences. What differentiates UX design from product design or vice versa? Why are they important? And what is better for your project? All these questions will be answered in this guide. Let’s explore;

When it comes to developing a digital product, you must be looking to make your product user-friendly, accessible, and engaging. UX design and product design are the two expertise that empower your product with all qualities. But have you ever wondered what are these two terms and what differentiates them? Both are different yet the same in some aspects.

In this article, we will explore UX design vs product design and find out the key differences and what makes them crucial for your project. At the end of this article, we will also explore whether you should hire a UX designer or product designer or choose both.

What is UX design?

When you talk about UX designs, it refers to the user experience that your product offers to your user. User experience does not mean bombarding your digital product with a bunch of features and functionalities. It must be relevant to your services, niche and give meaningful experiences.

Here in UX design, the interface is developed considering the wireframe of UI. UI again stands for the user interface, which takes care of the graphical layout of the interface. UX design is made keeping the users’ pov in mind. It is created after understanding the user journey with digital products. It involves plenty of things, like user research, their challenges/pain points, market and competitor analysis, design trends, and more.

A UX design service provider ensures design products that deliver value to users. It must solve their pain points effectively. The product lets users feel connected, engaged and have an overall positive experience while using it. Design agencies with vetted UX teams with diverse skill sets and good industry knowledge create digital products that appeal to the heart.

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The complex interface will draw the users away and will increase the churn rates of your product. Therefore, UX designing includes user research to make the design simple, guided, and easy to navigate.

What is product design?

Product design aims to reach the satisfying end of both users and businesses. It’s a process that helps the design team imagine, create, and iterate products. It’s not about ordinary products, it’s about the product that helps users solve their queries and pain points and address specific needs. It has a role in fulfilling users’ needs and business goals. Product design is the whole package after your product is ready to launch.

Take the example of a Coca-Cola bottle. It has been designing a way that users can recognize it just after looking at its bottle. Coca-Cola bottles can be instantly recognized just after looking at their shape, size, and color. And, it's not new, it has been recognizable for 100 years.

The product design process helps in creating a roadmap for the product to reach a wider audience. The best benefit of using product design is that it releases successful products in the long term. Product design majorly focuses on the business model rather than the user experience.

UX Design Vs Product Design: Key Differences

Business-Oriented Approach vs. User-Centric Approach

The product design is mostly business-oriented. It focuses on users and business requirements, marketing factors, technical support, and manufacturing processes.

While the UX design focuses on customer satisfaction, the product emphasizes the customers to know about their needs and the problems they face. It creates a user-centric, intuitive application that meets customers’ needs.

Roadmap of the Product vs. Brand Loyalty

The product design lays a foundation for the launch of the product. A good foundation with perfect execution and marketing will make your product popular, and your business will grow and reach new users.

When the product gets popular, it gains new customers and so loses them too. When new users don’t find the product user-friendly, they don’t return to it.

This increases the churn rates and decreases brand loyalty. An effective UX design reduces churn rates and increases brand loyalty.

Collaboration and Integration among UX and Product Designers

Product designers and UX designers often collaborate. When they collaborate, they utilize each other’s expertise for an overall experience of the product.

Product designers often use the expertise of UX designers. They use it to make their products not only business-oriented but also for aesthetic user experience.

Product Design vs UX Design: Key Similarities

UX designs and product designs have different approaches and focus. But, their main goal is to create an interface providing exceptional user experience.

Using these common skills is essential for both designers and businesses. It focuses on the nature of design and emphasizes the users’ needs. It merges users’ needs with product development.

Here, in the next portion of our blog, we will discuss the key similarities of the product and UX designs. Their shared goals, user research methods, and repetitive design processes are necessary for product development.

Creating an Exceptional User Experience

Even though product design focuses on business, its core is still the same as that of UX design. Both put users at the center of the design process.

They both conduct user research, gather feedback, and incorporate the new features in the product to meet the user's expectations.

Using User Research and Feedback

Both UX design and product research depend on research methods to get user research and feedback. Both use it to get insights about user behavior and preferences.

UX Design Vs Product Design: Why are They Important?

A well-designed product always builds a strong and loyal community of users. A product with loyal users always moves forward and has an upper hand in the market among the competitors.

A well-guided and intuitive UX and product design helps in gaining these loyal users. A user-centered, intuitive, and easy-to-use product always leaves a positive impact on the users. Users keep returning to it.

When product design runs successfully, it provides businesses with the boost they need. It maintains product desirability among the users by keeping it up-to-date with the latest world trends.

Product designers vs. UX designers: Differences in Skills

Product designers and UX designers come with distinctive skills. The skills of both designers are important and necessary to achieve milestones in product making. There are certain skills they both have in common. To know who is necessary for your product is important.
Understanding the specific requirements for each discipline, designers, and hiring managers can recognize the skillset for success and collaboration of these two crucial design roles. Product and UX designers need a combination of similar and distinctive skills.

Skills of Product Designers

• Excellent communication and teamwork skills to collaborate with multiple teams
• Information architecture experience to organize multiple user data into products
• Prototyping skills to develop prototypes for user feedback
• Lay a foundation for a user-centered design that can empathize with users’ behavior
• Visual designing skills and typography skills to make users feel comfortable about the product

Skills of UX Designers

• To conduct proper user research and usability testing to develop a user-centered design
• Information architecture
• Ability to prototype and wireframe
• Proficiency in converting user data into user-centered digital experiences
• Empathize with users’ behavior and design accordingly

Who is the best fit for your project?

That depends on the type of project your company is into. You need to figure out the goals of your project. The skillset it will require to make your product the market leader. Both comprehensive UX designers and product designers have some similar skills and some unique skills. Product designers certainly have more skills than UX UI designers given their diverse skills and working on a wide array of products. Product designers come with larger skill sets that help in the overall experience.

The UX UI designers come with detailed knowledge about their specific skills that can help you with the minimal level of problems regarding the user experience. But before hiring designers, you need to know about their expertise and the skills you need. Otherwise, you might end up hiring the wrong designer for your project. Most businesses opt to hire a dedicated design studio as they can meet their all expectations. Or, else you need to know about the comprehensive design, the product design, their differences, and their importance to make the right choice for your project.

Who to choose depends on your requirements in the project. If you want to make a successful business design and can afford to pay more, you can certainly go with product designers. But if you want to achieve perfection at a minor level on a low budget, UI UX designers are your shot to give.

Conclusion

When you want to develop a user-centered, market-leader product that is beneficial for both the users and the businesses, you know the difference between comprehensive designs and product designs. Both product and UX designers have unique skills that can make your product a market leader and user-friendly product. Hiring the right design agency is as important as design a product itself .