Many apps fail because of their learning curve. While they’re filled with features promising to simplify your life, they end up complicating it with unintuitive workflows. This is a classic example of product design gone awry.
In contrast, when product design hits the mark, it can transform users’ everyday lives, spark joy and revolutionize entire industries. While it’s a cliché, much of Apple’s success can be attributed to its innovative product design.
That said, good product design isn’t exclusive to Apple. If you’re a designer, entrepreneur or developer, you can also understand the “how” behind successful products by diving deeper into the world of product design and putting it to use with modern tools like Wix Studio design.
What is product design?
Product design is the process of identifying real-world problems and creating design solutions that are functional, visually appealing and aligned with business goals. In short, it’s about creating stuff that’s useful and usable—and makes good business sense.
Product designers are the ones making sure that new websites, apps or physical products aren’t just pretty but truly add value to users’ lives. They work closely with product managers and the product team to bring the vision to life.
A brief history of product design
Today, we often think about products in a technical sense, but really, products are anything designed to meet a need or solve a problem. With this broader definition in mind, the history of product design stretches back centuries.
Industrial revolution: As mass production became a thing, so did the need for standardized designs. While we might not have called it “product design” at this point, this era laid the groundwork for the field.
Early 20th century: Enter industrial design. Industrial designers like Raymond Loewy, who designed Shell’s logo, blended functionality and aesthetics in everyday objects and new technologies.
Mid-20th century: Dieter Rams advocated for minimalism with his “less but better” philosophy, which influenced generations of industrial and product designers.
Digital age: With the rise of personal computers and the internet, product design expanded into the digital realm. This marks the beginning of product design as we commonly think of it today. People lean on websites and apps to manage their everyday lives.
Today: Product design is more holistic than ever. It’s not just about physical or digital products but also entire experiences and services. From flat design to emerging metaverse design principles, the field continues to evolve.
As you can see, product design has always been about solving problems and improving lives. It’s just gotten a lot more complex (and exciting) along the way.
What’s the difference between product design and UX design?
While product design and UX design appear similar, they’re not the same thing. UX design is all about making digital products a joy to use—it’s the reason you can navigate your favorite app without breaking a sweat. While product design includes UX design, it also extends to business strategy, technical feasibility and market analysis.
Let’s break it down with a website example:
Say we’re creating a new eCommerce website. A UX designer would focus on the user’s journey—making sure it’s easy to find products, add them to the cart and check out.
A product designer does all that and more. They’d dive into questions like, “What unique features would make shoppers choose this website over Amazon?” and “How can we turn one-time buyers into loyal customers?”
They might come up with product ideas like a virtual try-on feature or a subscription model for frequently bought items. They’d think about how the website could evolve as the business grows, considering the product roadmap and long-term strategy.
The product design process
01. Define
Before we dive into design, we need to identify what we're really trying to solve. It's about finding the core issues that, if addressed, will make the biggest impact on product success.
Let's say you're working on a recipe website. At this stage, don’t look for solutions yet. Instead, try to clearly articulate the problems:
Are users struggling to find recipes that match their dietary needs?
Is the site failing to convert casual browsers into regular cooks?
Are we missing opportunities to monetize without alienating our audience?
To start defining these problems, glance at high-level metrics—such as the bounce rate—have a quick chat with the team to see if they’re detecting anything unusual and take a brief look at a competitor to see what they’re offering.
The goal is to come up with clear problem statements, like:
“Users are struggling to find recipes that match their specific dietary requirements, leading to frustration and reduced time on site.”
02. Research
Once you’ve identified the problems, it’s time to dive deep. This is where you don your detective hat and gather all the evidence you can to gain a deeper understanding of the user story.
For your recipe website, you can:
Analyze user behavior. Use analytics tools like heat maps to see where users are clicking, how far they’re scrolling and where they’re dropping off.
Conduct user interviews. Talk to both frequent users and those who’ve stopped visiting the website to understand their experiences and pain points.
Conduct a competitive analysis. Examine other recipe websites and adjacent products (like meal-planning apps) to understand the market landscape. Don't forget to look at indirect competitors, too.
In short, gather as much relevant information as possible. Don’t just confirm the initial problem statements—be open to discovering new issues or realizing that your initial assumptions were off.
03. Brainstorm
Now that you've got a deep understanding of the situation, it’s time to let your creativity run wild. This is where you generate a wide range of potential solutions using design thinking techniques.
Here are a few things you can try:
Host a brainstorming session. Get the design team together and use techniques like “crazy eights,” where everyone sketches eight ideas in eight minutes. No idea is too out there at this stage.
Use “How Might We” questions. Transform your problem statements into “How Might We” questions to spark creative thinking. For example, “How might we help users find recipes that perfectly match their dietary needs?”
Look for inspiration outside your industry. Instead of looking at comparable competitors, think of how other industries handle similar problems. For example, you can check out how dating apps match people.
At this stage, quantity trumps quality. So, instead of judging ideas, let everyone cook. You can narrow them down later on based on feasibility, potential impact and alignment with your goals.
04. Prototype
Bring the ideas you gathered to life by creating quick, tangible versions of them. They don’t need to be perfect or complete—they just need to communicate the core idea and be substantial enough for meaningful testing.
You can try:
Paper prototypes. Sketch out key screens or user flows on paper. This is fast, cheap and perfect for testing basic concepts.
Digital wireframes. Use prototyping tools to create low-fidelity digital versions of your ideas.
Interactive prototypes. As you refine the ideas, you might create clickable prototypes that simulate the user experience more closely.
For more complex features, you might also develop a basic working version—or minimum viable product (MVP)—to test core functionality.
That said, be prepared for an iterative design process. Create multiple versions of a prototype, refining it based on user feedback and your own insights.
05. Test
Now, it’s time to put your prototypes in front of real users and find out if your ideas actually solved the problems you identified.
Conduct a usability test with a sample of users to watch how they interact with your prototypes. Ask them to complete specific tasks while thinking aloud.
Aside from that, you might:
Run A/B tests. If you have multiple solutions, test them against each other to see which one performs better.
Use heat mapping tools. Track where users are clicking or tapping on your digital prototypes.
Gather feedback through surveys. After users interact with your prototype, ask them for their thoughts and impressions.
While positive feedback is always welcome, negative feedback is also valuable. If users struggle with a feature, it’s important to know what’s causing the problem. This ongoing feedback is crucial for improving your product design.
06. Iterate
Based on your testing results, it’s time to refine your design. This is where you take what you learned in the previous step and use it to make your product better.
To begin this process, look for patterns in user behavior in your feedback. What worked well? Where did users struggle?
Since you probably can’t address every piece of feedback, use the MoSCoW method (Must have, Should have, Could have and Won’t have) to prioritize a list of things you need to do.
For instance, maybe your black and white design gets users to scroll down the page, but they find the calls to action (CTAs) hard to read. In that case, the CTAs should be a priority adjustment since they affect your bottom line.
07. Implement
Finally, it’s time to bring your refined design to life. This is where you work closely with developers to make sure your product vision is accurately translated into the real thing.
The implementation process involves:
Creating design specs to document colors, layouts and interactions
Developing a design system to build a library of reusable components
Collaborating with developers
Quality assurance testing to make sure features work as designed
Planning the launch and considering user onboarding needs
Once all that’s out of the way, your job isn’t done. Keep an eye on your metrics to see how your finished product performs, and be ready to make further enhancements.
Sign up for Wix Studio and create your next great site today.
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