Product Design: Create a Product Your Customers Will Love

What’s one thing you use daily?

You probably answered your smartphone. From the phone itself to some of your favorite apps — they all started as the same thing: a product design.

For a successful product design to occur, a designer must have a clear understanding of the end user. Understanding the customer and their behaviors, habits, frustrations, wants, and needs sets the team up for success to design a product with the best user experience from the ground up.

At its core, the foundation of product design is centered around design thinking. This is when a designer draws from their toolkit or skill set, allowing them to integrate the needs of the people (or, in this case, the customer) and combine them with the possibilities of technology and the requirements that will make the business a success. 

A good designer knows that design thinking is a significant part of product design because it focuses on product development and not simply the design phase aspect of creating something new.

As a product designer begins bringing an idea to life, they’ll likely use 3D modeling software as they conceptualize the details and elements the product would have in real life. These tools are often used during the first stages of product design and can help everyone get a better idea of what the final product may look like.

Why is product design important?

No matter what an organization wants to bring to fruition, it’s crucial that product design be a major part of the process.

An object’s design can have a major impact on the success or failure of the product. Consider the famous quote by founder and former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who said, “Design is not just what it looks and feels like. Design is how it works."

For starters, a main characteristic of any product is ease of use, which is often based on its design. No matter how excellent your product is, it'll likely fail if a customer struggles to use it. For example, let’s take a glass ketchup bottle with a hole on top. It used to take some serious effort to get the ketchup out – until the design was reinvented into a plastic bottle with the hole at the bottom. 

In addition to ease of use, product design plays a significant part in marketing. Keeping a product’s marketability in mind during design gives it a better chance at being popular and relatable to its target audience. 

Similarly, product costs can greatly impact profits. Consider what the product is made of and if it can withhold the test of time. Weigh the costs of every material in use and how well it transports.

Finally, the design of a product can determine how efficient it is in the hands of a customer. If the item is marketed for a specific use and doesn’t do that job well, the team either has to go back to the drawing board and start from scratch, or it needs to be taken off the market altogether.

Areas of product design

The term product designer often gets thrown around at organizations in various industries. While there isn’t just one skill set that applies to the world of product design, there are distinct areas where different types of product designs have their focus.

• User experience (UX) design: Mostly, UX design pertains to designing and developing websites, apps, and other digital products. Designers work on creating wireframes, production flow maps, prototypes, and high-fidelity designs with UX design service platforms. 
• User interface (UI) design: Designers focus on how a product looks and its organization. UI design creates an interface that allows the end user to navigate throughout the product easily. This is done using various backgrounds, symbols, colors, and more. UI is more about the sum of all visual elements and how they come together. 
• Industrial design: Designers create prototypes of physical products or objects, journey maps of the final user, and implement usability testing for the design ideas. Those within this area of design expertise understand the materials needed for proper functionality and how to assemble the final product.

The product design process

When it comes to the product design process, there are a lot of decisions and tasks to cross off a checklist if you want to set yourself up for success. It’s best to follow a specific process from start to finish, no matter what is being created.

Empathize

In this first step in the product design process, the team must learn about the user they’re designing the product for. Before moving forward, you must conduct research to cultivate a deeper understanding of these users and empathize with who they are as individuals.

Assessing whether there’s a strong demand for a product before beginning the design and development process sets everyone up for success and ensures time and energy isn’t wasted. To do this, consider conducting user research.

Define

Once you’ve collected various insights, it’s possible to create a point of view that is based on these findings. Understanding the problems real users face can help product designers outline a clear objective of what to work toward.

This step is all about creating a plan of action before getting started. It's also in everyone's best interest to define what success looks like ahead of time. Without a clear goal that everyone understands and agrees upon, it's likely small details will fall through the cracks and the development process will lead to inconsistencies. Once there's clear alignment from everyone involved, you can move forward.

Ideate

Next, the design team will come together to brainstorm as many creative ideas for new products as possible. The more ideas the better, and it’s best to give the team total creative freedom and remind everyone that no idea is too outside of the box.

This is an incredibly important stage in product development because it allows everyone involved to build trust by getting key stakeholders and decision-makers in the room to align on design and center around the vision. Consider implementing elements like journey mapping or scenario planning to help bring something that's just an idea into a real-world situation.

Prototype

Once there’s a hard and fast idea to run with, it’s time to use design and prototyping software to get started. These tools are used to create incomplete or preliminary versions of ideas, products, and applications. Development and design teams use prototyping tools to increase the speed at which they build, test, and iterate their ideas into mock-ups and frameworks, without the need for developers.

Having a prototype helps product designers see if they’re on the right track and can spark new and different ideas for design projects that can be tackled next.

Test

Finally, test the design on target users and get their direct feedback. This can help solve usability issues before more time and energy is invested in developing the product. There are various ways a team can go about testing, like A/B testing or moderated usability testing.

No matter which method is used, tracking how well it performs in the hands of real users can provide key metrics into ways to improve or modify in the future.

Best practices for product design

During the product design process, there are some best practices to keep in mind as you move from start to finish. These are:

• Understand that the process should fit the project. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for the product design process. Instead, designers need to think outside the box and remember to tailor the project’s unique needs to the business goal. Elements like the customer’s needs and preferences, the desired timeline, and the project budget all play a part in tailoring the process to be as effective as possible. 
• It’s not a linear process. It’s common for the product design team to view the process as linear, but sometimes the phases overlap, or the team will have to jump back and forth. It may be necessary to revisit a phase or a step once you’ve moved on.
• Everything is based on communication. Cultivating a great design is just one part of the process — communicating great design is the other. Even the best designs won’t get approved or will fail if it’s not properly communicated from the team to key stakeholders.

Product design tools

The world of product design is big, and it gets bigger with each passing year. Not only do design jobs vary from graphic designers and prototypers to UX designers and motion designers, but there is a lot of software that can be added to one's tech stack, depending on the role. 

Some of the tools you should master if you want to make it big in product design are:

• 3D modeling software: For designing basic three-dimensional models of objects using a variety of approaches and tools. 
• Wireframing apps: Software developed for wireframing that can create blueprints of websites, web pages, and applications in the early stages of development. 
• Graphic design tools: There are various types of graphic design tools that can come in handy during the first few stages of product design. 
• Prototyping software: Ideal for creating preliminary versions of software and applications as a way to test, document errors, and deliver feedback. 
• Project management apps: To make sure nothing gets missed or falls through the cracks, project management software can ensure teams stay organized and on top of deadlines. 
• Product roadmap software: Roadmapping tools can come in handy when a team is looking to visually lay out a strategy and execute specific plans.

Examples of exceptional product design

Every product we use went through a design process, and some stand out for being truly ahead of their time. While there are a lot of examples to call out, here are just a few:

• Ballpoint pen: Designed in 1938, the ballpoint pen was invented by László Jozsef Bíró as a way to eliminate the need for fountain pens, which dried out quickly and bled ink when you least expected. Thanks to thicker ink and a tiny ball that controlled ink flow, the ballpoint pen became one of the most innovative inventions.

• Bendy straw: While humans have used some sort of straw for hundreds of years, the bendy straw was first patented in 1937 by Joseph B. Friedman after he noticed his daughter struggling to use a straight straw in a tall glass.

• Fitbit: The Fitbit completely revolutionized the industry of wearable tech, and its sleek design fits comfortably and is worn effortlessly around the wrist. It’s a sleep tracker, pedometer, and altimeter all at once.

• Coca-Cola bottle: The shape of the Coca-Cola bottle is one of the most well-known silhouettes in the world. Invented in 1915, the goal was to design “a bottle so distinct that you can recognize it by feel in the dark or lying broken on the ground” — mission accomplished. 

• Mascara wand: Invented by Revlon in 1958, the modern mascara wand provides users with an easy application while lifting and separating eyelashes better than the small applicator brushes of the past.
• iPhone: This list wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the iPhone. While the size has changed since 2007, it has kept its signature minimalist design and sleek feel that Apple is known for.

The right design can go a long way

When creating a new product, remember to design with the customer in mind. If your team wants to develop a great product, it has to have the right features and provide an enjoyable user experience. Make sure you understand your target audience, their needs, and how your product can solve a problem.

When it's time to bring your product into the real world, the first step is often creating a 3D model. Learn more about how 3D modeling works and the software that makes it all possible.