Back in the early 1990s, the “father of UX,” Don Norman, proposed the concept of user-centered design. Since then, a new role has emerged—that of the UX designer. Mind you, there was always the role of a user-friendly designer, but it was fairly limited before Norman. It used to focus mainly on what users see, whereas the UX designer job encompasses the entire user experience, including their thoughts and emotions.?
Today, there are many different product design roles within development teams, but the most important ones are the product designer and the UX designer. These designers bring unique skills to the table and play a vital role in getting products to market. Some of these design skills are transferable, but these two roles generally differ significantly.
Your Product Development Dream Team
To build successful digital products, you need a well-rounded team of experts:
- Graphic designers help product and UX designers create visual elements that support the overall brand. They design marketing materials such as brand typography, brochures, social media posts, advertising campaigns, etc.
- Developers create digital products by writing code. They typically focus on front-end or back-end development. The job titles for developers vary but may include architects, engineers, or programmers.
- Project managers require a unique skill set. They are responsible for managing development projects and timelines. They work closely with designers to ensure that products are built according to requirements and with developers to coordinate tasks and dependencies between team members.
- Analysts are responsible for conducting market research and producing reports to guide product decisions. They leverage data analytics tools to collect and analyze user behavior. They also gather insights into how users interact with digital and physical products.
- Customer-facing roles: You may have a team dedicated to building customer relationships. It can include sales reps, customer service representatives, or brand ambassadors. UX designers are often responsible for creating effective user journeys for these teams to follow.
A day in the life of a UX Designer’s Job
The job description will vary depending on your specific product, but typically a day in the life of a UX designer might involve the following:
- Conducting user research: To understand user needs and pain points, UX designers use user interviews, behavior patterns, focus groups, usability testing, and surveys.
- Creating wireframes and mockups: Designers may work with graphic designers and developers to ensure that UI designs are feasible for implementation, or they might do it themselves. Using design tools like Figma, Adobe XD, or Sketch, they create interactive prototypes that users can test and provide feedback on.
- Analyzing user data: UX designers uncover insights about how users interact with products. They make recommendations for improvements based on this data and think of new features to improve user flows.
- Detailing information architecture and content strategy: UX designers create compelling user journeys and design the information architecture of a product, including taxonomies, site maps, and navigation patterns.
A day in the life of a Product Designer’s Job
Among other tasks, they are responsible for the following:
- Designing prototypes: They create fully functional mockups of new products using prototyping tools. The visual design is just as important as the interaction design, as a product must look and function well.?
- Fulfill customer experience obligations: Product designers ensure their designs are aligned with customer needs. Using the wireframes (Adobe XD, Figma, etc.) created as a base, they will follow the user journey. They can then design the overall experience that users will have when using the product.
- Design thinking process: They develop new features and concepts for product improvements. This involves understanding user personas, brainstorming solutions, prototyping, and user-testing solutions.
Who to hire and when?
The question remains, which role should you hire for? Ultimately, the answer will depend on your product and team’s needs.
It may make more sense to hire a product designer if you are building a product from scratch, as they can be involved in all design and development stages. On the other hand, if you are looking to improve iterations on an existing product, then a UX designer may be a better fit.
Learn more with SWARM
Want to know more about the roles of a product designer vs. a UX designer? Check out the full blog on our site.
At SWARM, we offer a full range of product design and user experience services. So why wait? Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you build a strong design.
Award-Winning Product Design & Strategy Leader | Alum: Virgin, Microsoft, Havas | Driving Growth Through High-Value UX & AI
2 年In my experience, it’s very common to do both; ux has deep roots in product design at ARC, PARC, and Apple.
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2 年How often do you run into a situation where they have a product they want to improve through better UX design, but they really should have worked with a product designer to begin with, leaving things a bit of a mess to clean up?
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2 年Nate Cooper - how much time do Product Designers and UX Designers spend talking to each other before an iteration goes to market? Is there an industry standard recommendation about this? (forgive me if this is too complicated a question)
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2 年Very useful information Nate Cooper. What kinds of questions do you ask your clients to help them determine which role to hire for?
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2 年This article is a very helpful nugget I'll be passing on to the employers I know. Typically we are in such a rush to fill an opening but the need to know information you provide here is a must read before launching a search.