Product design is an extremely vast and continuously progressive genre of design. It refers to the designing of new products that could either be customized or produced for mass appeal. The ‘product’ in product design could mean anything ranging from devices used on a daily basis, furniture, utensils and more. Successful product design can essentially be toned down to a process. It includes the following steps:
- Idea generation – when you come up with an idea that has a certain market appeal
- Tangible interpretation – the next phase where the idea is honed into a marketable and profitable product.
- Commercialization – when that product is distributed amongst the public through several outlets.
Be sure to not confuse ‘product design’ with ‘industrial design.’ While product design involves understanding behavioral patterns and concocting the results into a useable end product, industrial design is all about interpreting artistic forms into usability. Both might overlap sometimes, but the creative process is completely different. Let’s look at some of the ways product design is a distinguished form of design in and off its own.
A Holistic Process Of Product Design
You cannot chalk up the entirety of the product design process in a single role. It is mixture of diverse concepts that combine together to deliver an end result. Product designers tend to work on several aspects of a single product – including but not limited to conceptualization, visualization, behavioral aspects, interaction and sometimes even coding. Crafting products requires you to be a jack of all trades. You cannot just focus on one aspect but deliver the product as a whole
Mediating
One of the most important aspects of product designing is mediating between the user needs, network trade-offs and business objectives. Only when all three align would you get a truly holistic design. Product design revolves around creating solutions for the problems you’re trying to solve through your end results.
From Idea To Reality
It would be correct to assume that the job of a product designer includes having the experience and knowledge to help a company turn an idea into a plausible reality. This means that from conception to reality and everything in between, it is the role of a product designer to evaluate and organize each and every aspect of the process.
The Process Of Articulating A Product
The actual process of product designing would include; idea, design and marketing. The idea is about garnering the features and requirements of the product. The design stage is all about trying to give the product a face. It should also be easy to use. Marketing is about making your product generalized to the target audience in clever ways.
So essentially, a product designer just kicks off the entire project and then helps and supervises the work of other designers while contributing valuable input and ideas.
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