In product development, the terms "Product Design" (PD) and "Product Experience" (PX) often get tossed around, sometimes interchangeably. However, there's a nuanced distinction that can catch even seasoned professionals off guard. While many believe they operate within the realms of PX or PD, they often describe responsibilities that align more closely with other functions, revealing a gap in understanding. I aim to clarify what these terms truly encompass, moving beyond the surface-level notion of outputting artifacts to explore the deeper, strategic roles these disciplines play in balancing user needs with business objectives.
Product Design is a highly objective discipline that balances the needs of the end user with business objectives. Unlike UX Design, which primarily focuses on creating optimal user experiences by prioritizing ease of use and satisfaction through the main lens of the end user, Product Design says "Yes, and," to all of what UX does. PD must also focus on balancing critical business goals such as market fit, profitability, and, often most importantly, scalability. This dual focus of end user and business requires Product Design to be inherently cross-functional, necessitating close collaboration with teams like revenue operations, growth, marketing, engineering, sales, and customer support.
The primary emphasis in Product Design is on functionality, reliability, usability, and convenience, with aesthetics playing a secondary role. Many a skilled Product Designer working with a mature design system may go months without outputting many visuals, while still making a large measurable impact on business and end-user outcomes.
Product designers employ rigorous research, testing, validation, and measurement techniques to ensure that the product effectively solves user problems and aligns with business strategies. This involves creating prototypes, conducting user testing, and iterating based on quantitative and qualitative data. The design process is systematic and grounded in a deep understanding of real user challenges, aiming for products that are not only reliable and usable but also memorable and meaningful. By integrating user-centered design principles with business acumen and strategic thinking, Product Design strives to deliver solutions that meet both user needs and business requirements, ensuring measurable outcomes and a holistic product experience.
Smaller, immature, or low-need organizations may start or exist for a long time with just Product Design. In fact, these days, a department of Product Design is often the first to emerge regarding design-related functions, although some organizations may employ a UX department or similar. Eventually, other organizational and end-user needs are like to materialize.
Product Experience (PX) is a holistic function that integrates various disciplines, including:
The list is ever-evolving.
The primary goal of PX is to create a cohesive and satisfying user experience as they interact with a product while achieving business objectives. This involves understanding and anticipating customer needs, behaviours, and emotions, generally influencing their behaviour somehow. This influence is productized or otherwise harnessed and aimed for some purpose contextually important to each organization and its goals.
PX teams use data-driven insights, user research, and cross-disciplinary collaboration to ensure that all aspects of a product, from the initial encounter to long-term usage, are optimized for ease of use, engagement, and value. PX emphasizes a continuous cycle of feedback and improvement, making professionals working in this industry inherently highly communicative and collaborative.
PX professionals aim to deliver products that not only meet functional requirements but also resonate with users on a deeper level. Usability, desirability, and experience are the realms of PX.
I give a lot of advice to junior folks, emerging professionals looking to break into product design, or even those who have worked in the industry but don't understand why they're having trouble getting another job. Here are a few simple tips to summarize:
There's no big reveal in PX/PD. Try to unlearn the habit of trying to impress and instead focus on building up collaboration skills while driving decisions, not with narrative (although a good story goes a long way) but with objective evidence.
Avoid creating one-off designs without considering reusable components and consistency. Focus on understanding and maintaining design systems, UI patterns, component libraries, and including collaborating with marketing on style guides, to ensure not only consistency across products but also high efficiency in the visual aspect of the creation of designs so as to allow the focus on larger problems and opportunities.
If you're trying too hard to convince, then you probably don't have enough evidence. Product Design is more scientific and engineering than it is art. This implies the need to prioritize functionality, reliability, usability, and convenience in design decisions, not aesthetics first. Understanding how design impacts the overall user experience and product effectiveness is paramount.
If you think your job is to create artifacts like "designs," then you're focused on the wrong things. What matters is your positive effect on outcomes. Measurable impact. Read more on this in my recent post.
This goes double on your resumé. Hiring folks want to know less about what you did and more about the impact you had doing it.
You will often be in the position to champion underserved populations.
Whether there is a business opportunity there or not, and what size, you will be at the forefront of the responsibility and accountability to your fellow people. A product designer who does not exhibit empathy for others is a danger. If we focused solely on business value or caved to waterfall decision-making, we could risk greatly harming the world and those around us.
Start with accessibility principles and standards like WCAG to understand what true accessibility and inclusivity can mean, going beyond designing for the "average" user. Talk to those you service, not just proxies like customer success teams. Continue to push and advocate for those with diverse needs and abilities and underserved or mistreated populations in general. Demonstrate ethical fibre in your design decisions.
I hope that this helps you understand PX, PD, and the beginning aspects of what it means to be part of this exciting and high-impact group of business functions. Drop me a line on LinkedIn and let me know your thoughts.