What is the difference between Product Design and UX Design?
These terms get confused with each other a lot, especially if you’re a newbie in the design world.
It can get quite confusing and overwhelming, but not to worry because, in this post, I am pretending to explain to you the similarities and the differences between the roles. So you can get more clarity on that.
Actually, before diving into the differences, let’s look at the official definitions of Product Design and UX Design according to interactiondesign.org.
Just go ahead on over to the site and look at how they define product design.
According to interactiondesign.org, Product Design is the process designers use to blend end-user needs with business goals to help brands make consistently successful products.
Product designers usually work to optimize the end-user experience in the solutions they develop. Also, they are helping the brands to create sustainable products for long-term business needs.
On the flip side, what is User Experience Design?
Interactiondesign.org defines User Experience Design as the process design teams use to create products that provide meaningful and relevant experience to end-users involving the design of the entire process of acquiring and product integration, including aspects of branding design usability and function.
Just by looking at these two definitions, you can instantly spot the difference. Right?
No issues, if after reading these role descriptions, it becomes even more confusing to you.
As to the differences between Product Design and UX Design, to be fair enough, both of them are almost identical. But there’s just one crucial difference that has traditionally separated these two roles.
For Product Designers, the official definition is that they care more about the long-term strategy and help businesses to achieve their goals by having a more holistic approach to the design.
Meanwhile, the UX Designers are hyper-focused on end-user needs on carrying out the entire Design Thinking process and just really drilling down into the process of designing a user experience.
And while some companies might still refer to these criteria when writing out their job descriptions.
I am confident that these two roles are the same and will give you four reasons why.
Reason number one, the industry is changing.
Fast product and UX industries are very fast-paced, and there are a lot of changes happening all the time.
I mean, the design role has been here around for only a couple of decades. So if you’re getting hung up on a particular title and role description, you might be missing out on some important key topics.
Reason number two is the end business goal.
This reason should always be on your mind. So even though the official description of Product Designer versus UX designer says that UX designers should not care about the business goal and should only concentrate on the end-user. That’s will be the most surefire way to never get promoted and always be seen as an executor rather than a strategic profile.
As a UX Designer, it’s always pretty important to keep the end-business goal in mind. And to be honest, creating a very cool design is not that hard than any designer can do that regardless of their seniority.
What’s more challenging for Product Designers and UX Designers is being enough mindful of what the business is trying to achieve, the business goal, and what your adjacent teams are currently working on.
So the next time you find yourself getting carried away in a project, stop and think critically about:
- Is your design feasible for the web dev team to do?
- Is legal going to be on board?
- With that design. Is it going to help your company achieve the bigger business goal?
Reason number three. The job description does not reflect this difference.
So while I was researching drawbars for this post to showcase what the difference between the role is.
During this time, I’ve discovered that while many companies are managing separate job descriptions for each role, UX designers and Product Designers. There’s are also thousands of job descriptions that want a UX and Product Designer in one single profile.
Let’s take a look at some LinkedIn.com job announcements that I’ve discovered on eBay.com and Wayfair.com, so what will you do as a UX designer / Product Designer at eBay.com is:
- Hands-on delivery of UX assets across all channels.
- You will ensure a simple, and fun enough experience for end-users.
- You will work with overarching design patterns to ensure a consistent brand experience.
- You will facilitate ideation coordination and perform user interviews.
- You will contribute to building and refining eBay’s design system.
So this already sounds like a mishmash of the two roles together and if you look at the job description they have for the person taking on a role, you could see that if you have three plus years of experience as a UX or UI designer, Product Designer, Interaction Designer, or any similar UX related role, you could potentially apply for this job.
Now, if we look at the wayfarer.com job advertisement for Product Design / UX Manager as you can see they want five plus years of professional UX experience they don’t even define a concrete UX domain that you should be coming from, so if you have experience in UX/UI, Product Design or Interaction Design you could be a candidate for this role and by now you’re probably wondering well is there a salary difference between the two roles and the answer is not really.
You could check it out at entry-level positions for UX designers and Product Designers in the California area in the US. This information is what we can see from Glassdoor.com salaries, and you can expect to get USD 73 000 by year as a User Experience designer while you can expect USD 77 000 dollars yearly as a Product Designer.
So the difference is very minimal and bears in mind that the salary comparison portals always depend on how many people fill out the survey and how honest they are in the answers, but you can already see that the salary range is more or less the same.
Reason number four titles are a vanity thing.
Titles should serve as a purpose, providing a clear overview of your skills, seniority, and what your job is. But that is just not the case in the UX world anymore. Currently, you could be:
- Designer,
- Product Designer,
- Conversation Designer,
- Head of customer product evangelist,
- Head of customer experience designs, or
- Any other ambiguous UX title that doesn’t tell much about the job you do.
So, instead of focusing on what your title means. I suggest you focus on the skills you want to perfect on the day-to-day assignments, and tasks you want to be doing.
And on really selecting which career path you want to follow, do you want to become a specialist and drill down into the technical skills. Or if you want to go a managerial route and manage the design team because those two career paths require different skill sets.
But that’s a topic for another post. So, to wrap this up. The role will be largely defined by the company you’ll be working for.
So make sure to check the facts of the job thoroughly and focus on the skills and responsibilities that a role has instead of getting hung up on the title just apply for the job no designer is going to go into an interview with a checklist of what a product designer should do or what a UX designer should do.
Just break down the rolls packs and make sure you can deliver what a company needs and wants for the current skill set and that you can complete over-deliver on this role. So, you should always be applying for the exact job the company is advertising, not what you think a UX or a product designer should be doing.
Finally, I hope you’ve got some clarity on what are the differences between the Product Designer and UX Designer roles and why they don’t matter that much in the current job market.
