The Product & UX Design Difference

Alex, after so many episodes, I still think we have such a big backlog on topics we need to cover. It's like the typical never-ending backlog story, right? I mean, you're the PM, PO. You are the PD? Yeah. Or there is this product designer and the UX designer, so the UXD. So what's the difference? Yeah, definitely a topic that we promised to pick up. I mean, how would you define them? Now you're playing back the ball, not taking it. Well, I mean, I think it changed a lot throughout the years. I think also product designer is fairly new. But you obviously have a ton of different titles in the digital design space, right? Can be anything from product designer, UX designer, UI designer, UX UI designer, interaction designer. There's visual designers that also play a role. Interface designers. I mean, there's a ton of stuff. There's also the graphic designers, right? Because I have a fun story. I used to date a woman and she was a product designer. And we were talking and she talked about the stuff that she was designing. It was at the beginning of my career and I was like, oh, you're a graphic designer. And she felt so offended. I mean, I don't know why someone would be offended by that. Just to put that out. I think obviously, graphic designer isn't necessarily something that would fall under the same category of product designers. But it's still an extremely important job, right? Like I think everything that's on the brand, marketing, even, yeah, well, like editorial and so on side of things is graphic design. I mean, I think most things that we see in the real world that are not the apps or websites that we use is graphic design, right? Like all the ads, all the newspapers that we read, all the books that you open. I mean, that's like graphic editorial designers, communication designers do that. But yeah, as you can see there, there is a lot of titles in the world. At least for today, I think the differentiation between UX design and product design is something that I recently was faced with within my business with other people. And I have to be honest, so at some point I got a little bit confused when it comes to the whole topic of research and then prototyping and then also where do you draw the line between what does the product designer, what does the UX designer, when should they be involved, other processes strictly, strictly separated or is it all one thing? So I really, I was like, at some point I was like, okay, we need to talk about it. I want to have at least for myself, so super ego driven, more clarity on that topic. Yeah. So I think in general, if you go down into definitions of all the different roles, there are differences. I think similar to what we discussed also in the PMs and the POs, product managers and the owners, there's also a lot of companies that use them interchangeable. So it also changes a lot from company to company of what is expected from you or from someone in such a specific role. The way I would usually put it, or the way I would also explain it, I think I have this conversation pretty much every time we open a new role and there's like a recruiter or someone coming in and you need to discuss the role definitions and the expectations. But to me, a UX designer is a designer that is mostly focused on user experience, right? It's very much looking at after the definition of the product, when you know what you want to build and when you know what you want to do, it's like working on the actual experience on screen of how the user uses it, right? And then you have like UX UI, which can be a little bit more visual because you also have this UI aspect of user interface design, where it's really then the interface layer itself and the visuals that the user interacts with. And then the product designer is a slightly broader and less specialized role, which works a lot also on connecting a lot of these things. So you could have a product designer working with UX UI designers, and with research and with the business to like really work on the design of the end to end product, which looks at the return of investment of the product, it looks at like the customer needs of the product, and so on, and then works with these things to come up with the definition of the end product and execute on it, right? So still a lot of like what we described for UX and UI often also happens within the product designer. I think the product designer might be a little bit more skilled on project management, leading a project side of things, very close also in big overlap with the product manager. As we talked a lot, right, I think it's like really this shared role of defining what we need to build, what is a viable product that makes sense also from a business side, and then also executing on it, right? I think now, if we go a little bit back in time, when processes have also been a little bit more waterfall, or when you look at agencies, where you also have more of like this project nature, and you have like different skills in an agency that you can pull from at a different stage of the project, then you can have like a product designer, you can then pass it on to the UX designer that focuses on the wireframes, on the prototypes and so on. And you have the UI designer that works on the final interface that then gets hand over, gets hand off to the developer. In a lot of the startups, with the nature of smaller autonomous teams, I personally always hire for the product designer, because my expectation is someone who works with the business and who works with the team members and external stakeholders to deliver that product and that experience from the initial definition to the implementation. And that reminds me also a little bit on this product owner conversation that we had, because at the end of the day, the product owner is rather specific, the title is rather specific, bound to the engineering team, while the product manager is rather broad. And I have the feeling that it's a similar thing when it comes to product designers, because I can expect from a product designer to have the full ownership of the whole process end to end when it comes to UX, UI, and then final execution with the team. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think it's just like also going more to broader profiles than having this very specialized ones. When we look at the market right now, and also the way product development and the whole processes are evolving and becoming more, let's say, I mean, we are in our tech bubble, right? But if you go to classic big companies, I mean, most of them, they are rather waterfallish than anyhow agile, right? Or I mean, if you say double diamond, right? I mean, that's like a word they've never heard. So I'm just asking myself, if I look at the market right now, do you think it's better for designers to specialize on this individual roles, like UI designer, UX designer? Or is it better to rather be broad, and be less specific as a, for example, product designer? So, I mean, while yes, a lot of companies are still waterfally, we do see a lot of movement in cross-functional autonomous teams, right? Agile, lean, and so on is something that a lot of companies are trying to implement. That's where the Spotify model has been so successful, five, eight years ago, I don't remember. And so I think that these broad roles are important, because you, like, there is not so many companies actually out there in the startup tech world, where you have a design team that is not like working in dedicated teams, but it works as an in-house agency. So if the ambition is like to work in one of these tech startups, I would say, go for specialization or go focus on product design, because that will help you understand the business that will help you learn with the different stakeholders. And it doesn't exclude that you then still go for one specialization, right? I think it's the T profiles that you have, where you have like a, you're generally broad, but you're very strong in one area, right? And that could be research. That could be motion design, micro interactions, that could be someone who's very strong on visual design, right? And I think like also for design leaders, working with these broad profiles, it's important to then get a very good understanding of the individual skills of each designer and the strengths, because like there is also a ton of like different backgrounds that someone can have. You can have a designer that was an engineer in the past and who could be like really strong to do some rapid prototyping with code and so on. You can have someone coming from graphic design. They might be more visual. They might have a better theoretical understanding of colors, proportion and so on. Use them in the design system team, use them on more UI heavy teams and so on. So I think like it's like really important to then focus on the individual skill set within the broad definition of product design and place the people where you need to. And that makes totally sense, because at the end of the day, every one of us has a certain specialization on or things you are naturally moving forward to. And therefore the idea of people looking back at the markets to be rather broad, but still having like one or two focus areas can be really helpful to still get a good job and doing what you like doing, right? Because the worst thing that could happen is if you are a product designer focused on UI and then ending up in the research team with working with data all the time, right? That would be a fail. So yeah, I think also when I look at the market, I think it's always good to have like rather this focus on this broad 360 degree view, so to say, but still being able to specialize. Yeah. And I think at the end that also like if executed well and if you hire different people with strong specializations in different areas, that will also give you a very well balanced team that allows the team to grow further, that allows someone who might be stuck also in career development to pair them up with someone who has a very strong skill in another area. And then you can like really develop also the expertise of the whole team and get to a well balanced team. Yeah. And in case they don't, they can still hire you for some support, right? Yeah, absolutely. Alternatively, you can just continue listening to the product bakery, press the follow button and don't miss any new episode. Thanks a lot. See you next week. Alex, thanks for the insight. I have definitely more clarity on that. So whenever I talk to a designer, I will always ask them if they are product designers. Ask them where they're strong.