Behind The Great Product: How Does Product Design Work and What Do You Need to Know

As you may notice that there’s more to every product than meets the eye.

Today, people are bombarded with thousands of choices each day, and it’s easy to overlook one mediocre product among so many great ones.

The appearance of a product can be as important as its functionality because people will judge the product by its look at the first glance. A good-looking product can be popular and dominate the market in a short time.

Here’s how product design services can help you with your next big project. Let’s get started!

What is Product Design?

Product design, as its name suggests, is all about designing products. It has several variants including industrial design, graphic design, and software design.

Product design is used to improve the appearance of products, making them more appealing to consumers. It can also be used to improve the function of a product, making it more user-friendly or efficient.

Product design is one of the main processes in new product development that aims to create successful products that solve customer problems. In order to do this, product designers must comprehend what both clients and users want as well as make sure they have an excellent experience with the item.

From smartphones and washing machines to furniture and cars, you’ll find many of the products that we can see, touch, and use in our homes, workplaces, or anywhere else in our daily routines are the result of this practice.

A good product can win over customers quickly while a bad one will end up costing your company thousands of dollars in return fees, wasted resources, and irreparable brand damage. That’s why you have to ensure that the design process is perfect before mass production or else things can go very wrong.

What is The Difference Between Product Design and Industrial Design?

The distinctions between industrial design and product design are often unclear, or even inconsistent depending on whom you ask.

What is Industrial Design?

Industrial designers are tasked with addressing both the aesthetics of an object as well as its functionality. It requires more work in transforming and customizing designs to make products ready for mass production.

What is Product Design?

Product design is a subset of industrial design. A product designer focuses more on the detailed appearance of the products following the client’s specifications and applicable standards.

Today, it’s common for many product development and manufacturing companies in China to use both terms interchangeably because an industrial designer and a product designer are both playing nearly identical roles professionally and share virtually the same goals of designing well-made products. 

How Does Product Design Work?

Product design is one of the main processes of creating a new product, and it usually begins with research, followed by ideation, prototyping, testing, and finally production.

Stage 1: Ideation and Strategy

Before you pass your idea to the product designer, it is important to have a clear vision that determines the product type, the main features, and functionalities, and the problems the product will solve. Also, you need a strategy to define how to make it, and why it would succeed for it in this current market.

The product designer also needs to provide design specifications for the developers. Design specs provide in-depth information about the design of a product, including details of the interface such as colors, typefaces and fonts, and detailed measurements. They might also include usability information, such as animation and motion details, user flows, and product behavior.

Stage 2: Designing

The product designer needs to provide design specifications for the product engineers before creating a prototype.

These are detailed instructions that tell exactly how products will look, including colors, dimensions, weights, materials, and other technical details.

 Stage 3: Prototype

After finalizing the product design, it’s time to build a prototype or series of prototypes to test your hypothesis.

Creating a prototype allows the designer to discover if they’re on the right track, and it often sparks different ideas that you wouldn’t have come up with otherwise to further streamline product development.

Using the physical prototype can help to test function and user experience although it will be expensive when compared with a digital design.

Stage 4: Testing & Modification

Product designers rely on usability testing to test and validate the product’s design with target users.

This allows you and your design team to see and learn about how people will interact with your products, which is a good way to gather qualitative data, identify user experience, and measure user satisfaction. After that, you and your designer can make changes accordingly and create a new prototype to keep testing until it’s ready for launch.

What Are Some Things to Consider Before Hiring a Product Designer?

A good product design can make your product more marketable and successful.

If you’re looking to design your product, but don’t have the in-house team and facility available, working with a product development company with a team of experienced product designers can be the perfect solution.

In this case, there are five main considerations you should keep in mind before moving forward:

• Think about what you want your product to look like. This will help you communicate your vision to the designer.
• Consider your budget. You can find some cheap product design services online, but a good product design can be expensive, so you’ll need to make sure you can afford it.
• Decide on the type of product design you need. There are many different types of product design, so you’ll need to choose the one that’s right for your product.
• Check out the designer’s portfolio to get an idea of their experience, style, and skills.
• Consider the timeline for when the project will be completed.

Ultimately, using product design services can help you create a better product that is more likely to succeed in the marketplace.

If you need any help, look no further than Shield Works. Founded in 2020, we are an offshoot of the British-owned and managed C2W Group located in the South China Greater Bay Area offering high-quality and competitive manufacturing services, supply chain management, quality control, and product development requirements.

We focus on the provision of a tailor-made solution based on your situation to meet your standards and requirements. Start your journey by reaching out today to discuss your product and learn how we can help.