Designing Products People Love

Chapter 1. Why Products Exist

What’s Product Design?

“WHAT IS PRODUCT DESIGN?”

What Does a Product Designer Do?

“What’s the difference between a product designer and a product manager?”

The interest in what product design is and what it does has surged in recent years. Now, more than ever, those of us working in—or wanting to work in—technology have become more curious about what product design is capable of and what it even is.

That’s because we need something bigger to describe the responsibilities placed on product teams. As technology continues to force its way into the lives of the global population, the implications of how a product is designed can put not only entire businesses at stake, but the lives of our customers as well.

But product design remains a difficult concept to grasp, even by people who are actually doing the work.

It’s fascinating to see the wide range of responses among the product designers I interviewed. Here’s how they describe what they do.

Josh Brewer, former principal designer at Twitter:

Product designers are people who have a set of knowledge that’s broader. They may be very deep in one or two areas, but they have an understanding of the entire process of bringing a product to life. You have to have a pretty decent domain expertise across things.

Nathan Kontny, CEO of Highrise:

I think product design is becoming more and more this search for friction people have getting [a] task done. As a product designer, I’m trying to really understand a task people have ...