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Introduction to Product Design

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Disciplines of Product Design

3:19 with May Kim

Product Design covers a wide breadth of skills and disciplines of design. Depending on your company and team structure, these disciplines may be divided into individual roles or multiple roles. Whatever the structure may be, it is becoming increasingly important for product designers to broaden their skills within the entire product design process.

Definitions:

  • User Research: User research places people at the center of your design process and your products. It is used to inspire and inform your designs, evaluate your solutions, and measure the impact of your design.
  • User Experience (UX) Design: User experience design, or UX design, is a human-first way of designing products, putting the user at the center and creating products that provide meaningful and personally relevant experiences to users. This involves improving a product’s usability, accessibility, and the pleasure people will get from using it.
  • User Interface (UI) Design: User interface design, or UI design, is about translating a brand to a product’s interface, visually guiding the user with interactive elements across all sizes and platforms. This includes a mix of visual hierarchy and interface elements — the look and feel, the presentation, and the interactivity of a product.
  • Visual Design: Visual design is about creating and making the general aesthetics of a product consistent and it aims to shape and improve the user experience by considering the effects of illustrations, photography, color, shapes, typography, space, and layouts on the usability of products and their aesthetic appeal.
  • Interaction Design (IxD): Interaction design, or IxD, is concerned with the way people interact with products and services. It considers how the user is interacting with the product, and how the product responds to the user’s input.

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    Product design covers a wide breadth of disciplines and skills. 0:00
    The disciplines that we'll be learning in this course are user research, 0:05
    user experience, user interface, interaction, and visual design. 0:09
    At the core of design thinking is empathizing with your users. 0:14
    If you don't have an understanding or awareness of how people see, feel, 0:19
    experience, and interact with things, 0:24
    you'll find that your designs will fall short of their potential. 0:26
    This can result in creating designs that are not relevant to users, or 0:30
    designs that are not easy or pleasurable to use. 0:34
    User research places people at the center of the design process and products. 0:38
    It is used to inspire and inform your designs, to evaluate your solutions, 0:44
    and to measure the impact of your design. 0:49
    User experience design, or UX design, is a human first way of designing products, 0:52
    putting the user at the center and creating products 0:58
    that provide meaningful and personally relevant experiences to users. 1:01
    This involves improving a product's usability, accessibility, and 1:06
    the pleasure people will get from using it. 1:11
    UX design is what makes an interface useful. 1:13
    User interface design, or 1:17
    UI design, is about translating a brand to a product's interface, 1:18
    visually guiding the user with interactive elements across all sizes and platforms. 1:23
    This includes a mix of visual hierarchy and interface elements. 1:29
    The look and feel, the presentation, and the interactivity of a product. 1:33
    UI design is what makes an interface beautiful. 1:38
    Visual design is a discipline that has grown out of both UI design and 1:42
    graphic design. 1:46
    It's about creating and making the general aesthetics of a product consistent. 1:47
    And it aims to shape and improve the user experience through considering the effects 1:51
    of illustrations, photography, color, shapes, typography, and 1:56
    layouts on the usability of products and their aesthetic appeal. 2:01
    Interaction design is concerned with the way people interact with products and 2:05
    services. 2:09
    It considers how the user is interacting with the product, and 2:10
    how the product responds to the user's input. 2:14
    The interaction designer thinks about the functionality needed to accomplish a task, 2:17
    and decides the behavior of information in reaction to what the user inputs. 2:22
    Even though your specific role and 2:28
    position may depend on the structure of the company, all of these disciplines and 2:29
    skills are important and necessary when it comes to designing a digital product. 2:33
    As we continue in this course, 2:39
    we'll be able to practise some of these disciplines with our project. 2:40
    The project for this course is to design a mobile app for Craigslist. 2:44
    Craigslist is one the most popular websites in the world, 2:48
    serving millions of users per month, who post and view ads on their website. 2:52
    Imagine that you are a product designer who recently joined Craigslist team 2:57
    to work on creating their mobile app with engineers, a researcher, and 3:01
    a product manager. 3:04
    While we won't be designing the entire Craigslist mobile app, by the end of this 3:06
    course, you'll have designed part of the purchase experience in the Craigslist app. 3:10
    Here is an example of what the final mockup would look like. 3:15

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