The world doesn't need UI/UX Designers anymore. Yes, that's right.
You see, until the world of digital design became popular, there were only Web Designers. Designing for mobile apps or complex web apps was not a skill that was in demand back then. After the release of smartphones, the need for app design shot up. Every company wanted to build an app to take their business online.
In fact, companies across the world were focusing only on iOS apps for a large period of time. But later on, companies started designing apps for both Android and iOS due to the rise in the massive adoption of smartphones across the world.
This led to a rise in demand for UI/UX Designers. But who are these designers? Are they different from Product Designers? Let's take an example to understand this better.
Let's assume you're a designer in a company that has a complex app with many features and multiple types of users. The company sees a lot of customer tickets/queries being sent by customers via email, the website, and the app. These are issues and concerns that a customer support agent must resolve.
The company aims to reduce the load on the customer support agents as they are finding it hard to manage all these tickets being raised by customers.
Here is an example of how you, as a designer, should proceed to solve this entire problem.
• Sit down with the stakeholders to understand why this needs to be solved.
• Learn in detail from users and the customer support team about the problem. This process of understanding the problem statement is rather complex. It's a huge problem to solve.
• Once the problem is understood in depth, you come up with solutions for this problem. Maybe you build a help center that users can access before raising a ticket. Perhaps you build an in-app chatbot where users can get their queries resolved instead of raising a ticket. Maybe you improve the user experience of certain flows which is causing users to raise tickets. To make these decisions, you also need the help of engineers and product managers.
• You start designing the solution, be it low-fidelity wireframes or pulling components from your design system, and designing highly polished screens.
• You need to focus on touchpoints, navigation, polished UI, designing sensible user flows, solving edge cases, etc. This is the process of designing interfaces until they are ready to be handed off to the developers.
• Before you hand-off to the developers, you may do some user testing if required.
• Once the design is built by the engineers and is tested, you ship it to users to be used.
• You measure and see the impact of this solution. Did the problem get solved? Did it help the business? What metrics are you going to measure? Are users using it as intended?
Now to solve a problem in this manner, I typically split skills into three categories.
Skill 1: UI Design
As a UI Designer, you focus on nothing but the interface. Colors, Typography, Design Components, and Responsiveness in the case of web-based products, etc. Your job as a UI Designer is to design the screens and make them look good. You ensure they follow the design guidelines and are using the right design patterns.
Here you're not making any decisions outside the scope of an interface.
Assume you're getting your house renovated, and you hire a painter to give your walls a fresh look. The job of a UI Designer would be that of a painter. The painter makes no decisions. The painter is told what color to paint the walls and what texture to add. The painter uses his tools to paint all the walls of the house. There is barely any thinking involved. It's just a matter of using his painting skills to get the job done.
Skill 2: UX Design
I like to split UX Design into 2 branches.
First is UX Research, where you understand more about the problem statement and gather as much information as possible to design a sensible solution. In the above example, it would be to sit down with the customer support team to understand the problem in detail.
This aspect requires a lot of thinking and analysis and is rather quite challenging. Asking the right questions, getting the correct information, making the right inferences and conclusions, and making a few hypotheses.
At this point, solutions are also formulated with the help of product managers and stakeholders. Sometimes this also involves making wireframes and maybe even prototyping.
The 2nd branch of UX Design is directly related to user interfaces, unlike user research. Along with designing polished screens, designers must also ensure that only relevant content is shown and users can read and comprehend the content. The design should make complete sense. Things like navigation, entry points, edge cases, first-time user experience, and adopting the right design patterns and paradigms are required to be taken care of by UX designers.
Here again you're not making any decisions outside the scope of an interface.
Before I move onto the last skill, let me ask you a question.
Who do you think does a better job of taking care of a child? A baby sitter or the parent of the child?
Skill 3: Product Thinking
The answer to the above question is very obvious. There is no doubt about it. We've all been in situations where we've seen a baby crying but had no idea why. But the mother of the child knows exactly why the baby is crying. That's the bond and relationship a mother has with the baby.
As a babysitter, you might know the child's favourite color, food item, or TV show. But do you know how to make decisions that can impact the child's overall growth? Do you know how to mentally and emotionally support the child? Do you know how to cater to all the needs of the child?
Most likely not. But a parent of that child does. The parent knows what's best for the child, how to make parenting decisions, how to support the child with their hobbies, what type of school the child should go to, how to keep the child healthy, and how to take care of the child.
This is the reason I mostly consider UI/UX Designers to be executioners because they don't focus on the growth of a product. The job of UI/UX Designers usually ends once screens are handed off to developers for development. They don't focus on the stages after that.
Product Designers focus on the whole process from start to finish. That includes the stages after the designs have been handed off to developers. They complete the whole loop.
They know how any decision would impact the business, what A/B Tests to run, how to analyse what went wrong and what went right, and constantly ensure that the product is growing and improving, and how they're contributing to the growth of the company.
If you've been working as a designer, just ask yourself if you've been working as a baby sitter or a parent all this while.
In the above example of designing the help center and chatbot, a product designer knows the impact it may have on the company.
• It will reduce costs for the company as most queries will be solved through the help center.
• It will reduce the time taken for a ticket to be resolved.
• It will lead to trust and brand loyalty which can improve conversions and engagement for other products that the company might have.
• It will lead to increase in active users, and it would decrease the number of users who would stop using the product since they become more confident using the product.
• Indirectly, all this will lead to an increase in revenue.
If in the above case, you find out that the time taken for a ticket to be resolved didn't decrease, you as a product designer, will analyse the experience and see what needs to be fixed.
That's not all. You as Product Designer will know how the information is flowing into the help center. Is there is a dedicated team that is incharge of updating it? Are they using a 3rd party tool? What happens after a query is resolved? In case of an in app chatbot, how can the experience be personalised? How can other teams across the company make the best of the help centre to cater to the user's needs?
These are the many questions a product designer may be tasked with asking and understanding how the whole process works end to end. In many cases, the product designer has a say in defining the process and system as well. But it depends on the complexity of the project. It's not just about interfaces.
In essence, if you're someone who makes decisions on improving the product, thinks beyond interfaces, and does everything a UI/UX Designer does, you're effectively a Product Designer.
Today, what the industry demands is very different from what it used to.
Many years ago, the industry wanted executioners. It wanted people who could just design screens and user flows. It didn't want thinkers. Acquiring customers through an app was good enough for a company to get an advantage over its competitors. But today, having an app is not enough. You need a well-designed one.
This means that today, just having an app with a few random features, sub-optimal flows, and immature UI isn't going to cut it. Companies need more than just UI/UX Designers. Companies need smart thinkers and problem solvers to solve problems with design. They need people who can think beyond interfaces.
Today the industry demands product designers. Not just to design interfaces, but to take responsibility of a product. Companies need people who make decisions and help build and grow a product. The previous chapters of Module 1 clearly talk about what Product Design is all about.
So then let's address the million dollar question.
Why are there plenty of job listings for UI/UX Designers?
It's simple. Most product-based companies are in-fact looking for Product Designers, but they haven't updated themselves to match the current trends. Hence, they stick to the term UI/UX Designer. The same applies to online courses and boot camps.
However, all online courses and boot camps are only equipped to teach you to execute and design screens. They don't focus on problem solving and product thinking. So they aren't really helping you to become product designers.
Unfortunately, almost all design agencies and service-based companies continue to look for designers to just sit and design screens. They need someone to follow instructions and execute. Designers who work there don't really get to own the product and make decisions that will improve the product in the long run.
The way design agencies and service-based companies function is very different compared to product-based companies. Given their nature of generating revenue of acquiring clients, design is often not given enough importance as much as it should. So even though they might call their designers as Product Designers, they aren't really doing core product design work. They are just doing UI and UX work which is pure execution.
Most of them don't even get to be a part of formulating solutions, doing user research and making decisions. They are provided with everything they need to design screens and once the screens are handed off, they are moved on to a totally different project.
The growth of a designer working at a mature product-based company is going to be 1000x faster than a designer who works at a design agency or a service-based company. The slower your rate of growth, the harder it gets to progress in your career.
You see, if you want to succeed in this profession, you need to work as a Product Designer and grow as a Product Designer. How long will you sit and design screens? 2 years? 3 years? 5 years? You can't be designing screens for the rest of your career. You need to be doing a lot more than that.
Don't focus on your title if you're a designer already working in a company because you can be called a UI/UX Designer who might be doing the job of a Product Designer. The reverse is also possible. You can be called a Product Designer but might be limited to doing execution work of just UI and UX.
People who enter this profession prepare themselves to focus on the execution of just designing screens rather than developing product thinking skills. Boot camps, online courses, and design schools make things even worse.
When you look for jobs online, you might see that companies have different names for their designers, such as Design Specialist, Experience Designer, Digital Designer, Interaction Designer, etc. You need to focus on the job description and not the title. Understand what the roles and responsibilities of that job are.
Google has 2 Design roles (excluding dedicated research roles): Interaction Designer and UX Designer. If you read the job description, they pretty much have the same requirements as a Product Designer. Apple also 2 Design roles: Product Designer and Human Interface Designer. The roles and responsibilities are identical.
The point to note is that the title doesn't really matter. The work you do matters more. If you're not doing core product design work, then you need to focus on working in companies that enable you to do core product design work. You need to rethink your career path.
Now a question you might have is that, if a product designer is responsible for owning a product, making decisions to improve the overall product and just design screens, what do product managers do?