If you are a Product Designer or work in a profession related to technology, I’d like to know: have you ever had difficulty explaining your profession to someone? I do, constantly! lol
You've probably already experienced this: it's very common - at least here in Brazil - to ask each other about our profession at some point in a conversation. And when we encounter these questions - especially working in fields such as Product, IT, marketing and similar roles- it is not uncommon for us to have difficulty explaining exactly what we do, despite living it every day (read in this article, for example, some of the different roles that the Product Designer can work with). I believe that this is due to the speed of transformation that these professions are experiencing, and, therefore, they are becoming increasingly complex and full of connections between each other and/or becoming increasingly specific, in many cases.
And precisely because I’ve been living into this speed linked to technology for several years - and because I have been an enthusiast of technology since a very early age - I have a tendency to see certain things as if they were known to everyone, which made it more difficult for me to explain. Nowadays, when I face this question, I’ve developed a new strategy and created ways to adapt the answer according to the curiosity of whoever is asking me, so I can go into more or less detail, bring examples and/or show how rich a career in technology can be!
In order to share more details about this topic, I decided, in this article, to summarize and illustrate some processes we carry out as Product Designers. The idea is to simplify and show examples of some Product Design processes; keep in mind that they will not always be in this order in the actual work routine and that each professional, team or company may have a different process - so I will show some common themes. Let’s try this?
Level 1: Tutorial
I thought of a light and fun way to exemplify the processes: I want to invite you to play a game with me! In this game, we are going to create an app to identify plants (using the cell phone camera, it identifies and brings interesting facts about the plants found), and you, as Product Designer, has the mission of creating the page for photographing plants so that the user of your app can identify a plant that they just found by chance.
This initial phase is when we receive our "game mission". To do this, we have to map out where we want to go, what goals we want to achieve, what tools we have and plan our journey. It is common that at this stage we receive help from Product Owners to understand what, why and when we need to deliver. We plan, understand and filter our possibilities and what is expected from the product to be delivered. They are known as "acceptance criteria", but they can be given other names.
Level 2: Descoberta e Pesquisas
This is a complex but very important phase: you have tools and knowledge in your Product Designer backpack, and now you will use several of them to solve the enigma: what does the user need to have an incredible experience on my app?
At this stage you will use the information, data and tools that you already have to help with development. Who will use the app? What do we already know about the user and what can we use in this app to facilitate the experience? What strategies will we build so that the experience is not only satisfactory, but incredible?
We have Double Diamond, benchmarking, heatmaps, among many other techniques! The Product Designer's backpack is really full haha, but luckily we have the technology to make it all easier. Assembling this puzzle will give us clues to the next level.
Level 2: Prototyping
With all this information, you probably already have an idea of how your app might look like and behave. There are several steps and processes here, but to summarize, at this level you will create beautiful prototypes of how you imagine your app working! You will think about how it will be accessible to different types of people, determine how each element should behave, and create variations as the user advances steps or makes decisions.
We will also ask the developers if the solution we imagine can be done in the way we prototyped, and if not, we will adapt the model. They will help us level up!
Level 3: User interview
At this level, we can show the prototype to the users and let them test it! Despite not having all the features yet, we ask them to use their imagination and tell us more about what they think of the experience so far with the prototype we built. We ask questions like: "What can we improve?" Do you understand what this button does? Can you see what is written here without any difficulty?" and so on!
Final Level: Refine and deliver!
Users, strategists (Product Owners, stakeholders, other product designers, etc.) and developers will give their opinion on the product you created to help you move to the next level, and then you will make improvements, create documentation to explain as much detail as possible about your process and your prototypes, finalize the data collection, present your findings and how we got here, deliver the prototypes to the developers... Phew! Sooo many steps! But our game doesn't end here.
You will now also work with Product Quality Professionals (QAs) to understand if we are on the right track, if our app is accessible and if there are no details or bugs that we missed in this long process.
And it's ready: our Plant Identificator app!!!
Final Thoughts
Could it be that, after knowing some processes, it becomes simpler to explain the profession? I believe that in areas such as technology, in which everything changes so very quickly and is increasingly linked to people in their routines, perhaps it will be more and more common for some of these professions and processes to become known. Today I can explain it through examples and processes, and I'm already very curious to know what it will be like to explain the profession in the future! Will we still have difficulties, or will Product Designer be a well-known profession? Can’t wait to see!
Want more tips on how to become a Product Designer? Comment below so I can write more specific articles about this too. 😊
Did you think this article helped you in any way, or do you know of any other tips to share with us? Please tell me in the comments!
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