Businesses that think of their solutions’ design methodically generate 32% more revenue than those that don’t.
When it comes to product design, the importance of this is even more significant, as your products and solutions aimed at consumers are a direct reflection of your brand. Customers form their impressions of you as a business based on whether your products are dependable, intuitive and easy to use – or not.
This article looks into the six most common types of product design, with specific examples for each.
Table of Contents
What is Product Design?
Product design is a process of devising, producing, and iterating products that solve users’ pain points or fulfill specific market demands.
Understanding the end-user (the customer persona that will use the product) is critical to successful product design. Product designers use empathy and knowledge of their prospective customers’ habits, behaviors, frustrations, requirements and aspirations to solve real problems for real people.
Good product design practices are evident throughout the product's lifecycle. From pre-ideation user research and concept creation to prototyping and usability testing, product design is critical in developing the user experience and product offering.
Let’s go over the six most common product design types.
1. Original Product Design
At the start of the product, the design types chain is the original design approach or form. It meets a user’s need by using an innovative, inventive idea and bringing it to life in a final product design.
Unique design necessitates creativity. Unique ideas often upset established businesses because they contain the seeds of new technology with far-reaching implications.
There are two variations on the original design:
- An original, inventive design inspired by the most recent scientific findings and technological advancements.
- A unique product that combines current solutions in a new form and provides new functions and features.
2. System Design
A shop layout is a simple and well-known example of a system design. The shelf product designer is essentially an information architect in a brick-and-mortar store with hundreds of items.
System design is about organizing items into logical categories (e.g., confectionery, snacks, cooking supplies, dairy, etc.) and then assembling the different categories in a logical order (e.g., multiple types of food on one side of the store, cleaning products on the other side), making sure that the items customers should notice are highlighted (sale, new product on promotion, etc.).
The system designer considers not only the customer's intuition and usability but also the store’s business aims.
3. Adaptive Product Design
This design form comes to life when a well-known solution is modified to satisfy a new requirement, resulting in a creative application.
The underlying solution concept remains unchanged, but the concept's manifestation is altered to meet and solve new issues and usage criteria.
Adaptive product design should not be confused with adaptive design for online and graphical user interfaces, which adapts to multiple screen sizes, akin to responsive design.
4. Engineering Design/Variant Design
Engineering design is more commonly used to enhance an existing design. For example, the goal could be to redesign a component in a product that has failed in service or to reduce its production costs.
Frequently, designers make no changes to the original design's operating principle or concept but only to certain aspects. For example, they can change the shape of a product to reduce stress concentrations, or they can use a different material to save weight or money.
It is frequently referred to as variant design when the redesign is limited to adjusting some design characteristics.
5. Interface Design
The aesthetic experience of the product is crucial to interface design. It takes a human-first approach: before appearance and innovation, the interface acts as a point of contact between the user and the product and its usability.
The interface design aims to guide the user through the product and help them use it instinctively.
Let's take the ATM as an example. Its interface must be simple and easy to understand for the average user withdrawing money from the machine. They should be able to quickly figure out how to operate the ATM via a UI design that implements colors, fonts, icons, familiar buttons and varied sizes on all elements.
6. Process Design
Process design is crucial in eCommerce websites since it allows browsing, selecting, saving, adding to cart, and ultimately paying for bought items.
But let’s consider a more tangible example: an airport. Airports, among other things, have a lot of waiting, zig-zag lines, and rooms that can only be entered and exited through one door. This is because various processes are crucial for safety and efficiency, such as check-in, security checks, passport control, customs, and other procedures.
A meticulous process design is of vital importance in this instance to ensure the seamless functioning of a highly complex ecosystem.
Types of Product Design Takeaways
While different product design types exist and new ones are likely to pop up as new solutions and trends sweep the market, it is essential to remember that each comes with the exact prerequisites.
Knowing your audience, understanding their preferences and habits, and being on top of changing trends are vital to providing an excellent UX with your end product. The product design’s primary concern should be ensuring intuitive and satisfactory use before tackling the questions of aesthetics.
Depending on the industry and vertical, the product design development should inherit some characteristics that the audience is used to. A product design that is too innovative and disruptive may alienate the audiences, so striking a balance between inventiveness and familiarity is essential.
A professional product design firm can also help you with this process, so we advise looking for the right agency to partner with for your project.
