The product management world sometimes uses the terms product design/development interchangeably. However, these two areas have different scopes, roles, and goals.
This ultimate guide will walk you through the key differences between product design and product development. We’ll explore the specifics of each process and outline the key steps involved in both.
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What is product design?
Product design is the process of conceptualizing and creating a product, focusing on its aesthetics, functionality, and user experience. It involves research, ideation, prototyping, user testing, and feedback collection to ensure the product effectively addresses the intended problem.
Product design goals could include meeting the needs of a specific user persona or filling a gap in the market.
For instance, the product design team at Spotify focuses its efforts on creating a seamless UI for the streaming platform, which requires continuous user research and A/B testing.
Spotify’s user interface.
What is product development?
A product development process encompasses the entire lifecycle of a product, from conception and design to engineering, build testing, prototype construction, market launches, and mass manufacturing (where applicable).
The key objectives are to build a product, launch it to the market, iterate based on user feedback, and maintain the infrastructure to maintain usability as the underlying code becomes more complex over time.
Returning to the Spotify example, its product development team works on building out the backend infrastructure to meet customer needs (in this case, streaming music) and maintaining the product to ensure its features continue to reflect the ever-shifting target market.
Product design and development: 7 key differences
Product design and development are two distinct but closely related disciplines. After all, product designers conduct the research necessary for developers to create products that align with user wants and needs.
That said, there are 7 key differences between product design and product development:
- Objectives.
- Scope.
- Processes.
- Roles.
- Tools.
- Output.
- Collaboration.
The sections below will go over each of these differences.
1. Objectives
Product designers focus on creating user-centric products with pleasing aesthetics, while product developers aim for functionality and reliability. The former sets goals around improving user experience, while the latter focuses on technical feasibility and ensuring successful product launches.
2. Scope of Work
The product design scope centers around UI/UX, while product development includes market research, product strategy, engineering, prototyping, testing, market launches, and post-launch evaluation. Prototyping may fall into the scope of work of both departments, with design prototypes being sent to developers who then create functional prototypes.
3. Processes and Methodologies
The product design process consists of research and user testing whereas product development covers various stages, from market analysis to engineering undertaking. The former process requires plenty of design thinking, whereas strategy and execution — such as manufacturing planning and agile development — are more crucial in the latter.
4. Roles and Responsibilities
A product designer holds roles that are responsible for UI/UX and other visual/experiential aspects of the product, while product development usually includes product managers, product engineers, developers, or QA testers. In other words, the responsibilities of all roles are different, but they share mutual goals.
5. Tools and technologies
Product designers use tools like Figma or computer-aided design software, whereas developers use platforms like Jira and integrated development environment software. Certain teams may also use cross-department tools that allow both designers and developers to access the same files.
6. Output and Deliverables
Product design teams deliver design concepts, feedback reports, and final specifications while product developers map out the overall strategy and create functional prototypes and production builds. Collecting and acting on user feedback is important for both product designers and developers.
7. Collaboration
Product designers interact with the target audience (e.g. focus testers or end users), as well as stakeholders, marketers, and other creatives like writers or designers. Product developers collaborate with the company’s stakeholders, product designers, marketers, and manufacturing and engineering teams.
Why is it important to connect product design and development?
While product design and development are different disciplines, it’s crucial to foster collaboration between members of both teams while intertwining cross-departmental processes. There are a few benefits to meshing your product design and development workflows:
- Consistency and alignment. The product vision should remain consistent across every stage, from idea generation to execution, as any misalignment could lead to the creation of disjointed products.
- Open communication. Open lines of communication between product designers and product developers are paramount to ensure both departments can properly collaborate.
- Faster launches. Strategic collaboration between your designers and developers can accelerate the time-to-market for any software product.
- Product quality. The quality of the final product is at its highest when both user experience and technical feasibility are taken into consideration.
- Cost efficiency. Production costs are often reduced when designers and developers work towards mutual business objectives in tandem.
- Innovation. Cross-department collaboration makes it easier to generate ideas and innovate using the combined expertise of both teams.
Key stages of product design and product development
Both product designers and product developers are part of the same overarching development process. The sections below will go over the key stages of the entire flow so you can see exactly where the product management process shifts from design to development.
1. Research and discovery
The research and discovery stage is where most product lifecycles begin. This primarily consists of market research, user research, and competitive analysis.
Once enough data has been collected, it will be easier to discover design opportunities and identify any relevant constraints.
If you’re not sure what to ask users, you can read our full guide on user research questions. As a quick primer, here are a few examples of what you can ask your users:
- What problems are you looking to solve with this product?
- What is the main goal when completing a certain task?
- How hard is it to complete the task in question?
- Which tasks do you accomplish on an average workday?
- Are there any recurring issues that, if solved, would greatly increase your satisfaction?
You can also offer incentives such as vouchers in order to get more customers to volunteer their user feedback and give you their time:
2. Ideation and concept development
Brainstorming to generate fresh ideas and developing initial concepts — such as wireframes or sketches — are the next steps in the product lifecycle.
The concepts are then evaluated with concept testing so the best concept or features (based on feedback and feasibility) can be selected and prioritized.
When attempting to collect product feedback, it’s best to open with short surveys before attempting to invite users to lengthier 1-on-1 interviews:
3. Prototyping
The product design team moves on to creating low-fidelity prototypes such as wireframes and mockups.
These almost always come before 3D models or interactive prototypes as they’re a lot faster to create and revise prior to finalizing the prototype design.
Only once the prototype design has been finalized will product designers be able to hand the specifications over to developers who work on building a functional prototype (more on this later).
4. User testing and validation
Once the final design specs are available and a working prototype is ready, usability testing is the next stage.
This allows product teams to analyze feedback and improve the design based on results to improve the user experience early on.
By leveraging iterative testing, your product team will be able to validate individual features and ensure that the final product is in line with what its end users expect.
5. Planning and feasibility analysis
This is where the product development team usually takes over in order to define project goals across the roadmap, set the scope of the project, and create a rough timeline for when each milestone should be completed.
Note: This is the same stage where business analysis, such as feasibility study, resource requirement, and risk assessment occurs.
Once the scope, timeline, and milestones have been set, this information can be converted into a roadmap that helps the entire team stay on track throughout each stage of the development process:
6. Detailed engineering design
The engineering design phase consists of converting design specifications into technical requirements, developing detailed engineering drawings/models, and technical evaluations to ensure that the product doesn’t encounter any unforeseen roadblocks.
For more complex products, developers may need to run simulations in a sandbox environment to verify that the software is working as intended before resuming user testing or releasing builds to an open beta.
7. Prototyping and testing
The second prototyping stage consists of building functional prototypes and performing stress tests on them to gauge their performance. This will allow product developers to identify (and proactively address) any design flaws or technical issues.
In addition to creating the functional prototype itself, developers may also be responsible for producing detailed engineering models or drawings that explain how everything works.
These resources will be crucial for progress updates with other stakeholders and during technical evaluations by QA testers.
8. Product planning and deployment
Immediately following the prototype testing stage is the Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) phase where the necessary infrastructure is set up. This is around the time when security and compliance are handled in preparation for an upcoming launch.
Depending on which industry the product is in and who its target market is, the level of compliance may be more stringent.
For instance, SaaS products in the medical field will need to be HIPAA-compliant when processing data, while other platforms may only require SOC 2 compliance to serve their users.
9. Release and post-release activities
In the lead-up to launching the product, most teams will conduct beta testing in either closed or open betas.
The product launch itself will consist of GTM strategy, product marketing, and SaaS sales. Post-release activities mainly consist of monitoring and maintenance to keep everything running smoothly.
Ongoing improvements will also be needed to increase product usage and drive feature adoption.
These objectives are most often achieved by extracting product experience insights and creating in-app guidance for users.
By analyzing data and building flows, product teams will be able to see how the product performs post-launch while having the means to boost the usage of early adopters.
This, in turn, leads to a larger sample size to draw from when reviewing user feedback.
Top 4 product design and development practices for 2024
Tying product design and development together is a common goal that most SaaS companies share. This has led to the rise of new methodologies and best practices to better connect the two divisions such as:
- Agile methodologies.
- User-centered design/development.
- Collaboration between designers and developers.
- “Design thinking”.
Let’s take a closer look at each of these in the sections below!
Agile methodologies
While Agile release planning originally gained traction as a way to break projects down into smaller chunks to speed up delivery timelines, it has since turned into a popular avenue for iterative design and development.
The opportunity for test marketing new features in isolation makes it possible to gather feedback earlier on and adjust the product accordingly. This stands in stark contrast to releasing only a few large updates per year and being swarmed with tickets spread across countless newly launched features.
User-centered design and product development
While product-centric development may have been the norm just a few years ago, SaaS companies are quickly transitioning towards a user-centered design ideology to adapt to the increased competition from the hordes of VC-funded startups.
User-centric product design and development put the customer’s needs at the core of every strategy throughout the product lifecycle. This in turn leads to products that better reflect what users want and lead to reduced churn rates as a result.
Collaboration between designers and developers
While product design and development have traditionally been thought of as different departments, the division between them has diminished over time to make way for better collaboration.
These cross-functional teams are further boosted by so-called “full stack designers” who are involved in every step of the process, from research to implementation.
These cross-functional team members bridge the gap between design and development teams to create a more unified product lifecycle.
Design thinking
In its most basic form, design thinking is an iterative approach to solving problems. It consists of implementing various design-based solutions depending on the specifics of the issue being addressed. However, this can be difficult to reconcile with newer user-centered design philosophies.
Human-centered design (HCD) takes the adjusted approach of centering every stage of the development process around the users who will be interacting with the functional prototype or final product.
Conclusion
As you can see, design and development are equally important to satisfy your customer base.
Fostering collaboration and synergy between both of these departments should undoubtedly be a top priority for modern product managers.
If you’re a product designer or developer who wants to create human-centric in-app flows, then it’s time to get your free Userpilot demo today!
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