Product Design by Onwuneme Yahwedalu Miracle

Product design describes the method of imagining, creating, and iterating products that solve the problems of users or address specific needs in the market. Product design specifies the materials to be used, determines dimensions and tolerances define aspects of the merchandise and sets standards of the performance.

A Product Designer is someone who uses the different facets and tools of design to create and execute a solution that solves a user’s experience problems. The key to successful product design is an understanding of the end-user customer, the person for whom the commodity is being created. Product designers try to solve real problems for real people by using both empathy and knowledge of their prospective customers’ habits, behaviours, frustrations, needs, and wants.

Although the details of a product design process vary from company to company, professional product designers tend to follow a similar philosophy or framework when it comes to design thinking which involves: empathizing with people, defining the problem, ideating a solution, building a prototype and testing the solution.

The design process refers to the initial process of the planning and therefore the order with which the entire tasks are completed. An effective design process matches the product or service characteristics with customers requirement, ensures customers requirements are met in the simplest and least costly manner, reduces the time required to design a new product or services and minimizes the revisions necessary to make a design workable. While designing a product, the designer must consider the functional requirements and the aesthetic qualities.

Design starts with a problem. Let’s say there is a problem which is hunger. The designer will try to find the best restaurant or eatery. While the designer tries to solve your problem by finding the best eatery, the designer will consider some other variables like matching your financial capability with the eatery to be shown to you.

Product design usually involves four periods, namely, the research phase, the analysis and positioning phase, conceptual design phase and detailed design phase.

The research phase is usually the initial phase of a product design. It mainly focuses on people, machines, and the environment. The analysis and positioning stage is mainly based on the research phase. Through the actual deep investigation of people, machines, and the environment, the designer can analyze the direct and potential needs of the users, to achieve design customization in a targeted manner.

Conceptual design is a progression of orderly and targeted concepts of concise design established by analysis of the previous market demand and user needs. It manifests itself as an evolving process from coarse to fine, from fuzzy to clear, and from abstract to concrete, which is a trial phase for the visualization of the design conceptions after analysis and positioning stage is determined. Detailed design is a visualization process based on the conceptual design process. It is extending and diverging based on design concepts and gradually forms a visual clear plan.

Based on all the stages, the process of design output is carried out.