100 Product Designers - Hire a Product Design Company

What is product design?

Product design is a process that blends user needs and business goals when creating a product. The goal of the process is to ensure that your company’s products are as user friendly as possible and generate consistent and significant profit.

Product design is a delicate balance that forces professionals to contend with the demands of the market and the needs of the company. While it’s not an exact science, product design is a process that promises many advantages to those that understand and use it properly. To have a strong business, you must have strong products. To have strong products, you must have strong product design.

What are the advantages of product design?

There are numerous advantages of product design, including improving the sales of the product, improving the company’s position in the industry, improving brand loyalty for the company, improving compliance with regulations and best practices, building a stronger brand identity for the company, creating the possibility of entering new markets, reducing customer complaints, and reducing the time and cost of marketing new products or services.

The advantages of product design all revolve around creating a more appealing product for your customers.

What are product design strategies?

There are no exact step-by-step guides to a successful product design process because every product is unique. What works for one product will most likely not work for a different product But effective product design should help users understand the problems and opportunities of the market, define a product solution, and stick to the product process.

1. Understand the problem of the market and the opportunity it presents, because no market is perfect and there are always gaps in the performance of other products. Recognize those gaps and visualize the solution.
2. Define the solution, because the product should answer three questions: How does the product work? Can anybody use the product? Why would someone use the product?
3. Stick with the process, because product design is not a linear process. Designers will often have to test their products repeatedly and refine the things that don’t work until everything is just right.
4. Product design is a process that constantly asks questions in order to improve something. It’s a good way for good ideas to be born and put into practice in the real world.

Product design is a process that constantly asks questions in order to improve something. It’s a good way for good ideas to be born and put into practice in the real world.

What is the cost of product design?

There are nominally two ways vendors charge for product design services. These are hourly rates or a per project flat fee. The average hourly rate for a product designer can land somewhere between $45 to $105, while per project rates commonly begin at $100.

The factors that ultimately determine the cost of a product design project are its expected scope, prototype construction, and testing. There are many moving parts to a product design budget and it is essential to hire product design experts that will execute within a reasonable cost range.

How should companies choose a product designer?

Product design isn’t a new service and the process of looking for the best vendor is fairly standard.

1. Review the vendor’s case studies, by taking note of the number of products the vendor has brought to market, not just the ones they conceptualized. You want a vendor that helps you take a product off the factory line, not a portfolio of computer images.
2. Inquire about the vendor’s route to market, because the most successful vendors have insight on the industry of their partners. They should know the maximum threshold the production of a product should be to help your company make a profit.
3. Gauge the vendor's cultural fit with your company, because the product design process is heavily collaborative. You need to choose a partner that can get on the same page with your team as quickly as possible.

Choosing the right partner is the single most important decision you can make in the entire product design. Take as much time as needed to make this decision the right one.