How To Build A Killer Product Design Team

Team building can do the magic, here is why!

Every top-notch product design company has a talented design team. A great product design team can do magic in achieving company goals and making your product successful. It makes the final product easier to use and understand. A great team makes the PM’s and PO’s life much easier. Building a great product always need a team effort -it’s a no brainer. But from what team?

Product developers might be the first people that come to mind as we talk about the team. However, UX researchers, UX designers, and visual designers benefit the whole team and the final product. A UX researcher digs deeper to find out the customer insights about the target audience. Don’t forget about the initial usability tests either. Prototyping and design workshops can make the process easier and improve communication within team members and assist in creating an agile environment. It is a great way to fix problems efficiently. So, let’s dig a little deeper into finding what a great product design team looks like and what are the three most essential ingredients of the team. 

Product design team 

A great product design team plays a vital role in early-stage product ideation to having a useful product – exactly what your target audience needs. The core responsibility of the team is to use it’s design thinking methods to create the product and get to it’s the most desirable state that fulfills the customer requirements. 

Three significant ingredients of the product design team

Product design companies always look for the design team with the right skill set. There are three vital components of product design. Let me simplify them a little bit below:

UI design – The person who has excellent UI design skills will help you draw beautiful screen designs with the perfect-pixel

UX design  – He is someone who loves to build prototypes and wireframes. UX designer will define the most critical design flows and structures. He will communicate with the other players and brainstorm to bring in new ideas. 

UX research – He must be able to test the product with real users, do interviews, validate feature ideas, build personas, and provide the necessary customer feedback. 

That being said, it does not mean you only need three people. Product design companies have several numbers of team members who could put efforts together to bring in the product to its final phase. However, in many startups, it is just a one-man show, which means that it is quite a risky thing. 

If you have a startup and ultimately one-man show, then chances are you will fail to get the perfect product designed because research is very consuming part of the process. If you have a one-man army, you will be too busy to do the research, and you will miss out the feedback from the end users, which is the most crucial part. 

Get the right structure 

Getting the right structure of your design team is very important, and there are several structures applicable when it comes to the product design teams. You can either combine UX research, UX design, and UI design or keep them separate. Or you can use an external or internal team. 

Before you could design the structure of your team, make sure to align your situation and your thoughts. It will help you have an optimal solution for a team structure. 

The magic lies in the design methods

Even if you got the team structure right, you would not be able to design the perfect product. And therefore, most of the product design companies invest in design methods. You need your team to use the best practices available. 

The design process will help your team to deliver the best results and enhance the performance of your product sprint-by-sprint. The process will define how you can initiate designing latest feature with sketching and prototyping to deliver the pixel-perfect result. 

Every product design company has senior people who have real-life experience. They know the methods and what you should do in your specific project. 

Train your product design team

To get a great end product, it is important to improve the methods your team uses continuously. It will also provide learning opportunities for all team members. You can create intense training programs to teach your team specific methods. Meet designers from other companies, and it will help you build a better understanding of the topics. 

You can also hold common sketching and mentoring sessions and provide feedback to each designer. It’s not a surprise, and your designers will learn a lot in such a very fast environment. Great teams work together and combine their knowledge to create the best product, so why not you?