Why 2023 is the Best Year to Move into a Career in Product?
Product design that is innovative, aesthetic, and usable is vital to business success. The incentives for a good product design are clear—well-designed products with strong sales and brand image. For those who want to start a career in product design, choosing the best product design and development courses will help you get started quickly.
Akzo Nobel’s Dulux is perhaps the perfect example of how companies from different domains use design thinking to drive market success. Dulux, for instance, launched a new line of paintbrushes in 2009. These brushes came with a novel triangular shape, making painting edges easier. According to a Mckinsey report, this led to an annual sales growth of 36%.
The growing importance of design in business success has led to the rise of modern-day designers, who can mix modern technology with legacy design principles to develop a product that matches the likes of today’s consumers.
The demand for new-age product designers in India has increased over the years. A Deccan Herald report revealed that India’s demand for product designers has increased by 10%. So is 2023 ‘the’ year for moving into the product design and management field? How can a course help with this? Find out all this and more in this blog.
What are the Benefits of Learning Product Design and Development
Learning product design and development helps aspirants develop skills that enable them to bring new and innovative products to market easily. Besides that, here are some benefits of learning product design and development.
Learning product design and development gives learners broad theoretical knowledge and the practical skills to create new products.
With the help of product design learning, designers will become capable of handling commercial or large-scale design projects.
Learners will develop a strong foundation in design through live projects and gain industrial experience through a comprehensive curriculum. For instance, aspirants can study design thinking methodologies to help them create human-centered designs.
Learners can track trends and make changes to the product that match the customers’ needs effectively by taking product design and development courses.
ALSO READ: What are the Steps of Product Design & Its Process
How Can Product Design and Development Courses Help Advance Your Career?
Picture this: You are a product designer with a few years of experience. You have been a part of several product launches and have managed to earn a name for yourself as an excellent product designer. Like other designers, you are ambitious and want to advance your career. You ask yourself questions like, “Where do I want to be in five years?” and “What is next for me?”
However, getting promoted involves more than just skills and knowledge. It requires consistently demonstrating competency in various activities, like designing user-centric products. This might all sound simple, but how does one bring this to reality? Well, one needs to concentrate on two simple things—results and behaviors.
Results are the output of the work a product designer does. It is assessed based on its eventual quality. On the other hand, behavior is defined as how one does their work. It also includes how one acts and communicates in their role.
Aspirants’ results and behaviors determine their performance. If one consistently performs well for an extended period, there are high chances of promotion. Learning from a well-structured product design and development course helps improve your skills as a product designer.
A product design and development course helps aspirants improve their competencies over time. Increased competency can open the door to unlimited possibilities in the long run. This is true for product designers with varied work experience.
What Skills Will You Acquire From Product Design and Development Courses?
A product designer needs a unique blend of technical and non-technical skills to be a competent addition to any organization. Here are some technical skills aspiring designers acquire after completing product design and development courses.
1. Coding Skills
Having excellent knowledge of common computer languages like C++, Java, Python, and CSS and coding experience can help product designers effectively write code that drives devices to perform specific tasks and functions.
2. Visual Design Skills
Product designers must have excellent visual design skills. Utilizing these skills, they can create an amazing product that concentrates on layout, color theory, and typography.
3. UI and UX Design Skills
Product designers employ User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) skills to create products that are visually appealing and easy to use.
Here are some non-technical skills that aspirants can acquire from a product design and development course:
4. Empathy
A good product designer knows their end users’ pain points and motivations. They must also care about the requirements of their in-house team.
5. Collaboration
Product designers work in collaboration with different members of the product team. The mindset to share resources and information is paramount to building great products.
6. Excellent Communication
Since product designers work in collaboration with different departments, they need to have excellent communication skills. Translating ideas into words is a skill that product designers must pick up.
What are the Top Product Design and Development Trends?
The advent of technology has led to a massive shift in the kinds of products people use. Here are the top product design and development trends for 2023.
1. Prioritizing Sustainability
As consumers become more conscious of the environment, companies also need to evolve with them, thus making sustainable product design the norm. Product designers must design more sustainable products that don’t erode the environment’s resources.
2. Increased Importance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Product Design and Development
AI is already transforming many industries, and product design and development are no exception. AI will be more significant in product design in the coming years. Designers can use AI to identify user preferences and create personalized experiences. Additionally, it can also be used to automate design tasks.
3. Human-Centered Design Approach
A human-centered design approach refers to a method that prioritizes the needs of potential customers. Future product design and development will heavily rely on this approach. This trend will help designers concentrate on what customers actually want and design products accordingly.
How do Product Design Courses Differ From Industrial Design Courses?
Product design is about designing individual products, whereas industrial design is about designing anything that can be mass-produced. This difference applies to the courses as well. For instance, the product design and development courses curriculum effectively emphasizes the creation and development of consumer goods. On the other hand, the industrial design courses’ curriculum focuses on how to use industrial equipment, machinery, and complex systems to manufacture products in large quantities.
Besides the curriculum, the skills that an aspirant gets by taking a product design or industrial design course are also different. Taking a product design and development course helps aspirants develop skills such as user research, product sketching, 3D modeling, human factors, and design thinking. Technical drawing, CAD modeling, material selection, manufacturing processes, and engineering collaboration are some of the skills that industrial design courses teach.
ALSO READ: Product Design and Development 101: Your Comprehensive Guide in 2023
How Can Emeritus Help You Build a Successful Product Design Career?
Emeritus’ product management courses will be a critical catalyst to scale your product design career. These courses will teach learners how to design and develop customer-centric products. Additionally, learners will learn how to use design thinking and new design techniques to develop products with valuable features.
Furthermore, these courses are designed for fresh graduates and mid-level and senior-level designers who want to develop an empathy-driven design mindset and gain a deeper understanding of business objectives.
