Excerpt from What is Product Design by Eric Eriksson

What is Product Design?

This frequently misunderstood field is in need of a proper definition.

If you look at your Product Designer as someone that makes your solution look presentable, look again. She is there to help you identify, investigate, and validate the problem, and ultimately craft, design, test and ship the solution.

Present a Product Designer with a solution, and they will tell you what’s wrong with it.
Present her with a problem, and she will go to Analytics and gather existing user data. She’ll assemble a cross-functional team from every corner of the business and brainstorm as many solutions as possible. Then, she’ll talk to User Research and make a test plan. She’ll work late and churn out wireframe after wireframe, exploring the vast realm of possibilities. She will throw together prototypes of the most interesting ideas and put them in front of users for quick validation.

Then she will give you several fully formed concepts that all perfectly solve the problem at hand. With clear strategy for how, when, and what to A/B test, and ultimately what the build and release plans should be. And she’ll support the developers through launch. She’ll work with marketing to ensure the story is consistent with the product. She will care for the product long after the first version has shipped, following up on data and metrics to keep validating the design.

A product designer will design the solution, until the problem changes.