You may not meet product designers very often, but you encounter their work every day. As you read this text on a phone or computer, you’re using software that user experience and user interface designers helped build. When you buy something at the store, odds are that product designers were part of everything from the item itself to the packaging it’s in.
These designers combine their knowledge of design, business and consumer preferences to create products that work better for you. If you’ve ever been in a store’s aisle and thought some product packaging could be done better, this field might be for you.
If you want to work in this field, getting a product design degree is an excellent first step to teach you the foundations and familiarize you with the career paths available.
What is a product design degree?
First and foremost, product design degrees teach you how to use your creative and critical thinking skills to solve problems and create user-friendly solutions. University of the Pacific engineering management professor and co-lead of the Faculty Advisory Board that developed Pacific’s product design degree, Mehdi Khazaeli, highlights the importance of human-centered thinking in the age of artificial intelligence.
“Let the computer do what it’s good at, which is computing, and let humans be more human,” he says. “This [product design] major helps identify problems, then connect different disciplines together to solve them.”
As you earn a product design degree, you learn to connect disciplines such as engineering, business and communication to find innovative solutions and gain the storytelling abilities to sell their value. You also learn the hard skills of project management, conceptual design and prototyping to make those ideas physical. By the time you graduate, you’re ready to join a team that brings a project from idea to consumer product.
This degree often allows you to specialize in physical design or digital user experience, which gives you the flexibility to focus on the types of products that interest you.
“This major is good for the students that want to go that extra step to understand the world, to be inspired by nature’s ideas and integrate different ideas from one discipline to another,” Khazaeli says.
Industrial design vs. product design degree
When you research product design, you also find references to the field of industrial design. This practice is part of product design. When you design a physical product for consumer use, you consider not just the end user, but also the practical side of mass production.
This is one of the skills you learn in a product design degree, although it will be combined with a broader focus that prepares you for a wider selection of industry jobs.
“You will learn techniques like industrial design, but we need to combine these skill sets with technicals and creating value, ”Khazaeli says. So, that’s the value of this interdisciplinary major. You’re not just focusing on narrow topics. You learn a combination of skills.”
Product design curriculum
When you compare product design degrees, be sure to look at each program’s course catalog. That outlines what you learn at that university with required and optional courses, plus the intended learning outcomes.
These learning outcomes are especially important, because they give you insight into the abilities that university expects you to have when you graduate. If you compare these catalogs, you can also see where a university adds particular emphasis based on its specializations.
University of the Pacific’s program, for example, offers two tracks: physical design and manufacturing, and digital user experience and artificial intelligence. Physical design gives you a foundation in 3D design, manufacturing processes and mechanical engineering. Digital user experience trains you to understand digital design, computer science and human-computer interface design.
Pacific’s Bachelor of Science in product design and entrepreneurship also builds your business mindset. It’s less hands-on than the actual process of design but no less important. You can build a technically perfect product, but it will never go to market if it’s too expensive to build or purchase.
“Maybe your first job is human-computer interaction designer or something on the manufacturing side, drafting or doing product design,” Khazaeli says. “But eventually, you get the experience to move on to be an entrepreneur. There’s a business in viability, and that’s what you learn from these experiences.”
Product design course requirements
To give you an idea of what kind of courses you take, here are a few examples from Pacific’s degree program:
- AI for Designers
- Introductions to Statistics and Probability
- Data Visualization and Storytelling
- Social Science Research Methods
- Behavioral Psychology
- Principles of 3D Design (physical design track)
- UI Techniques and Applications (digital user experience tracks)
Khazaeli points to the wide range of knowledge you gain in this degree, which prepares you for a wide variety of job options.
“You work with some case studies, checking the physical or digital viability, and come up with solutions. You learn to create financial forecasting, a marketing plan, an operation plan and eventually a business plan. You learn artistic design and how to convert that to digital and physical concepts,” he says. “And, at Pacific, there’s a capstone project, which is real. And we bring in industry experts to mentor students to solve those problems that actually exist in industry.”
Skills acquired by product design majors
You build soft skills and hard skills in a product design degree, which prepare you to create, improve and sell people on product ideas. This last ability is one of the most important. No matter how good your idea is, you still need to sell other people on its importance.
“The most important is communication,” Khazaeli says. “Not just verbal communication. You need to draw something—we call it napkin drawings—be able to draw a concept on a napkin and share it with others.”
You also build your ability to use computer software to create and improve prototypes. This is the meat and potatoes of design work, where you work with a team to iterate an idea until it’s a feasible product. Plus, you learn how to use AI to compliment your human skills.
“There are also skills related to finance, marketing, operations and general management,” Khazaeli says. “We want our students to have two things: a liberal arts experience, and also the AI and digital literacy understanding as well.”
Careers with a product design degree
Product design exists in any industry with a product to sell. In other words, most of them. It goes by a lot of different names depending on the exact role, so product design degrees prepare you for jobs such as:
- User experience (UX) designer
- User interface (UI) designer
- Industrial designer
- Packaging designer
- Product designer
When you’re in school, it’s important to build your project skills and your portfolio. Those give your resume a leg-up, because you can show off your ability to shepherd a project from conception to delivery.
“Students can take any job that starts with ideation, goes through concept generation, through detail designs, through manufacturing, through launch and sell,” Khazaeli says. “You learn the whole life cycle of product development, which is useful for different workforces in the industry.”
Choose a product design degree program based on your career goals
When you compare product design degrees, consider your specific goals. If you want to work in a particular industry, look for degree programs that focus on relevant knowledge and skills. If you’re not certain yet, which is completely normal, consider a program that gives you a general foundation and helps you build your portfolio.
Pacific’s program emphasizes real-world projects and connects you with industry, which helps you understand what options you have and prepares you for that jump into a career. Before you graduate, you take a capstone class that brings together all your education to create a real product with a team. That shows employers that you know how to apply your education.
“We designed these classes for hands-on activities,” Khazaeli says. “And you get to solve those complex, real-world problems.”