The Two Worlds of Product Design
Have you ever wondered, especially if you’re a product designer working at an agency, as a consultant, or even as a freelancer, what happens after a product is developed?
The app is launched, the website is live, the client signs off… So, is that it? Is the job really finished once the designs are delivered?
GIF via Tenor
This is a question I’ve asked myself often. Through my experience working on in-house projects at my previous company and now at Antikode, a design agency, I’ve come to understand that product design has two very different sides: Creating something from scratch and maintaining and evolving an existing product.
While they share the same core design thinking principles, they’re very different in terms of timeline, responsibility, focus, and creative process.
Also Read: From Creative Idea to Project: A Complete Guide for Designers
Creating a Product from Scratch: Designing the Unknown
1. The Challenge of Starting from Zero
Starting from zero is more challenging in a unique way. When you’re building something from scratch, there are a lot of unknowns.
You’re often working in unfamiliar industries, facing new problems, and building everything, from user flows to design systems without existing frameworks or user data.
Especially for junior designers, this can be quite challenging as they have not mastered every industry yet, but they are expected to learn fast, ask the right questions, and build a solid foundation of understanding as they go.
You can’t wait to know everything before starting. Timelines move fast, and you learn by doing. If you never start, the product never happens.
2. The Workflow for Creating a New Product
The process usually begins by understanding product requirements and developing a foundation design system that’ll be reusable elements like buttons, tabs, text styles, and color schemes. Once that’s set, the visual direction follows the brand’s identity, but there’s more creative freedom.
Since we’re defining the look and feel, we can explore visual concepts, as long as usability remains at the core. We also build low-fidelity wireframes early to ensure the user flow aligns with client needs. Because there are no existing patterns to follow, we can shape the ideal flow freely.
After validating the structure, we move into high-fidelity designs, adding micro-interactions and visual polish. This is where creativity and imagination can really shine.
GIF via Tenor
Finally, we deliver a complete package design system, UI components, and user flows to the engineering team, along with documentation or briefs for anything that needs extra clarification.
Maintaining a Product: Evolving with Purpose
1. What’s Good is Good, Refine What’s Not
When working on an existing product, the focus shifts from creation to optimization. Instead of building from the ground up, you’re working within established design systems, user flows, and technical constraints to refine the user experience (UX) based on user behavior and business goals.
Here, attention to detail is everything. Most tasks involve reusing existing components and making enhancements that improve clarity, usability, or consistency.
The role also becomes more collaborative, you’re in frequent discussions with stakeholders, developers, and users to uncover pain points and find the best ways to solve them.
2. The Workflow for Maintaining an Existing Product
The first step is usually immersing yourself in the existing product. That means learning the current design system, flows, and logic behind key decisions.
Designers work closely with product managers and developers to identify friction points or areas for improvement, either from user feedback, data analytics, or usability studies.
For example, if a financial app has a high failure rate in the deposit process, you might begin by analyzing analytic data or conducting user interviews. Maybe the button isn’t prominent enough, the screen has too much clutter, or instructions aren’t clear.
Your job is to diagnose these blockers and design a solution to improve the flow. Not all updates are big. Sometimes it’s about tweaking microcopy, adjusting button size, or improving visual hierarchy. Other times, it involves reworking entire flows.
In-house teams also need to be aware of emerging trends like AI integration and explore where these innovations might keep the product competitive and relevant.
Also Read: Bridging the Gap to Business Strategy with Project Alignment
Conclusion: Two Roles, One Goal
Whether you’re creating something new from scratch or maintaining and evolving an existing product, both roles are essential to the product lifecycle. It all comes down to your preferences as a designer:
Do you enjoy rapid discovery, starting from zero, and working on something different every day?
Or do you find satisfaction in deep product ownership, continuous improvement, and creating data-driven decisions?
Neither path is better or cooler than the other. They just represent different ways of thinking, creating, and collaborating. And the good news? You can always explore both and discover where you thrive.