5 practical tips to be an effective product designer

Alden Tan
5 min readOct 17, 2020

What does it mean to be an effective product designer? I define effectiveness as:

  • Being a critical problem solver whose expertise not only lies in visual and/or interaction design but also in being able to flesh out core business concerns & factors
  • Being excellent at cross functional collaboration & communication – being able to tactfully ‘handle’ different people
  • Maximising tangible and intangible value (KPIs, loyalty, sentiment) for the organisation on a macro level via design
  • Bringing and inspiring as many stakeholders as possible along in this journey with you to solve high-impact problems

I believe this criteria may vary across individuals, but the bottom line is that an effective product designer creates value for those around him/her and ultimately for the organisation he/she may be in.

Let’s get right into the 5 practical tips I have learnt with regards to maximising value creation as a product designer.

1. It is key to understand the background of the project with much clarity.

  • I learnt this while…

--

--

Alden Tan

I design products for a living in Singapore 🇸🇬 Also, I like to write and think about how to inspire a better world.