Product Design vs UX Design vs UI Design: Why So Many Titles?

What’s the Difference Between Product Design, UX, and UI?

Product Design

Product Design is a broad, strategic discipline. It encompasses the entire lifecycle of a digital product, from identifying user needs and business goals to shaping the solution, validating it, and guiding it through development. As a Product Designer, you're not just drawing interfaces; you're helping define what the product is and why it matters.

This role blends user research, interaction design, interface design, business strategy, and collaboration with product managers and engineers. Think of Product Designers as hybrid thinkers, people who care as much about the “why” as the “how”.

UX Design

User Experience (UX) Design focuses on how users interact with a product. The aim is to create smooth, intuitive journeys by understanding behaviours, goals, and pain points. UX Designers dive deep into user research, map end-to-end journeys, create wireframes and prototypes, and test continuously to improve usability.

It’s methodical and user-first. But in isolation, UX can become theoretical if not aligned with wider product decisions.

UI Design

User Interface (UI) Design is the craft of making digital products look and feel good. UI Designers specialise in layouts, typography, colour theory, spacing, and micro-interactions. A beautifully crafted UI supports brand consistency and improves usability, but without UX thinking, it risks being purely cosmetic.

And without product-level context, even the most elegant UI may not move the needle for users or the business.

Why So Many Job Titles in Design?

As digital products became more complex and user expectations rose, companies started carving out specialised roles to solve increasingly focused problems. That’s why job boards are now brimming with listings for Product Designers, UX Designers, UI Designers, and everything in between.

But here’s the catch: these lines blur in real life. A UI Designer who understands user psychology becomes a better designer. A UX Designer who thinks commercially builds more valuable products. And a Product Designer worth their salt does all of that and more.

From My Lens: Good UX Has Always Been Product Design

Over the years, I’ve noticed a pattern: the best UX work always happens when you zoom out and start thinking like a Product Designer. Why? Because a product is more than a user journey, it’s a blend of goals, constraints, technology, and people. You can’t design a meaningful experience without considering the product strategy and business context.

The same goes for UI. Good visual design doesn’t sit in a vacuum. The best UI Designers I’ve worked with are also systems thinkers and product problem-solvers. They’re not just picking fonts, they’re making decisions that affect retention, conversion, and trust.

In short: great UX and UI are deeply interwoven with product design. They’re not separate disciplines, they’re components of it.

So What Should You Call Yourself?

That depends on your scope. If you spend most of your time on visual polish, “UI Designer” may be accurate. If you’re obsessed with user flows and usability testing, “UX Designer” fits. But if you’re shaping solutions from ideation through delivery, balancing user needs, design execution, and business impact, “Product Designer” might be your true title.

Personally, I’ve embraced Product Design not just as a title, but as a mindset. It lets me work fluidly across the layers that matter, from accessibility and aesthetics to commercial outcomes.

Final Thoughts

As someone who’s built products from scratch, pitched to investors, worked with developers, and handled user feedback loops in real time, I’ve always approached design from a product-first mindset, long before I was ever officially called a “Product Designer”.

In truth, product design is more than a job title, it’s a mindset.

While UX and UI have their own critical focuses, product design asks the bigger questions:

• What are we solving?

• Who are we building this for?

• How does this tie back to our business goals?

• What does success look like for the user and the company?

These are questions I’ve lived and breathed throughout my entrepreneurial journey. When you're responsible not just for how something looks or flows, but whether it functions as a viable business, you start to realise that great design isn’t just usability or polish, it’s decision-making.

Product Design Is Strategic, Not Just Creative

What separates a Product Designer from a UX or UI designer isn’t just a broader skill set. It’s the ability to connect design with strategy.

As a founder and lead designer for QZee, I wasn’t just prototyping flows, I was working with payment systems, aligning with marketing goals, handling support issues, and steering the product roadmap. I had to think holistically. Every design decision had ripple effects: user trust, conversion rates, retention, technical scalability.

That’s the heart of Product Design.

• It’s balancing user needs with business viability.

• It’s knowing when to sweat the UX detail, and when to make a commercial trade-off.

• It’s collaborating across disciplines, engineering, marketing, operations and making sure the product vision translates into something real.

Wearing Every Hat Taught Me What Product Design Really Means

Building a product from the ground up forces you to wear every hat. I’ve been the researcher, the strategist, the UI designer, the copywriter, and sometimes the customer service rep. And while the industry loves clean role distinctions, the reality is: in product, everything is connected.

This hands-on, end-to-end exposure has made me a better designer. I know how to think in trade-offs, how to prioritise, how to advocate for users without losing sight of delivery timelines or revenue targets.

And that’s why I believe product design is the glue. It brings UX and UI together under one purpose—to build something that works, not just something that looks or feels good.

Job titles will keep changing. Tools will keep evolving. But the core of digital design remains the same: understand people, solve problems, and build things that matter.

Whether you’re designing pixels, flows, or full-blown product strategies, remember this: design is never about deliverables—it’s about impact. And impact doesn’t live in silos.

It lives where UX, UI, and product thinking converge.