In modern startups, design is how we deliver the value of technology to people. The designer's main goal is to create the best experience for the end-user.

Consider Paystack's checkout form. The technology is the ability to collect money from anyone given their card or bank account information. The actual, underlying tech is banking applications, card networks, processor aggregation algorithms, public APIs, but the design of the checkout form does the talking.

Product management, on the other hand, involves "guiding the success of a product and leading the team that is responsible for improving it" (What is the role of a product manager, Aha). PMs basically pursue the best plan for providing and maintaining solutions to end-users' problems. Both disciplines are in service of the end-user.

Some form of design and product management have, for years, existed side-by-side in other industries like fashion or urban development. What makes these disciplines new again is the advent of internet-enabled businesses.

In this industry, of what use is design to product management?

Every time I see one of these, I die a little inside. This is not a valid representation of the relationship between design and user experience.

Let's consider the typical design functions in software startups.

• Graphic design involves working with text and images to create visual communication. This is typically applied to create and maintain a "brand", a stand-out visual identity for the product.
• When graphic design is applied strictly to creating websites, it's known as web design. Websites are typically the front page for the product and are important for acquiring customers.
• User Interface (UI) design is a branch of applied graphic design. In this case, graphic design is strictly applied to creating application interfaces.
• Information architecture is the structural arrangement of content to make it easy to understand and search.
• Interaction design is the practice of creating digital environments that respond to users. Think about it as bringing UI design to life.
• User research is about understanding the needs and behaviours of end-users by observation, seeking feedback, or performing interviews.
• The culmination of all these efforts to design a satisfactory software product is User Experience (UX) design, a.k.a. Product design.

Designers at different companies are flavoured differently and combine these roles in different ways, sometimes even with engineering skills.

How do different businesses apply design?

Invision's design report, Design Maturity Model

For their 2019 report on design maturity, Invision interviewed thousands of people across 24 industries in 77 countries to explore the relationship between design practices and business performance.