Alongside the digital expansion of computational devices the landscape of accompanied disciplines has become increasingly specialized and segregated. Invisible walls have been built to separate professions that just a few years ago were the same thing. Leading to the current offering of countless different design specialities such as interaction designer and product designer. In order to compare these two disciplines let us briefly define them.
Interaction designers are someone tasked with designing or improving the interactions that play out between humans and machines through a product or a service. Product designers, on the other hand, might be a more holistic role taking into consideration the whole product offering, competitive elements, feature selection and strategy.
There is not really a clear winner as many times the roles are not completely separated, if you are working in a small company you will invariably wear many hats and perform both product and interaction roles and probably many more. Design specialization happens in larger organizations where like complexity naturally emerges along with distinct and specific disciplines. Even then you are not functioning in the vacuum as product designers work alongside Interaction designer and multiple other disciplines. The truth is there is no clear winner on this debate, a product with poor interaction would be a failure but the same fate awaits a great interaction packaged in a horrible product. The final product will always be a mixture of both (and many more) disciplines that will need to work together for the greater common good, a great user experience.
