What does a product designer actually do?

I get this a lot from friends and family who are not in tech. They kind of assume that I just push rectangles on a screen all day (which is not that far from the truth if I'm being completely honest).

In 13 years I've seen lots of people trying to explain it in simple terms. And most have done a better job than me, but that won't stop me from sharing my take today.

I woke up before my alarm went off this morning. I picked up my phone, turned off my sleep focus mode, and got hit with this alert:

"It looks like you're awake. Would you like to turn off your alarm?"

This is smart, I thought. This is exactly what good design is - reading the user's intention based on their input, and having a useful suggestion ready.

The two options I had:

"Leave On" / "Turn Off"

Very clear. You don't have the ambiguous "Cancel". You have two buttons, and you know exactly what each one does because of the labels.

That's it - that's what a product designer does. Clears up ambiguity with as little effort as possible.

ps. I heard a joke somewhere. In the beginning of our careers we just copy Apple. When we get to base-level we start doing research, user testing, interviews, measuring KPIs, etc. But at the master level - at the master level we just copy Apple :)