How to Design Product Architecture: Concepts, Process, and Deliverables

This issue discusses how to perform product architecture design. In simple terms, product architecture is like a building's overall blueprint, showing the complete outline of a product and gradually refining from an initial concept to detailed specifications that meet implementation requirements.

Business architecture is likened to the heart, product architecture to the skeleton, and information architecture to the veins and muscles.

Product architecture is derived from business scope, requirements, and processes, extracting and abstracting the core structure of the product.

02 How to Design Product Architecture?

As the skeleton of the entire system, the architecture must describe the subsystems (modules) and their relationships. The process starts with mapping the overall business process (business panorama), extracting common components as foundational modules, then separating first‑level, second‑level, and third‑level business modules (including page tabs) and fields.

When designing the product framework, the "User Experience Elements" can be used for decomposition. The strategic and scope layers correspond to first‑ and second‑level business modules, defining user and functional requirements. The structural layer corresponds to third‑level modules (tabs) and details the relationships between pages and the type of content displayed (list, chart, etc.). The framework layer deals with layout decisions (UI design), while the presentation layer focuses on visual communication such as color schemes, button sizes, chart styles, fonts, and other visual details.

03 What Are the Outputs of Product Architecture?

Typical deliverables include:

Business process diagram

Product functional diagram

Product prototype or PRD document

The design process gradually sketches the product, similar to drawing a human face: first defining the strategic and scope layers (the "features"), then positioning the framework and structural layers (the "layout"), and finally adding the presentation layer (the "appearance"). The final output is the prototype or PRD that conveys the product’s appearance, supported by intermediate artifacts such as business flow charts, product maps, and functional diagrams.

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