Omnichannel Design Thinking: From Digital to Physical Product Creation

My journey as a designer has spanned the spectrum from digital interfaces to physical products—from creating UX flows for platforms like JoinMyTrip to crafting wooden automatic watches with Cambium. This cross-disciplinary experience revealed a powerful truth: the fundamental principles of good design transcend mediums, even as their application transforms.

When a UX Designer Builds a Watch

The Cambium project represented my deepest venture into physical product design—creating luxury timepieces from locally sourced wood. As a designer primarily experienced in digital products, I expected a complete paradigm shift. Instead, I discovered that my UX thinking provided an unexpected advantage.

The parallels were striking:

• User research remained fundamental, though the questions changed
• Iterative prototyping shifted from pixels to materials, but followed similar cycles
• Design constraints evolved from technical limitations to physical properties
• Experience mapping transformed from user flows to physical interaction touchpoints

This realization led me to develop a framework for omnichannel design thinking that applies across physical and digital domains.

The Omnichannel Design Principles

Through my cross-domain experience, I've identified five core principles that maintain their validity whether you're designing an app or crafting a physical product:

1. Start With Human Needs, Not Medium Constraints

Both digital and physical design must begin with deep understanding of human needs rather than medium-specific considerations. With Cambium watches, this meant recognizing that users weren't seeking merely time-telling devices but objects that connected them to nature while maintaining precision.

The principle holds equally true for digital experiences—functionality must serve deeper user motivations rather than technical possibilities.

2. Embrace Material Properties Rather Than Fighting Them

Digital designers work with the properties of screens, code, and connectivity. Physical designers work with wood, metal, and mechanical systems. In both domains, fighting material properties leads to failure, while embracing them leads to innovation.

For Cambium watches, this meant working with wood's natural expansion and contraction rather than attempting to eliminate these qualities. In digital design, it means designing with—not against—the realities of network latency, screen sizes, and interaction patterns.

3. Design for Time and Change

All products—physical and digital—exist in time and change with use:

• Physical products develop patina, require maintenance, and eventually repair
• Digital products require updates, feature evolution, and infrastructure maintenance

By designing for the entire lifecycle rather than just the initial state, both physical and digital products become more resilient and meaningful. Our wooden watches were designed to age beautifully, developing character with use—a principle that quality digital experiences also embrace through thoughtful feature evolution.

4. Balance Innovation With Familiarity

Users approach both physical and digital products with existing mental models. Successful design in any medium respects these models while thoughtfully extending them.

For watches, this meant honoring horology traditions while introducing sustainable materials. For digital products, it means creating interfaces that feel intuitive through connection to established patterns, even as they introduce new capabilities.

5. Create Coherent Systems, Not Isolated Features

Perhaps the most transferable principle across domains is systems thinking—understanding that products are interconnected components rather than isolated features. This applies equally to:

• A watch's integration of movement, case, face, and band
• A digital platform's harmony between frontend experience, backend systems, and business processes

The Advantages of Cross-Domain Design Experience

Designers who have worked across physical and digital domains develop unique advantages:

1. Enhanced problem-solving flexibility from applying solutions across contexts
2. Deeper material understanding that influences both physical and digital choices
3. More holistic user experience perspective that considers all touchpoints
4. Better collaboration skills from working with diverse specialist teams
5. Stronger storytelling capabilities that transcend medium-specific language

Applying Omnichannel Thinking to Your Design Practice

Even if you primarily work in one domain, you can benefit from omnichannel design thinking:

• Study designs outside your specialty—physical designers should analyze digital interfaces; digital designers should examine physical products
• Prototype across mediums—use physical prototyping techniques for digital concepts and vice versa
• Consider the complete ecosystem in which your design will exist—physical, digital, service, and brand elements
• Learn the language of adjacent disciplines to facilitate collaboration with specialists
• Question medium-specific assumptions by asking "why" before "how"

The Future of Design Is Domain-Fluid

As technology increasingly blurs the boundaries between physical and digital experiences—through IoT, AR/VR, and embedded systems—designers who can think fluidly across domains will create the most compelling products.

My journey from UX flows to watchmaking and back again has convinced me that the strongest designers aren't those who specialize in a single medium, but those who understand the universal principles of human-centered design and can apply them thoughtfully across contexts.

The next time you approach a design challenge, consider how it might be solved in a completely different medium—the insights gained may transform your thinking in unexpected ways.