Product Strategy
A straight answer for founders on what product design actually costs, what drives the number, and how to spend it well.
The honest answer is: it depends on scope, and here is exactly what moves the number so you can reason about your own situation instead of guessing. Founders deserve the mechanics, not a vague 'it varies.'
Three forces drive the cost of product design, and understanding them tells you both what you will pay and how to spend it well.
What drives the number
Surface area is how many screens and states genuinely need design. Not the vision, the actual flows a first version requires. Novelty is how much you are inventing: applying known patterns is fast, inventing a new interaction model is slow and iterative. Integration is how tightly design and engineering must work to ship it well, which is high for anything real-time, data-heavy, or deeply interactive.
A simple marketing site is low on all three. A real-time trading interface is high on all three. Most products sit in between, and where they sit is most of your estimate.
Written by
Jayesh Velossa
Founder & Creative Director
The most expensive option is not the highest quote. It is the cheap engagement that produces beautiful screens nobody can build, or a product that ships and does not perform. Value comes from work that ships and moves your metrics, and that is a function of judgment, not pixels.
This is why 'how many screens' is the wrong first question. The right one is 'what decisions does this product need to get right,' because those are what you are actually buying.
Where to spend
Put the budget where risk is highest: the core flow, the first-run experience, and anything a customer pays through. Everything else can follow patterns. Match the investment to the stakes and the total takes care of itself.
Scope to the claim your next milestone depends on, not the full vision. Reuse patterns everywhere the product is not differentiated. Bring engineering in early so design decisions are buildable. And resist polishing the parts no one will judge. The teams that spend well are ruthless about concentrating quality where it changes the outcome and using conventions everywhere else.
So the real answer to 'how much does product design cost' is: as much as the decisions that matter are worth, spent where the risk is. Reason about surface area, novelty, and integration, put the money on the flows that make or break the product, and you will both understand the number and get the most out of it.
