Saudi Arabia in the last few years entered new markets like smart cities and IoT, Egypt is now building new cities from scratch, and UAE keeps rising, those examples giving us big signs of how our markets are changing and trying to be the hub in several industries. thus there is a big need for designers that know Mena region culture to help in this transformation  

Well we all can notice the big changes in the Mena region market last few years, all these changes came with one goal is less reliance on oil and gas which is the main source of income in the region.

So, and as said before, our markets are changing and I believe that product design can play a key role in this change and below I will explain why

Why product design is important?

Product design has always been important and if we look at history, the countries that had power are the countries that design their own products and export them to the world, every day we use tens of products that were designed and developed in other countries.

So product design can play a key role in the Mena region Renaissance by first, solving problems related to our countries like getting advantage of deserts and export those solutions to the world, second is by inventing new products and sell them to the world or developing the products to solve their problems, and by doing this, you can lead the market in a lot of sectors other than oil and gas.

Nowadays and with our globalized markets all markets are open to each other’s so if you have a product that is better than what is already in the market your product will be chosen by the consumer. and this is actually great for countries trying to enter new markets you just need to provide a better product, so it’s not about who came first it’s about who delivers the best option.

Product design market size

Nowadays product design market is one of the biggest markets in the world, in numbers The global product design and development services market size was valued at USD 7.9 billion in 2020 and this is just the market size of product design as service, but there is a lot of industries that rely on product design and I will talk about them later.

Product design also is one of the most promising markets and all experts expect big jumps in this market, in numbers product design and development service market size, is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.6% from 2021 to 2028 to become USD 17.1 billion. And as it is known the main players in this market are pacific Asia and North America.

Markets mainly depend on product design

Several industries mainly depend on product design, industries like the manufacturing industry, craft-work shops, household appliances, furniture, and agriculture solution. All these markets -in different proportions- are dependent on product design service, not to mention other industries that get less affected by the product design, so the impact of the product design service will reach all these markets that its size is over hundreds of billions.

Product design as MENA region market differentiator

When it comes to product design all product designers are crafting their designs based on their culture and this could be a strong point for our market since most of our countries are following almost the same culture and have a lot of shared customs and traditions.

Our culture could be the number one differentiator for us, but we have other specials like our countries have a special environment and we can use that, for example, the deserts we can solve all deserts problems and make the most use of its environment by designing customized products then we can sell it to any place in the world, we can use deserts for agriculturist since its big landscapes so we can design products to solve weather problems and make the deserts good place for agriculture. Our countries are surrounded by a lot of seas and oceans, thus we can make good use of them by using their water for agriculture uses, or generate power, and all these applications, of course, need a product design

So, and briefly I will summarize how product design service can lead to MENA market revival 

First of all, many countries in the mena region are trying to discover new markets other than oil and gas and you can build any market if you have good product designers and have the tools to do it.

The second point is that many countries in the mena market are trying to lead the world in specific industries and to lead these sectors you need to keep the development wheel spinning and to do this you need a good product design firm.

And last but not least the Mena region market have all the tools to lead the world in several industries like agriculture industry, alternative energy, fintech, tourism industry solutions, and of course oil and gas all tools needed to lead these industries are available in mena market we just need to start thinking of making our products and solutions instead of using others.