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Accelerating your product design career: Reflecting on the harsh truths

Let’s be honest, it’s very demotivating to be given a list of things you are not good at. It’s easier to look at a list of what designers should be doing — thinking you’ve checked all the boxes. But let’s take a step back and look at what we might have subconsciously missed — preventing us from levelling up in our career and impacting our growth as a product designer. Maybe there are some ways to overcome them.

It’s a brand new year. Time for some reflections & adjustments.

#1 — Have we taken enough initiative to grow ourselves?

Personal initiative signifies our willingness to grow, especially in the areas we are lacking in. It can be about learning how to run small-scale user research, using design tools more effectively, improving documentation structure, understanding how to communicate effectively to stakeholders and more.

What might be happening:

• We are being too comfortable with our skill sets. We’ll usually wait for others to spoon-feed us with new information, resources & how-tos.
• We let our incompetency impact our team's performance and the projects we’re working on.

What we should try to do:

• Work with our manager to understand areas to focus on. Study the company’s career laddering (if any) to understand what is expected of us in our role, and start planning to fill those gaps.
• Keep up with the latest in the design industry — but be very particular about what to follow, what to ignore and what to avoid.
• Explore new tips & tricks through extensive libraries of free resources or paid online courses. Then, volunteer to share the knowledge with the team for everyone’s benefit.

#2— Are we comfortable with feedback & criticism?

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Gathering feedback is part of our job description as a designer. Understandably, we usually don’t want our work to be judged or critiqued when they’re not 100% done yet (PS: It’s never going to be 100% done). But, without them, we will only be looking at the problem from very limited perspectives.

What might be happening:

• We usually waited until the last seconds to start gathering feedback about our design. “It’s not ready yet”, not willing to share any work-in-progress.
• We tried to make sure there were not too many rounds of feedback, so we didn’t have to change it too much. Sometimes, we’ll become too defensive whenever the feedback is not in our favour.

What we should try to do:

• Share early, share often. It’s never too early to get feedback about our work. We don’t want to spend days working on something that ends up in the wrong direction.
• Be more objective when receiving feedback about our work. Don’t treat it as a personal attack on us, but as a way to expand our ideas.
• Be open to trying different ideas and suggestions from other people, especially those that are not from the design team.

#3— Have we tried putting ourselves out there?

It’s not easy to get out of our comfort zone, especially when working in a big cross-functional environment. But keeping things to ourselves, and just following whatever direction given to us will eventually reflect negatively on our level of commitment.

What might be happening:

• We rarely speak up or ask questions even if things are unclear, which might jeopardize the quality of our work.
• We tend to avoid sharing our thoughts & opinions for the benefit of the project and the users we’re designing for. We waited to be called out to say something in group discussions and shied away from giving suggestions.

What we should try to do:

• Find opportunities to volunteer with design help on new challenges or cross-functional initiatives outside of our usual scope, to be able to participate in more diverse projects.
• Pay more attention in group discussions. There should be plenty of opportunities to ask relevant or clarifying questions to show our proactiveness and interest in the problem we’re trying to solve.
• Start speaking up and sharing opinions in a smaller group discussion. This helps to build our confidence for when we move up to a bigger group with a more diverse audience.

#4— Are we taking ownership seriously?

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Whether we’re the sole designer working on the entire project, or one of many designers focusing on a specific feature, it is crucial to understand every aspect of the project to be able to design effectively for it. Beyond design, we should also dive deeper into the broader project goals, business objectives, operational considerations and technical limitations that are relevant to the projects.

What might be happening:

• We only focus on surface-level & design-related context, not the whole picture of the product we’re working on.
• We are not aware of any changes & cross-functional updates regarding the project that might have an impact on the user experience
• We are unable to answer clarifying questions by engineers, operations, marketing etc since we don’t have enough understanding around it.

What we should try to do:

• Be more involved in relevant discussions about the project, even if it’s not entirely about design.
• Equip ourselves with enough context & insights from various areas of the project, to be able to articulate and defend our design rationale effectively, especially when collaborating with stakeholders.

#5 — Are we easily satisfied with our work?

After all the effort we’ve made, as a designer, it is not easy to admit when our design falls short — that we have to start over and put in more work to get to the level of quality we dreamt of. We do not want to fall into the basic level of mediocrity, but that certainly happens a lot, and we are guilty of letting it slide.

What might be happening:

• We spend only a fraction of our time exploring a limited amount of ideas for the problem we’re designing for.
• “That’s the final design” — without considering more options to be presented to the team.

What we should try to do:

• Always ask ourselves, “Is this good enough?”. Find ways to develop a critical eye that allows us to assess the designs from different perspectives, including usability, functionality, and aesthetics.
• We need to embrace ideation and divergent thinking. Make sure to explore multiple options to address a problem space thoroughly before committing to a solution.
• Spend some time looking at how similar products are approaching the same problem, and learn from it — the good and the bad.

Photo by matthew Feeney on Unsplash

As we reflect on our journey as a product designer so far, remember that it is not solely about reaching the highest ranking and position. It’s mainly about the constant need for creative innovation, the courage to explore new ideas, and the resilience to continuously iterate until we are proud of the products and solutions we’re creating for our company and the users it serves. Good luck!