Learnings from my first year as a Jr. Product Designer
Written for juniors, by a junior
In 2019, I moved from New York City to Berlin for my first full-time role in UX as a Junior Product Designer at Zalando Lounge. It was a nerve-wracking transition, moving to a different country and shifting careers, but an exciting chapter of my life unfolded.
(FYI this article was written in 2020 — but finally published now!)
Looking back on my first year as a product designer, I noticed how drastically I’ve grown. Now, I’m more confident in my skillset and I feel empowered to create the best experiences for our customers. I remember being so nervous (but of course, excited) during my first few months at Zalando Lounge. I sought advice from my colleagues and researched online about how to excel as a product designer, but since they were more seasoned designers, the feelings of being a “newbie” seemed quite distant.
Therefore, I realized how important it is to write this article for juniors, by a junior.
1) Acknowledge that imposter syndrome is real
At the very beginning of my career, I was quite intimidated as the only junior designer on the team working with mid-to-senior level designers. During team meetings and critiques, I was always impressed by the amount of knowledge my colleagues had, but I doubted my own competence and found it difficult to express my opinions. My team was beyond encouraging and included me as much as possible, but I held myself back due to my own anxieties.
As time progressed, I realized that I was overcoming feelings of imposter syndrome by:
- Creating solutions that benefited our users and the team
- Understanding my own strengths and how I add value
- Being honest about my perfectionist tendencies and having others relate with and validate my feelings
There’s no cure-all for this “syndrome”, but it will pass with dedication to your craft and your users. It’s important to be mindful of these feelings and work through them.
2) Uncover your secret sauce
I’m sure you’ve heard this before: know your strengths and development areas. (Let’s be more positive and not call them weaknesses 😉)
Thankfully, Zalando has a structured performance evaluation system, where our managers work with us to have open development talks to determine our growth plans. Therefore, I’ve been cognizant of skills that I have been utilizing well and also skills that need to be strengthened.
You may be wondering as I did early on, “What strengths? I am new to this and have so much to learn!”
The latter might be fairly true, but you were hired for a reason. The recruiters, team leads, team members, and whoever else involved in hiring you saw not just your potential, but how you can improve their product and team.
Use your strengths to excel in your work and help others.
For example, I helped our department organize an end-of-quarter demo (our first remote demo due to the current work-from-home situation). We established guidelines of how teams can best communicate their successes and learnings, and I designed the slides to tell a cohesive story.
The demo was received extremely well by over 60 colleagues and stakeholders and we even received kudos from our Sr. Vice President! It reminded me how my strength of storytelling can be utilized in different ways.
Improve your development areas to become a more well-rounded designer.
On the other hand, sometimes I am unsure of which methodology to utilize when problem-solving, so I decided to strengthen more of my hard-skills online by taking a Human-Computer Interaction course from the Interaction Design Foundation.
Other than compulsive Googling to learn and gain inspiration, I also subscribe to UX Design Weekly so I’m up-to-date with the latest UX articles and trends.
3) Ask those you trust for feedback and guidance
Hopefully you can talk openly with some colleagues on your team. Whether it be other designers, or even PMs, developers, etc — establish some rapport and trust with them! Building these connections go a long way, not only does it make work even more fun, but you can get great guidance from the intelligent people around you. So, ask those that you trust for advice about how you’re doing, and how you can improve.
It can be a quick message over chat: “Hey, how do you think I did in that presentation?” or a meeting where you can have an open dialogue about something specific. Just be prepared to have some topic in mind to make it easier for the feedback giver — unless you’d like to just have an informational interview about someone’s career.
Don’t worry, you got this!
All in all:
- Believe in your abilities (cheesy, but true) 🌟
- Leverage your strengths and improve your development areas 💪
- Build bonds with those around you and seek guidance 🙏
Happy learning, I hope you have fun along the way in this journey!
