How a Design Sprint was a tonic for my Impostor Syndrome
Recently, I joined the Depop team after taking a year away from product design to work as a developer. Whilst I knew I’d grown as a designer in learning to code, I was nervous to present my designs again. What if 12 months is all it takes to regress to my junior days?
Sometimes, all of us seem like a fraud. In case you’re not familiar, or want a reminder of the definition of impostor syndrome:
Impostor syndrome (also known as impostor phenomenon, impostorism, fraud syndrome or the impostor experience) is a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a “fraud”. — wikipedia
We look at the designs on our screen, or maybe come out of a presentation we did that wasn’t met with immediate applause and think ‘Am I good enough to be here?’. Honestly, I’ve come out of presentations that went well, and still convinced myself it was a fluke. The designers we work with every day and whose work we admire, feel this way too sometimes. But this isn’t going to be medium post where I tell anecdotes of feeling inadequate — phew!
The Sprint
Last week, my team at Depop embarked on a Design Sprint. It was only the second design sprint i’d done using the book as a guide. I was excited to see what we could achieve.
Design sprints are a great way of generating ideas for a project and keeping the development focused — we were talking to different teams, Depop users, looking at analytics and tackling all aspects of the project as a team. After the week was over, I felt so confident in the every aspect of the design. Why did we choose to ask the user these questions? Because we spoke to data science, and got the information we needed. Why did we choose those images? They performed well in user testing! It was wireframed clearly, researched and executed with clear goals so when it came to the sketch part, it was a breeze.
Suddenly, I didn’t feel like an impostor showing my designs to stakeholders, I knew our initial product was good enough to test on some real users. Now, this is a 50% plug for design sprints, but it’s also a 50% a plug for not trying to tackle a problem alone.
We, not me
Suddenly it made me realise a designer is not a island. Excuse the pun, and mashing together of analogies! Tearing off a blank sheet of paper or opening a new file is the most daunting thing of all, and personally I find it contributes to my imposter syndrome a lot. As designers, we can sometimes take ourselves off to solve a design problem and come back to the team once we’re done. This can lead to burning ourselves out overthinking, questioning every decision or sometimes coming up with too many concepts and having no way to decide which ones work.
This is something I’ve struggled with in the past, and it’s something Design sprints combat really well. By establishing a target, breaking it down into individual objectives, sketching concepts, interviewing different ‘experts’ you realise that the greatest designers utilise the team of designers and also non-designers around them.
Recently, I was looking at how to promote a new in app feature to users. We could modify the onboarding, we could send an email to new users, we could sent a push notification, I thought, we could add a popup to the app. Suddenly I realised I hadn’t broken down the problem enough.
How would new users see the feature? They wouldn't have anything to compare the new design to. How would existing users see it? Do we need to disrupt the user’s journey to shout about a feature, or let them use it? I tried to recall the lessons I learned from breaking down the problem, discussed it with a colleague and suddenly the solution seemed clearer.
Sometimes we start in the middle when we design to solve a problem, racing past the planning or doing it quickly in our heads, hungry to open up a new file and start working. Design programs or prototyping really did need to be the last step for me to realise what the real problem, and therefore the real solution was.
The Process
This made me think a lot about design methodologies and how much of an impact they can have on my impostor feelings. Some designers swear by their own process, whilst others study the greats and use their process to work with. Whilst all of them involve the same basic concepts from theories like ‘The Design Process’ such as research and development, iterative design etc, some are fairly new and team focused, giving more specific feedback directed towards UI/UX. You don’t have to get swamped in design theory books to find a flow that works for you.
By researching some design methodologies and processes, I found it a really valuable exercise to generate new ideas or think about problems differently. Take some time to be mindful about the steps you take during tricky projects, like me, you might want to make some changes.
I don’t have to have confidence in my ability all the time, but maybe for the time being it’s enough to work on my processes and have confidence in them to make me a better designer.
Want to know more?
Feel free to message us or stop by our office in London to discuss the topics mentioned in this article.
By the way, we’re also hiring. So if you’re a designer and want to be a part of something special, sign up on our careers page or email jules@depop.com and we’ll get back to you.
