So you’re thinking about becoming a product designer?

Often would-be product designers reach out to designers & managers for advice. Similar questions are frequently asked, so we thought we’d wrap them up in a post to share.

We originally wrote this for an internal audience at Clio, but thought it might be useful to share with other would-be product designers in the community who are just finding their way on a new career path.

Product designers and managers regularly have newer designers or people from other roles reach out to book informal coffee chats to help them in figuring out how to get into product design. We’re more than happy to have a conversation and make a connection, but since we often field the same sets of questions and give similar answers, we thought we’d put all of them into a post to help anyone curious about product design to better understand what they actually want in their career, what a product designer does (and how other paths might differ), and determine what actions to take and not take to move forward along a new potential career path.

Before anything else, first ask yourself “What do you actually want in your career?”

Like any good design project, starting with a thorough discovery process is essential. That starts by validating or invalidating the underlying premise that you’re given: is it the right problem to be solved? Spend some time understanding what is really important to you before deciding to make a career shift.

Answer these questions:

• What do you value? What gets you excited? What do you hate?
• What activities do you want to do/get energy from as part of your role? What outcomes do you want to drive?
• What is it about product design that interests you?

If you don’t know the answers to these questions, then there are a few things you can do to get started:

• Self-exploration through goal-setting and vision exercises (I’ve written an article on one of the approaches I’ve used in the past although there are many you can choose from that may work better or worse for you)
• Talk to a career coach (we’re lucky to have them at Clio — they’re amazing at helping to uncover fundamental questions and insights about ourselves)

Once you’ve answered those questions about yourself, now’s the time to compare what you actually want and don’t want with the role of product designer or product manager, marketing designer, developer, UX researcher, etc (Here’s an article comparing the PD and PM roles)

What does a product designer (PD) do?

Product design is an umbrella term covering several subdisciplines. There are the technical skills of being a PD: user research, usability, information architecture, interaction design, prototyping, visual design, coding knowledge, UX writing, and content strategy. There is also a myriad of softer skills that you’ll need such as collaborating and communicating with other disciplines, feedback and critique, storytelling and facilitation, leadership and influencing, bias to action, self-driven, growth mindset, business acumen, and many many more.

There’s far more about product design than could ever be described in one article, so instead I suggest that you use a core skill of any designer: your innate curiosity about the world. Go find out more about being a product designer by doing your own research into the field by Googling, reading articles/watching videos about what it means to be a PD, talk to individual contributor PDs, talk to junior PDs who came from other industries, and attend design meetups to build your understanding of what it means to be a product designer.

Here’s a reading list to get you started:

• About Face 3 (everything you need to know about product design in one compendium)
• The A Book Apart series (short, tactical reads on specific areas of design) — “Just Enough Research” in particular is phenomenal.
• Lean UX
• The Design of Everyday Things
• Don’t Make Me Think
• Sprint (Google’s design sprint methodology)
• The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
• Information Architecture (the “polar bear book”)
• Interviewing Users
• Thinking Fast and Slow

You’ve decided you want to be a product designer (or PM or another role), what should you do next?

Build a strong foundation and the skills for the role you want.

Do your own research (see “what does a product designer do?” above)

Educate yourself: post-secondary programs (design-focused or cross-functional), bootcamps, online UX courses (here’s a good set of free ones from IBM on some of the softer design skills)…

Note: Speaking from experience (I taught BrainStation’s Intro to UX course for 3 years), short online courses and 10wk bootcamps can give you an overview of the skills a product design will need, but definitely will not be sufficient on their own to get someone from a completely different profession into their first junior designer role. There are many aspects that just cannot be covered in a short bootcamp or Udemy course such as collaboration with other disciplines, giving and receiving feedback, seeing a project through from discovery through shipping to users, or solving a real business’ problem including constraints (since most bootcamp projects are self-driven).

Do some competitive research.

Look at junior designers that have the role you want (Clio and elsewhere). Review their portfolios for what they share and how they talk about their projects. Reach out to them to ask about their career story and for advice for landing your first gig.

Get some experience in the different areas of product design.

Find a role at a company where you can wear many hats or that will allow you to do your role while being able to take on aspects of the role you’re looking for.

Booking meetings with product designers and managers

Before you book a meeting, ask yourself “have I explored what it means to be a PD enough myself yet?” There is SO MUCH to learn that’s readily available with some Googling, by taking an online course, or by reading “how to get started in UX” articles like this one. Start there. This will not only move you toward your goal more quickly, it will also ensure that when you do reach out to more tenured designers that your questions are of a higher calibre than they would be otherwise. It also shows that you’re a self-starter who’s got a growth mindset because you’ve already done all of the work you can do yourself.

When you do book meetings, have a specific goal in mind before asking for the meeting. What do you want to get out of it? Be specific (not just “I’m thinking about becoming a product designer, help please!”)

Save yourself time by not booking meetings with several designers at the same company. We’re all going to have similar answers to your questions and those of us at Clio will likely direct you to this article. Better to focus your efforts toward better understanding the discipline, which could include reaching out to designers, but they should be of a similar level to the role you’re looking for (junior designers in the industry) and always have specific goals for the conversation in mind.

Finding a mentor

When you want to find a mentor, have a specific objective in mind. Mentorship should be focused with an outcome on a specific area that you want to develop. When you’re just starting out, the areas of growth are just too numerous and too broad for a mentor to be useful since it will take a lot of time and effort (by you) across a variety of topics to move into the role. You should definitely ask more experienced designers for advice (although see the first paragraph in this section before you do) or for their career story to understand how they got started, but “mentorship” should be far more directed along a certain path such as “I want to get grow my skills in UX metrics or in visual design.”

When you’re ready and it’s time to find a mentor, be intentional with who you ask. Product design is an umbrella term that covers a broad spectrum of both harder technical skills (like user research, interaction design, information architecture, etc) and softer skills (like facilitation, collaboration, influence, etc), and every designer will have different strengths and weaknesses. Being intentional in finding someone whose strengths match your growth goals will only help you get there faster.

When you do find a suitable mentor for the area you want to develop, be sure to treat the mentorship like a contract. There should be:

• specific goals (that are hopefully measurable),
• a timeline with check-ins and a potential end date (you can always extend if need be),
• rules of engagement (like how you’ll interact and for what purpose), and
• both parties should be clear about what they wish to get out of the mentorship.

Build a product design portfolio.

Once you’ve covered much of the above, you’re hopefully at a place where you can start to build your portfolio. A portfolio is the most important artifact in your online persona as a designer. We care far less about the school you went to or where you last worked or the title you had, and far more that you can actually do the job. Your portfolio and the case studies within show off how you work. We wrote these two articles on the topic to offer some guidance.

Hopefully this was a helpful guide for you as you navigate unfamiliar waters and discover your next career. What it really all comes down to is doing as much as you can to understand yourself and the path you’re considering, which will enable you to ask stronger questions when you do connect with product designers and managers in the community.

Best of luck as you make the next step in your career!