Know the common 7 struggles of being a lone UX designer in a firm
Are you the only designer? or probably joining to be the one and only in company? Then keep reading, cause I know exactly how you feel sometimes.
Howdy my readers, I’m Monica with a ‘C’, a UX designer, avid reader and just a curious soul wandering around the earth with a keen eye of perception. Just like you, I worked as a lone wolf in the design team for 3 years in my previous company. And just to make things clear, this is the perfect time to be a UX / UI / VD or someone in the design industry! It’s booming, but I too have had my share of sleepless nights and caffeine high days. So here are the problems I faced along with the solution to it.
1. To be mentally prepared or have the mindset, the expectation to meet as a fresher
“Everything in life starts with your mindset first and your action second. Your actions follow your thoughts, your beliefs, and ideas. To make a shift to free your energy start with getting your mind right and then take action”
People have the fear of being judged. They experience a psychological fear of being viewed as amateurs, which causes them to lose faith in themselves in the face of uncertainty, resulting in unclear problem statements and inadequate solutions. Recognizing that not everyone is knowledgeable about everything and maintaining curiosity is essential. Your desire to learn, ponder ideas, delve deeply into things, and broaden your knowledge is innate.
Curiosity and the capacity to accept criticism are two of the most essential mindsets for a designer. As a designer, you will get plenty of feedback from Clients, Stakeholders, Project Managers, Developers, and the QA team. That’s why it’s said to leave your ego at the door. Receiving criticism, empathising with it, and using it to your advantage are all very important steps. Designers should resist the urge to become too attached to their solution, but one must let go of their ego to solve the problem because doing so will attain success in your career.
Collaboration is another important aspect to keep in mind, as you’ll be required to work with different teams and juggle between priority and ad-hoc tasks throughout the day, which calls for Multitasking abilities. Let’s talk about it in the following section.
2. Multi-tasking, having to work on numerous projects with the ability to work together in cross-functional, multidisciplinary teams
When working for a firm as the only UX Designer, not only you have to do the UX work, but to be a graphic designer, visual designer, interaction designer, information architect, and of course the UX designer. Different teams will require various inputs from you, as they probably have just one designer who wears the hat of multidisciplinary.
In the morning you will assist the marketing team with website UI auditing and graphic work, providing them with various collaterals, working with the team on aesthetics, colour palette, and keeping things consistent. And in the evening you will be sitting down with the stakeholders working on the business strategies, and deciding the flow of the product. Your emphasis will be on the functionality of a product rather than the aesthetics. See how quickly the role changes, and it’s difficult to shift focus like that and at times we end up hitting a mental block.
3. Challenges you’ll face when stuck with design query or creative block and struggles to connect virtually due to Covid
Challenges you will normally face on an everyday basis would be not having many colleagues to turn to for support when you need to take feedback or when you’re experiencing a creative block.
We’ll go into more detail about this in the article’s sixth point. Some of the techniques I use to overcome my creative block (depending upon different kinds of situations)are to put my ideas down on paper, try this with the crazy 8 approach, it’s a great way for a quick brainstorming session. Another way is to have several sources of inspiration, not just in the visual arts, but everywhere, there is inspiration to be found. Go take a break when stuck, take a walk or shower basically just turn away from the screen cause a tired mind will keep you from doing your best work.
It especially became a hurdle for the people who joined during covid as virtual onboarding wasn’t something that was done before and it gets challenging for people to interact virtually. If you work in an office, getting answers to your questions and assistance is simple. But the hardest part of working remotely is maintaining constant communication. Since you are a fresher, you will likely have many questions and uncertainties, have no knowledge of the firm or its procedures and would be hesitant to approach your coworkers. Thus, communication is difficult when working from home; simply waiting for confirmation can take hours.
4. How to prioritise, deliver, and adhere deadlines
Teams will continually contact you to ask for assistance. Marketing will have their ask for help, you’ll have dedicated work going on during the sprint and your CEO may come to you with some requests and so on such ad hoc tasks keep on piling. Every work is important and urgent to the people bringing the work, but we as a designer have to set the priority and deliver, which is a challenging task especially when you are new, at times your manager can help you with this, but there will be times when you’ll have to decide it yourself. For this very clear communication with the teams is a must and you’ll need the confidence to say no, reminding the team what you agreed to do in the first place. Getting too much on your plate will cause distraction, won’t let you properly focus and the outcome will be rushed and ineffective.
Whenever you are assigned any task you must include some buffer time, so you can squeeze in some unexpected tasks in between.
5. Establishing a process of overcoming the blank canvas fear, and benefits of component library and style guides
Having a process in place always guides you toward the solution with lesser distractions. The idea is to break down a large project into small manageable chunks. So normally I follow the process where I start with understanding the requirement, brainstorming, and gathering data to start giving me inspiration. Then I craft a solution and present it for feedback. After a few iterations, I had a solid design to move forward with.
Using reusable components can save you so much of your time and helps you work more consistently. When you are customising your design or creating some new screens you do not want to recreate an element if it already exists doing so will cost you ample time and may impact the development side too, as you may end up with some minor tweaks and for that developer may have to create an entirely new component. All large companies like Google, Airbnb, and Netflix used design systems constructed from component libraries to leverage their rapid and astounding expansion.
An efficient technique to lessen the workload associated with managing several repositories for various components is to build a component library.
6. Choosing your own team of critics before delivering
Avoid staring at screens for too long without interacting with people or your team. The comments of another individual could drastically alter the course of your design. Never become involved; even if you may enjoy the design. For this find a colleague at your organisation who has a keen interest in the design and is willing to give feedback, it could be someone from the QA or UI Developer, Salespeople, or anyone. At my organisation I had a fantastic Product Manager with a strong sense of design and usability, she would always be my go-to person to take some constructive feedback on designs and she would give me several perspectives on my solution.
You can set dedicated weekly meetings with such folks who are interested in providing design feedback. You can also include other involved people such as the stakeholders to understand if you’re heading in the correct direction. The most critical thing to keep in mind is, that feedback is an integral aspect of design. Working as a team makes you a more efficient designer, and fostering a culture where receiving constructive design criticism is the norm, it’s crucial to select such folks from the team who can provide you with effective opinion, that doesn’t deviate you from the goal and is aligned with the vision of the project.
7. Give yourself time, focus on your hobbies, and make time to learn new things
When you start working as a lone designer things will be quite overwhelming, but it is critical to strike a balance between work and personal life. Finding time for yourself implies intentionally blocking off time. This time ought to be reserved only for you. Everyone needs to carve out that essential time, you need to slow down, enjoy life, and rejuvenate your mental, and physical health by engaging in hobbies. Go to some new place, explore new kinds of food, read a little, paint, or do whatever makes you happy. Those who take time off can feel compelled to work instead or feel more productive.
How to maintain it, you may have to say NO (or learn to prioritise as we talked about it on the 4th point) to certain favours or ad-hoc tasks if you already got too much on your plate, cause you also need to stick to the roadmap and existing commitments made to stakeholders.
Not paying attention to this can cause major burnout leading to not-so-efficient quality of work.
So there you have it: my seven key takeaways from working as a lone UX designer. I hope this helps you understand what to expect in the industry. Getting your bearings in a new field requires that you identify the strategy that suits you the best. The points I covered in this article can assist you in creating some general practices that can guide you with the dos and don’ts. And don’t get scared with all the work and responsibilities because that’s what truly makes it so rewarding.
Finally, I’ll conclude this article with the quote “Be ready to fail. Failure only comes to those who try something new. Fear has led to more procrastination than laziness ever will.”
