7 tips to succeed in your first year as a Product Designer
I’ve been working at Doctolib as a product designer for 1 year now. This is my first experience as a full-time designer since I graduated in 2021 (bye mum). Full of challenges, 2022 allowed me to learn a lot. Here are some of the learnings that have helped me grow in my role.
As all product designer roles are different, I’ll focus on the soft skills you can use to quickly integrate into your first job.
- 1. You are not a junior, you are a product designer
- 2. Use your fresh eye to question
- 3. Focus on the problem, not on the solution
- 4. Discuss with all designers and stakeholders
- 5. Have a good knowledge of the company and its tools
- 6. Your job is not your only relationship to design
- 7. Start designing your career path
1. You are not a junior, you are a product designer
You will have to demonstrate your value as a product designer, no matter how senior you are. Although you might only see the junior in your title, you are a “Product Designer” before being a junior.
At Doctolib we are organized in feature teams, which means that you are the only designer in your team (with 1 PM, 1 data analyst, 1 UR and developers). Of course, you’re part of the Design team and its rituals allow you to get feedback from other designers on your projects to improve your skills, but within your feature team you have product design ownership.
At first, I was thrown off by this: although everyone was giving their opinion on my work and guiding decision-making, it was up to me to show that I knew what I was doing. Although it’s important you stay humble and keep in mind you may be wrong, you have to explain your rationale and defend your solutions. This way, you share your thought process instead of designing by intuition.
“Your colleagues are not your parents”
I once found myself in a situation where I disagreed with a PM on what an interface should look like. Being a new joiner, I felt it was awkward to question the opinions of others, especially as they were more senior than me. I was given this advice which stuck in my head “your colleagues are not your parents”. Indeed, I had to defend what I thought was the best solution, without being afraid of the feedback from others. When we realized we struggled to come to an agreement, we organized a user test to help us take a more informed decision.
Initially, we may not dare to question what other stakeholders tell us for fear of confrontation or because we do not feel legitimate. Listen to their feedback, but remember that you have ownership of what you do. If you provide solid arguments (benchmarks, insights, user research, data, etc.) your stakeholders will listen to what you propose and you will gain their trust.
2. Use your fresh eye to question
New company, new jargon. Doctolib and the health sector are no exception to the rule. As in any field, abbreviations and acronyms are used for all sorts of words, so you will have to get used to them and understand them. You can make your own “Glossary” file to fill in all the terms you don’t understand and learn them.
“There is no such thing as a stupid question”
When I joined, I forced myself to ask questions when something was unclear. You may already have heard that “There is no such thing as a stupid question”. It’s always acceptable to ask questions. As long as you listen and pay attention, you will find that people won’t mind your asking them to rephrase or clarify their point.
Questioning shows your interest in the discussion and can make way for new questions. Feel legitimate to question a presentation, a vision or a process. Some things are done out of habit and your fresh eyes can help challenge them.
3. Focus on the problem, not on the solution
You will be working on projects that may span several weeks or months. Often, your solution will be challenged at the very end of the project, close to delivery time. When this happens, detach yourself from your solution and return to the problem.
The logic is reversed compared to that of your training: when you present your work as a student, it is more personal, it is yours. If a jury questioned my work at the last moment, I know that I could be inclined to justify myself and not want to redo everything with only a few days to go.
In the professional world, you have to keep in mind that your solution is not you. If someone criticizes it, they are not criticizing you directly.
Granted, it’s always annoying to work on flows and get challenged towards the end. In this case, don’t take it personally, and ask yourself if you are responding in the best way to the initial problem. The arguments may not be given at the best time but they may still be relevant. You can always try to push back the deadline, by explaining to your team that after some feedback from your colleagues, you realize you can propose a better answer to the problem.
“It’s common to see inexperienced designers stick with a design they have already invested a lot of time and resources in, even if it’s evidently incorrect.
The quality of your design outputs correlates with your ability to abandon a design, understand what’s wrong, and start over.”
— Juan J. Ramirez · Product Design Lead @ Netflix
To avoid this, make sure you include all relevant stakeholders early on and throughout the project. Try not to put affect into a solution, so as not to bias yourself. This way, you will have all the cards in your hand to imagine the ideal solution to your problem and you will mitigate the risk for late feedback.
“Design once to understand and re-design multiple times to perfect.”
4. Discuss with all designers and stakeholders
As Doctolib is established in 3 countries, many people work in a different country, and often in a hybrid or full-remote setting. I didn’t get the chance to meet everyone physically on my first day. That’s why I started with a 15-minute virtual coffee with all the product designers of the team. Doing so is an opportunity to introduce yourself and learn more about their own background and scope.
You can then replicate this virtual coffee routine for all the new designers who join. If they don’t do it themselves, ask them for a coffee to introduce yourself or send them a Slack message to welcome them. This allows you to become a point of contact and will make it easier for them to settle in in their new team.
Secondly, I’ve noticed that, as a product designer, when you don’t make a conscious effort to work closely with development teams, things can go wrong: a mismatch with the Figma file, text that doesn’t fit, one input in place of another, components that don’t comply with the design system, etc.
I think it’s the responsibility of the product designer to establish a good collaboration with the developers of their team. I had a 30-minute meeting with each developer of my feature team so that we could introduce ourselves. Then they presented their daily routine, their processes and their tools. I could learn more about their job and also introduce them to my work as a product designer.
Once that was done, I asked to be added to the feature team’s rituals (stand-up, weekly and retrospective meetings) to participate as much as possible in the team’s life. I don’t join all of them, but when design decisions are made I am always consulted. The aim is to not have the product manager act as a messenger between you and the developers, as this can lead to miscommunications and make it harder for the design point of view to be heard.
5. Have a good knowledge of the company and its tools
This point may seem obvious, but it is crucial to quickly integrate into projects and get organized. When you arrive in a new company, you are bombarded with emails, figures, tools, links and presentations. All these things will be useful for the projects you will be working on and understanding how the company is organized. However, if you don’t take the time to read this documentation and ask yourself what each tool is for, you can quickly become overwhelmed.
The tools we use at Doctolib:
- For internal communication: Slack, Google Meet and Gmail
- For design: Miro and Figma
- For tasks/tickets organisation : Asana and Jira
- For documents and presentations: Google Workspace
- Data: Periscope
- Collecting feedback from our users: Doctolib Community and Dovetail
Obviously not everything can be learned in 1 day, so start with the tools the company provides for your daily tasks. Once you know what they are, go and explore the ones you are less familiar with to make them your own. I myself had never worked with Google Workspace, Periscope and Dovetail. Try to identify the gaps in your workflow, and then look for ways in which certain tools can help you solve them.
To keep track of the information and documentation I am given on a project, I organise my notes in Google Drive. At the start of each project I create a personal Google Doc where I write down everything about the project to centralise the information and remember it after meetings. I also use the tab groups in Google Chrome to keep the resources I need to return to frequently open throughout the project (Kick-off presentation, Figma, Confluence, Periscope, Miro etc.)
I use Periscope and Dovetail for data analysis and user research in my projects. As I could not find many resources online, I directly asked the people who knew how to use them in my team to show me how they used them. It was also an opportunity to introduce myself to them.
By improving your tool knowledge, your workflow becomes stronger: you don’t lose any important data, your cognitive load is reduced because you know where to look for information. You undoubtedly gain in efficiency because you structure your way of working.
6. Your job is not your only relationship to design
When you start your work life, it becomes less obvious to keep “practicing design” after your workday. However, I think it’s important to try to do it, to keep a critical eye on what you’re doing. Personally, I am passionate about design but also about entrepreneurship, and I like to set up personal projects with my friends or family.
Obviously, the investment for these projects depends on your work contract, your family life and your passion for what you do. It could be creating an app with friends, going to events to network, starting a youtube channel, a podcast etc.
I decided to continue my final year project in the field of sustainable fishing and to teach the students of the UX/UI bachelor at my old school.
Working with new people on different topics gives me a fresh perspective. I also think that passing on the knowledge we acquired allows us to learn even more because it forces us to structure our thoughts and allows us to confront other points of view.
Design is not told, discussed and integrated in the same way in all cities and companies. Meeting new people, through meetup events or new projects will enrich your vision of design.
7. Start designing your career path
You may have the impression that it is premature to start working on your career path in your first years on the job. But it can help with two essential things: situating yourself and projecting yourself.
To improve your skills, you will need to evaluate yourself. It is also important to know where you stand in relation to the different levels of seniority in your company so you can grow in your role
You can do this with the help of your manager and do a skills assessment during a quarterly or annual interview. At Doctolib, we do this by following an internal skills matrix where we rate each skill from 1 to 5. Each quarter we choose 2 skills we want to focus on improving.
Once you know where you stand, you can prepare your personal career path to lay the foundations of your career without being restricted to one organisation. Ask yourself where you want to be in 1 and 3 years, and identify which skills you need to work on in the longer term to achieve these goals.
For example, you might set a goal to reach a higher level of seniority in the next 2 years or to become a lead designer in 5 years. To do this, identify which aspects of your job you need to improve and which levers to use to achieve this (it could be mentoring, training, etc.)
In general, ask your stakeholders for regular feedback. At the end of each quarter, you can set up a survey and send it to the people you have worked with. Ask them, from a list of competences (which should be those listed in your career path), which ones they think you have mastered and which ones you can still improve on.
To help you find where you stand in term of seniority, I recommend using this document “Product Design Level Expectations Rubric” by Aaron James, Product designer at Netflix. To build your personal career path, you can use the “Product Design Career Growth Workbook” by Spruzzo Labs, available on Notion.
My learnings are personal and correlated to my young experience as a designer. Initially, I had done this retrospective work for myself but I thought that sharing it could be useful to others.
After all, your company hired you for your design skills, so don’t let them get rusty. Be bold when you need to be and don’t hesitate to question what you don’t think is legitimate. Your fresh eye is an asset.
What are some of the things that have helped you thrive in your first job as a product designer? Share them in the comments and let’s discuss.
Let’s connect on Linkedin and you can check my portfolio for more.
Thanks to Vanko Yutian Zhou for her illustration and to Chloé Thibaux and Camille Le Maître for having reviewed this article.
