Advice I’d give to myself six years ago, when starting a career in UX design.

About a week ago, I had breakfast with a good family friend of mine.

He’s in his mid-early twenties, currently halfway through a design degree, and very interested in pursuing a career in User Experience (UX) design. Chatting together, his enthusiasm and curiosity about the field was contagious, and it suddenly struck me that it was nearly 6 years ago that I was in this same position, too.

As I left breakfast on my bike and rode back north along Chapel street, I found myself naturally reflecting on what I’d learned since I first started my career as a UX designer.

I wondered what I might tell myself, if I was just starting out today.

As a note

I’m still learning. I’m not a complete master at the below suggestions. I’m human and I make these mistakes. Whilst these are applicable to UX design, they’re probably equally as applicable in any field.

Mentors in UX are so, so powerful.

I’m extremely fortunate and grateful that my first workplace in particular, exposed me to some incredible thinkers, designers, and people. Their guidance has played itself out in a variety of ways over the years. This could have been anything from a hallway conversation, to talking through a difficult client situation, or even a late night 3 hour sketching session after work.

What I’ve learned through these figures in my career has allowed me to grow professionally, but probably more so personally. Even though I’m 28 now, I still speak to some of my mentors on and off (in fact, I had breakfast just 3 weeks ago with one of them).

Find a good mentor, or two in the field. Don’t try too hard, it should just naturally happen. You’ll probably meet them in your university course, or design short course, at work, or even at a BBQ… And they’ll change through time but they’ll change your life.

Just because someone’s more experienced, it doesn’t mean their opinion is “right”.

This could be perceived as contradictory to my note above about mentors, but, this has probably been the biggest learning I’ve had in my career in design.

Early on, I had the tendency to take on the opinions of more experienced designers, simply because they were just that. More experienced. This was partly because I didn’t have the confidence in my own design rationale (just yet), and partly because when you’re fresh in your first job, it can be intimidating going against advice and opinions of those 10+ years older than yourself.

More often that not, the critique and advice from senior designers can be bang on. Warranted and accurate. But, it needs to be handled with an appreciation for both your, and their, reality.

Do they know the context of the problem your designing for? Have you adequately explained the context? Are they offering their opinion, just because they’re senior? Have they seen the evidence from your usability testing studies?

Or on the contrary, have they seen the problem with a fresh set of eyes, and something that you can take onboard.

I think what’s key here, is taking critique and feedback like anyone else’s feedback. But knowing when to follow critique from more senior designers, is an incredibly difficult skill, and one that you’ll learn, most likely through getting it wrong (and that’s fine).

Having been trained in science (physics and maths at university), my schooling taught me that solutions were binary. 1 or 0, it’s either right or wrong. In UX design, this couldn’t be further from the truth. There are “okay” solutions, there are some better solutions — but everything has its pros and cons.

Only you and your development teams can make these informed decisions together.

You can’t be a gun at everything. Find your niche.

Just like Chris Froome isn’t a sprinter on the bike, and Mark Cavendish isn’t a hill climber.

Looking at the spectrum of a UX designer, there’s everything from upfront strategic research — “What space are we playing in here?” — And then all the way through to nitty gritty interaction/visual design… Plus lots in between, and then many angles and dimensions you could layer on top of this. But for simplicity, let’s go with what’s above.

You’ll instinctively know which parts of the UX process you like, which parts you’re good at, which parts you suck at, but equally as important — what you don’t like doing.

If you love translating strategic insights into tangible concepts — that’s great, and just as important as the finesse and crafting that a specialist UX/UI designer puts into interaction design.

Don’t beat yourself up if everyone around you talks about the importance of moving into service design from UX design, but it simply doesn’t interest you because you love human-computer interaction… and visa versa.

And don’t beat yourself up that you’re not comfortable leading huge client workshops in defining objectives of projects.

There’s no right or wrong here. Be happy, be useful. Find your niche, and be comfortable with not being a gun in other aspects.

Your design confidence will come.

Even learning that this was a “thing” took me years, learning to work on it took me longer.

Some are born with it, some it’ll take their whole career to get near it. It might take 6 months. It might take 6 years. Whatever level you’re at, it will improve. Don’t stress if it’s not there right from the get go.

Once you do start to build confidence in your design work, don’t fall into the trap of coupling this with your self worth. But everyone does this from time to time, even if they say they haven’t ever.

Learning to disassociate from your work is tough, and something that continually needs focus — particularly when engrained throughout your whole life:

• “That was a great essay…”
• “That was a great photograph you took…”
• “Gee what a great goal out there today…”

It can be easy to see your design work as an extension of your worth, and character. When it doesn’t work, if it’s critiqued, if it fails miserably, it can hurt. Again, you’ll go through this. And that’s fine. But remember: You aren’t your designs, you aren’t your work.

If they fail in testing, good. That’s why you’ve tested them.
If they get torn down in critique, good. That’s why critiques happen.
If the developers say it can’t be built, good. That’s why you collaborate.

Just because you have the title “designer”, doesn’t mean you’re the best at designing, or most important.

It’s a cliché, but everyone’s a designer. The best design is done by teams, together.

There were times particularly early on in my career, when a project manager made a suggestion for an improvement, or, a producer highlighted a problem in an interaction I’d worked on, I’d beat myself up for not noticing it. This is fine.

Flip this problem on its head. This doesn’t mean you’re a bad designer. It emphasizes the importance of collaboration. And this happens (and needs to happen) all the time.

Just two weeks ago, we were conducting some final usability and content testing with real customers for an activation/on-boarding workflow. I was working closely with our UX/UI writer for this project, and I couldn’t quite synthesize how we needed to change our designs, based on the feedback we were receiving… Until the solution finally hit our UI writer:

“I’ve got it!” she exclaimed, as she grabbed the whiteboard marker, and drew an alternate design on the whiteboard (it was a very, very good solution).

I don’t see this as a kick in the guts as a designer. I see how much this highlights the value of collaboration.

Be cool with this.

Like I said at the start of my article — I’m still learning, I’m still in beta, and I’ve in no way mastered these. I still continue to make these mistakes, and work on them.

… But as I’m about to jump on my bike to ride home from work tonight, I wonder what my future self in 6 years from now would tell me if we went out for breakfast.

This list is probably going to change significantly in another 6 years time.

I’d love to know what advice you’d give yourself as you started your career, even if it wasn’t in UX design.

Thanks for reading,

Angus.