Top 7 tips for UX&UI to move into product
Hi! I’m Victoria, Product Designer at START streaming service. Six months ago, I decided to leave studio work behind and go into product design. This career change is considered quite common, and most designers who come to work for product companies were originally employed at studios specifically. In this article, I want to share my opinion on whether you should choose this path and what you need to prepare for.
I first started thinking about changing my direction when my studio hired a UX researcher. I was a senior designer at the time, with my hand in multiple projects, and as such, I often interacted with the UX department, which kept growing rapidly.
I loved getting to know the client, understanding what they do and what their product challenges are. That’s when I realized I wanted to make products more than I wanted to draw. The financial component also had an impact. Product design has better terms to offer, and this, as I am sure you will agree, is an important factor and a good motivator to abandon your familiar work format and gain new knowledge and deeper expertise.
I spent a long time thinking whether I should leave, because I had made a lot of friends at the studio and built up good rapport with the designers and management. I greatly appreciate it when I get to spend a huge amount of time not just working, but also interacting with friends and amazing professionals. I still look back on some of my work stories with a smile, but I have also come to a realization that you will get nowhere without taking risks, and you have to sacrifice something in order not to become stagnant.
During my first few days at START streaming service, I read all the documentation and was beyond eager to get started, thinking that I would just work within processes I was already familiar with, but as soon I received my first task, I realized that everything is completely different here. Product ≠ studio. This is something I was mentally unprepared for, so I had to learn the processes from scratch. And the adaptation period only made things more complicated. It’s my least favorite part of starting a new job: you don’t yet know your coworkers all that well, you haven’t earned a reputation as a professional among your teammates, you don’t know who to go to if you have any questions.
Things are good now, as I have left this challenging time behind me, befriended some incredible professionals, and managed to make a name for myself.
So I consider it my mission to hype you up for this career change and to share my observations about the differences between studio design and product design. Let’s go over the basic things that you will need to anticipate you a considering a similar career track:
1. A Product Manager is not a Project Manager
They are both your customer and your partner, with a solid understanding of development and analytics. They look at things from a numbers-centric standpoint and want to see a conversion result, not a time frame for quick implementation.
2. Even when you hand in your task, you still remain responsible for it
It’s important to understand that you remain in charge of the task from idea generation to metrics. And if you’ve proposed a solution that doesn’t improve product performance, you’ll have to rethink it. You need to prepare yourself for dealing with fewer tasks while simultaneously diving deeper into each hypothesis that the product manager came up with and into each task that does come in, in order to propose the most appropriate solution that accounts for convenience and usefulness on the customer end.
Additionally, your solution will go through multiple review stages, which can multiply depending on how much quality you initially put into the solution.
3. Now you are responsible for more than just visuals.
Point 3 on my list is a logical consequence of Point 2: the list of requirements for a product designer becomes broader. So don’t be surprised if you leave a studio where you were a Senior Designer, you are demoted to a Middle of Junior Product Designer. The demands here are higher, you need to be morally prepared for that.
4. Analytics are everything
You don’t need to be an actual analyst, but you do need to understand metrics and be familiar with Retention, Churn Rate, ARPU, DAO, MAO, and other things like that. If only to understand your peers, work with data, and know how to properly apply metrics to design decisions.
5. You must consider corner cases
Imagine you are working on a task that involves making adjustments to the header on a website. Will it look the same for logged-in users as it does for guests? How about users with or without a subscription? You can experience this yourself in different scenarios by talking to a product manager, or a designer who owned the product before you. As you are starting out, this is one of the major challenges, so it’s important to always consider scenarios. Missing a single scenario can create a mess for the whole team, resulting in business losses.
6. Love thy developer
In product design, you will have to pay more attention to how you describe your solution to developers and project managers. While the product manager is involved with the task since its inception and is aware of your ambitious solutions, the project manager will not encounter your work until it enters the development or refinement stage. Therefore, it is important to show how an element behaves at different resolutions and how it scales, to highlight clickable areas, element architecture, scenarios, what states the element has and when they appear, and more. Keeping your colleagues informed of this is good form and a sign of respect. This will also help you spend less time on explaining your solutions after the task is handed over to development.
Remember that your product might get displayed not only in the web browser but also in apps (ios/android), or as in my case also on a TV screen (Smart TV, ATV, tvOS), and all your solutions should be written out in great detail for different customers, because developers will also be different.
7. Research
In product design, it is much faster and more efficient to do the research yourself if the issue concerns your solution at its initial stage. So be prepared to familiarize yourself with hallway tests, quantitative research on real audiences, Toloka, Useberry, and other services. In my work I usually use side-by-side, first click, and image classification templates.
And while I am at it, I would also like to mention the importance of asking the right question during your research. At this point, you need to put yourself in the shoes of the person being interviewed, who may not be too familiar with the service and will fail to understand much of the lingo.
Some more tips
For UX-UI designers who want to become product designers, I would recommend to start by leveling up your knowledge of analytics, up to courses designed specifically for analysts. For example, GoPractice’s analytics simulator. Yes, it’s complex, I know that firsthand, but, being a simulator, it will do wonders for your product-focused mindset. It’s great to choose a payment plan that will allow you to complete the simulator with a mentor or someone you know. When you have the opportunity to discuss what you’ve learned or ask questions, that’s invaluable.
In terms of literature, I can recommend: Burn Your Portfolio by Michael Janda; UX/UI Design for Creating the Perfect Product. A Complete and Comprehensive Guide by Yaroslav Shuvaev; Write and Cut Out by Maxim Ilyahov.
Don’t look at products just from a visual perspective, consider how they meet the customer or business needs. Which solutions can create benefits and which can cause losses? Ask questions more often. This will help improve your understanding and inform your future decisions.
Also, don’t be afraid to take a step back before you take a step forward. Even if practice shows you that it’s not your thing, you will have gained experience.
Good luck! And remember, beyond the realm of risk and fear, lies your best possible future!
