What Kind of Design Work Should I do?

A Flow Chart for Designers

Julie Zhuo
The Year of the Looking Glass
1 min readOct 13, 2015

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Given my track record of mining overused Internet mediums with listicles, limericks, comics as well as a short dalliance with link-baity headlines, you probably thought cat memes were next.

(Actually, you probably didn’t think that, because it states very clearly in the title this is a flow chart.)

The making of was a bit of a disaster as my very small notebook and my very bad handwriting conspired to make my sketches completely incomprehensible to everyone including myself.

Thankfully, I discovered a fairy godmother in the form of Omnigraffle which gave my flow chart the good ol’ Cinderella treatment.

I get asked all the time by designers What project should I take on?/Where should I work?/What should my career look like? for which I usually give a woefully inadequate 2-minute answer. This chart is an attempt to better illustrate what I always end up wishing I could convey. I hope some of you find it useful.

Download the high-resolution version here.

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The Year of the Looking Glass
The Year of the Looking Glass

Published in The Year of the Looking Glass

A collection of essays by Julie Zhuo on design, building products, and observing life.

Julie Zhuo
Julie Zhuo

Written by Julie Zhuo

Building Sundial (sundial.so). Former Product Design VP @ FB. Author of The Making of a Manager. Find me @joulee. I love people, nuance, and systems.

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