Designers share learnings from a 2-year long product design career

Credits: absurd.design

I asked a bunch of product designers about what they have learned in their 2-year long product design career. I am a big proponent of learning from others and this is a small attempt to share that knowledge with the community.

Meet the designers

Kenji Kaneko

• Product Designer at Duo Security
• Ann Arbor, MI

Deepak Krishnan

• UX Designer at SAP San Ramon. I work on the Sales Cloud Team.
• Oakland, CA

Nathan Magyar

• UX Designer at the University of Michigan Center for Academic Innovation.
• Ann Arbor, MI
• My role as a UX Designer there spans the entire spectrum of our field, from research, to design, to front-end implementation.

Raymond Su

• UX Designer at Telenav
• Santa Clara, CA
• I’m working on in-car navigation and infotainment systems at Telenav. I create user flows, wireframes, and interaction guidelines. Occasionally, I also handle UX writing, product documentation, and motion design.

Raden Tonev

• UX Designer at Microsoft
• Seattle, WA
• I am a UX Designer working on tools for data professionals. In my work, I design new generation data experiences for databases, machine learning, and edge computing.

Jatin Gupta

• Product Designer at Sprint (now T-mobile)
• Reston, VA
• I am working on designing new features or redesigning existing screens for the My Sprint App.

Ruta Gokhale

• UX Designer at Thomson Reuters
• Ann Arbor, MI

Olivia Patercsak

• User Experience Architect at Esri
• Redlands, CA
• I’m on the UX team for ArcGIS Pro, the 2D/3D GIS desktop software.

Why only designers with experience of 2 years?

I thought their perspective would be interesting to gauge before the curse of knowledge creeps in. They are in a phase of their design career where they are still fresh from facing the problems that new designers face every day, while also understanding and growing into a more experienced designer themselves.

All these designers are from my cohort who graduated from the Masters in HCI program at the University of Michigan School of Information in April 2018.

Questions they were asked?

Note: Section titles below link to a medium post with responses to questions.

Life as a Product Designer

• What does a typical workday look like for you (pre-quarantine)?
• What is 1 skill that you think is the most important to be a good product designer?
• What is the most challenging aspect of being a product designer?

Advice for new product designers

• What is 1 UX skill/course from the University of Michigan that translates directly into your work?
• What advice would you give to product designers starting their career?
• What is 1 thing you look for in a product design portfolio?

Tips to grow as a Product Designer

• Please share some resources (communities, blogs, or specific designers) that you use to keep yourself updated about product design?
• Is there something (preferably related to design but anything creative) you are learning nowadays? If yes, what is it?
• Is there a product you have come across that you thought was designed really well? Why did you think so?

Get help from these Professional Designers

• Is there something that you want to promote (personal website, Instagram, dribble)?
• Where can people reach out to you?
• What should people reach out to you?

A big thank you to all these designers for taking the time to answer these questions and agreeing to share with the community what they have learned about product design over the last 2 years.

Want to learn more?

If you’d like to become an expert in UX Design, Design Thinking, UI Design, or another related design topic, then consider to take an online UX course from the Interaction Design Foundation. For example, Design Thinking, Become a UX Designer from Scratch, Conducting Usability Testing or User Research — Methods and Best Practices. Good luck on your learning journey!

Hi! My name is Jatin Gupta. I am a product designer currently thinking about how to grow as a product designer.

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