Learnings from a Product Design Internship: Part 2

After completing my internship at ZeroToDesign, Part 2 summarises the main learnings I had come across through the Design process. I have covered 5 points for when executing your design process and how small changes can have a powerful impact on your work.

1. Rationalise your designs

As a designer it’s important that you rationalise your designs as this facilitates better communication among people who are involved in the design process. Rationalising not only helps your design stay focused on fulfilling a purpose but also ensures that your final decision is benefiting the person you’re designing for. Learning to be a good decision maker and being able to discuss with your team members leverages their knowledge and also helps evaluate which steps would be most useful for both your users and the business.

2. Focus on Functionality over Aesthetics

Which designer doesn’t want their design to look cool and fun? All of us do. When you start to question your design decisions and focus your attention towards what would be most functional for your users, you realise that good design is not only about the aesthetic pleasure but instead all about the functionality. When making design decisions it’s vital to question the functionality of your design elements. For instance:

• If I add this information would it be visible enough for users to understand where to go after taking this action?
• Would adding a filter option on this side of the page include ease of use for our users?
• Would implementing this design pattern go well with the current mental models of our users?

3. Design layouts made simpler for users

I was recently working on a few checkout-flow designs and was stuck when it came to the ways of laying out different sections that users would have to go through. It took a while from V1 to V2 to V3 and so on but I still couldn’t figure out where to put this text or if a specific visual should be placed on the bottom right or left?

When getting feedback, a team member mentioned the F-shaped rule. The F-shaped pattern among many others is ideally used as a simple layout designed to guide your users’ eye to the main information you are trying to showcase. Once I implemented it to my designs it helped better layout the main information intended to catch users’ attention. There are many common patterns that are well known and can bring a major difference to your users’ overall experience.

You can read more on the F-shaped pattern here: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/f-shaped-pattern-reading-web-content-discovered/

4. Organisation in your Design Systems

When having to create the components of a product you are working on, having an organised approach will be really beneficial for you and your team. The first steps when creating your design system will include gathering all the different types of design elements used in your product, like buttons, input fields, icons, etc. By doing this, you create a more organised space of all design elements. This makes it easier for when starting the converging process with the rest of your team for the Design System.

5. Complete is better than perfect

As designers, we tend to create endless variations, refine our designs, and continuously try to polish them to perfection. Don’t focus on perfecting your designs (initially).

Design your ideas to satisfy the bigger picture, which is to be able to get the feedback you need from your users to then re-design and have a clearer vision on what should be focused on. Keep in mind that your users don’t care what shade of green you are using on a button or which font you plan on designing with. Focus on perfecting your designs after your users are able to get the desired outcome without any frustrations/pain points, launch the MVP, gather data, and finally, you can redesign to perfection with the feedback gathered.

That sums up a few among many other learnings I’ve come across so far. I’m super grateful to have gotten a full-time role at ZeroToDesign after my internship 🥳

Looking forward to learning more through my journey in this field and sharing more blog posts in the future.

Part 1 in case you missed it :)