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Does the design community perpetuate imposter syndrome?
Reflections on whether the discussion on overcoming imposter syndrome has been at odds with our practice.
Earlier in the week, I came across a twitter thread of designers arguing about the exclusionary nature of the design community. Real or imagined, this is something I’ve always felt — not having a “formal” education in design or UX.
You might say I’m suffering from imposter syndrome. I have chronic and reoccurring feelings of self-doubt and fear that I’m about to be “found out” at my next job opportunity. But why? Somehow, I’ve always managed to grow as a designer and learn new things. I maintain relationships with people I respect in the field. If they didn’t respect me equally, would they care to keep in contact?
I also have a growing body of work which I’m very proud of. In fact, I just peeked at reviews of an app I worked on a couple of years ago to discover it has a rating of 4.5 stars in the app store and a number of glowing reviews! This was an app (where I lead the visual and interaction design) to help people quit smoking and here, right before my eyes, 400+ people are coming to testify they’ve actually given up their habit. That’s a feather to stick in my cap, right? Hmm, dumb luck, I say!
So what’s up with imposter syndrome? If you search for ‘imposter syndrome’ on Medium, you’ll find an infinite number of articles giving advice on how to overcome it. But clearly, it’s still an issue and it hasn’t gone away.
Here’s the thing: we aren’t really trying to solve the problem. It’s like getting an invite to a party, where the host knows you can’t attend.
We can’t seem to reconcile the desire to rise to the top, but also be a welcoming community. It’s a gatekeeper mentality. It’s snobbish culture.
I mean, yeah — half of our job is to be in the mindset of critique. Most of the time it’s extremely subjective. And when there are no clear metrics for how we should perform, it’s up to us to come up with ambiguous standards of success.
