In search of product designers
In the past couple of years, the Design industry has gained a lot of relevance. Especially product and service design. In Latam and around the world, product design has become a necessity and that brings with it positive and negative things.
In the McKinsey Quantifies the Business Value of Design study, 2 million financial data and 100,000 design actions throughout 5 years, McKinsey discovers that design-led companies had a 32% more income and a 56% better financial performance for their shareholders in comparison with others.
Picture caption: Google says it will include UX as a new search variable for its search engine.
Nowadays, people from different backgrounds and professions see design as an “easy way out” to improve their income. I say “easy” because even though the demand is there, being a product designer involves a learning curve. This brings with it a wave of new designers coming from other backgrounds. It makes sense, there is an actual demand for it, but when these new designers don’t have the know-how, foundations, or experience, it harms tremendously the industry credibility.
Because of this, finding specialized talent becomes harder and harder for many companies. Sometimes they don’t know the role they are looking to fill, sometimes they are creating a new UX department and there is no one to search for the right candidate with the knowledge to put a team together. Sometimes, this talent quest to assemble a team is supported by consultant firms but even that won’t guarantee success. There are a lot of external factors that can alter the result of bringing together a “dream team”.
In 2019, Invision did the Product Design Hiring Report. Product Designers are in high demand, more than ever. Our survey revealed that 4 of 5 are contacted by recruiters at least once monthly (81%), while 1 of every 3 is contacted by recruiters weekly. Among the contacted designers 61% manifested that recruiters are approaching them more frequently than the previous year.
The Current Situation
Today there are a lot of job offers for designers, but not always companies know for sure their need, which generates a false relationship between the designer and the company. The reason why many designers leave their job is the lack of a design vision within the companies they work.
Companies who bet into creating a design team, face a lot of challenges but designers do too.
- Companies should go for junior candidates as long as they are willing to train them.
- A good experienced designer will not be at its fullest capacity in a company without any design vision.
- To retain designers these days, companies need to know that a good salary alone won’t be enough, a good sense of belonging, being clear about opportunities to grow within the company and not to generate false expectations.
- Specific tools are not a pressing issue for designers. During the past 5 years software has been constantly changing, having the base knowledge is what counts. Avoid recruiters who are looking for designers who know a specific software.
The ideal designer
- Adapts to the conditions.
- Are great team assets.
- Communicate clearly.
- Understand Business objectives and strategies.
- Is a strategist and identifies opportunities.
- Understand the design process phases. (It doesn’t sound very logical but nowadays there are a lot of designers that cannot tackle a design problem).
- They are curious.
In my opinion, best designers are the ones who understand perfectly the business, connect with the needs of the user and identify market opportunities. They also need to change their mindset, everything is part of a process, adapting to each company has its nuances. Product design is iterative; understand your users, launch and improve your product constantly.
