What I learned as a Product Designer over the last 6 years
This story dates all the way back to explaining to my family what I do as a “UX Designer” or “Product Designer” (as it is mostly now known) upon landing that first job after college. Which ultimately ended with me just saying I make apps!
To be fair, even back in 2014 I didn't realize how much there was to being a product designer, and I still don’t know it all. What I have learned however is enough to tell my story of the things that have truly been valuable to me and helped me become the Design Leader that I am in my career today…including all the bumps in the road.
This is my own personal knowledge share of what I have learned these past 6 years doing work for places like Walmart Labs, working on its Enterprise Applications for their 2.3 million associates as well as customers around the world, to where I am currently at Movista — a SaaS startup growing rapidly after gathering Series A Funding in 2018. I hope to give you some tips if you’re looking to get into Product Design or you just enjoy seeing other designers experiences — enjoy!
Be flexible & have an open and iterative mindset
Learning to be flexible with my designs was not something that came naturally. Being a very passionate designer is great but also realizing when you need to step back and think:
This just doesn't really work, let’s try a different approach.
That can be hard, super, super hard! This is especially so when you invest a lot of time and effort into your design solutions. Ultimately learning to be receptive to other people (not just designers!) feedback and ideas will only help in pushing your designs further. Learning to work in an agile environment was difficult at first, but it’s something that I have grown to be so appreciative for. Approaching product design with an iterative design mindset is incredibly important.
A Product is never just “done” — its a living thing that constantly grows and can be improved upon.
Stay curious & ask questions
One thing that I found difficult when I first started in product design was working up the courage to ask questions.
I mean, if I were to ask questions because I didn’t understand why a product did something, or where can I find certain guidelines — they’d think I was some kind of fraud, right?!
Wrong. So very wrong.
When I first began there were times when I have had to approach a total re-design of a product or feature and at first was too nervous to ask questions about why it did things a certain way. I thought…
“they’ll think I am a fraud and have no idea what i’m doing, i’m sure it’s obvious why it does it this way and not the way I would expect it to…”
even though it felt TERRIBLY WRONG for it to function that way. Sometimes people are so ingrained into their products that they don’t see that the UX is terribly lacking, thats why you’re here.
You’re there to shed the light on issues and ask questions — so don’t ever be afraid to do that.
Always keep learning
The amount of times that I have had to teach myself new skills, software, methods, strategies, etc is honestly un-countable at this point. This is one of the things that has helped me the most in my career, maybe because I have a fear of irrelevancy or falling behind emerging practices (I’ll talk to my therapist about that later).
Mostly this has been out of the habit that I LOVE LEARNING something new. It’s so exciting to be able to go from not knowing how to doing something or seeing something that sparked something in you and going out and learning how to do that. When you are able to do this and apply it to your work, its a great feeling!
If you’re not sure how to do something — google it and learn!
There are countless resources that you can learn different software, methods, and design principles from such as Lynda, Udemy and YouTube.
Listen to your users
This seems like an obvious one as a product designer — however when politics, frustrated business stakeholders, and impatient clients are involved … let’s be honest, this tends to get put on the back burner because “we have to ship the product”.
There have been times when I have worked on a feature and shipped it without truly understanding the “why” that user’s need to use this, which generally results in users feeling frustrated because you gave them something they don’t care about or upset that it doesn't work in the way they truly intended to use it.
It’s so important to understand the business requirements but ALSO make the time to understand what problems are facing your users. I’ve found numerous times over the years that sometimes stakeholders are just not in tune with what their users are really doing or wanting.
Always remember that you’re advocating for the end user — thats our job!
“Let’s User Test It”
If there is anything that I have learned over the years its that if I can listen to my users, present a design solution for the business problem AND back up my decisions with data — then I am really doing my job as a Product Designer.
It’s so important that you test your design solutions early and often to validate or invalidate your hypothesis. UX Researchers will be your best friends, so get acquainted and befriend these folks as soon as you can!
I’ve had to become very strong in UX Research as well as the execution portion of Product Design, but some folks focus primarily in one area (which is totally okay). By utilizing user research and data, you can approach a solution that works for them MUCH quicker than by just making a hypothesis.
I’ve done all kinds of methods for testing, such as remote testing, in-person testing, immersive methods, etc. There are all kinds of software that you can use, but personally I have really loved using Maze which offers you the ability to “purchase” testers, mission creation (task scenarios) and a lot of great user testing feedback and reporting features.
One thing that is vital to remember that I have learned is:
Methods matter less as long as you’re doing SOMETHING to validate your designs with users.
Always reflect on yourself
It’s important to listen to feedback from your peer’s and your managers, but its equally (if not more) important to listen to yourself and ask yourself questions.
Yes, I am asking you to talk to yourself.
Ask yourself things like:
- What am I doing well?
- What are some areas that I feel like I am not as strong in? How can I learn to improve upon those things? What are my next actionable steps?
- Should I be having more 1:1’s with the right people?
- What do I actually enjoy doing and want to do more of and what would I like to do less of?
It’s very important to know these things about yourself because as your career grows — so do you.
We change as we grow in our careers and we’re rarely ever going to be feeling the same way we did 1, 3, 6 years ago. Knowing the answers to some of these things as you evolve can be your guiding light to getting you in the right direction.
Thanks for coming to my Ted Tal-… I mean thanks for reading this article and I hope it brought you some good information. This is based on my own personal knowledge that I have gained over the last 6 years doing Product Design and I do hope that you can take something away from it.
Be on the lookout for more articles as I explore writing my thoughts out and please consider following me Matt Elbert to see more as it comes.
Cheers!
