Growth as a junior UX designer
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I recently completed five years as a UX designer in the industry — navigating the fintech world, working on diverse products, helping expand our design team, and fielding countless questions about whether I design credit cards. Over the years, my approach to asking questions, interacting with peers, and maneuvering 1:1s with managers has changed quite a bit. I’m adding some thoughts to the pensieve for anyone looking for tips to grow in their UX career.
The fresh grad era: Building on the basics
When I first started working, I was a motivated, proactive, eager-to-please (albeit slightly under-confident) new designer. Looking back, focusing on a few habits in addition to core design skills helped me grow faster.
Showing up
Gaining trust as an early career designer often comes from consistently showing up and following through. Join meetings on time, schedule 1:1s with teammates, and take deadlines seriously. If you say you’re going to update a component by Wednesday, update that component by Wednesday — don’t wait for a teammate to check in on your task.
Taking notes, lots of notes
Effective documentation is an often overlooked skill. Taking notes and being able to articulate key decisions is great for building product knowledge and aligning with stakeholders. It’s useful to have a way to trace decisions back to their source when folks need a reminder of past discussions or agreed upon timelines. Proactively taking on this behind-the-scenes work indicates that you are ready to take on more responsibility.
Snack on all the cheese
Getting your first big project feels incredible, but try to pitch in on multiple projects on a smaller scale as well. You’ll make connections, learn about working styles, and get exposure to different aspects of the business. You’re (hopefully) working with cool people you admire on real projects outside the context of school, so soak up all the knowledge you can.
Check in with yourself
Checking in is important in all stages of your career but the questions you ask yourself at different points might change. Some topics that were top of mind for me at this point:
- What does growth look like for me right now? I prioritized core design and communication skills over strategy, project management, and leadership opportunities at this stage. Developing a good sense of design and pushing through the blank-frame-scaries takes time and consistent effort. Work with your manager to figure out how you can own end-to-end flows, and ensure that you deliver quality, detail-oriented results.
- How do I improve my core design skills? Identify a design skill and ask yourself how you can work on it through your current project. For example, to improve my micro-interaction skills, I volunteered to create user testing prototypes and experimented with interactions even if implementation wasn’t feasible. To hone visual design skills, you can host UI critiques, work with references, replicate common design patterns over starting from scratch, and so on.
- How do I learn about other projects at the company?
- How can I structure design critiques to get the most useful feedback? How can I learn to take critique positively and not personally?
- How can I be a more active member of the design community at and outside of work?
Two years in: Expanding my role
As I grew in my role, designing at a comfortably fast pace within constraints felt more natural. This was a great time for me to focus on other skills. I started to value having greater ownership, strategic input and more visibility.
Get involved in strategy
Look for ways to contribute to strategy for your product or your design org. I brought up taking on a more strategic role in my team and was added to recurring strategy meetings with Design, Marketing, and Product leadership. I also joined the interview squad and interviewed 10+ designers with the panel across all levels. Within your product, you can influence direction by finding opportunities to lead projects and increasing your interaction with stakeholders.
Leading meetings
Leading meetings for large cross-functional groups comes with varied opinions and stricter schedules. As you start to drive more meetings, go into them with an agenda, and respect the meeting duration. Being prepared equates to being confident and efficient, and people appreciate it when their time is respected.
Estimating bandwidth
While respecting other people’s time, be sure to respect your own. You should feel empowered to decline meetings when needed. Learn to estimate bandwidth and timelines for your projects, including padding for stakeholder reviews, hand-offs, and unforeseen pivots (because let’s be real, there will be some). Do this often, and you’ll get pretty good at understanding how much you can commit to in a sprint or a quarter.
Check in with yourself
My priorities had changed at this stage, and so did the questions I frequently thought about:
- How can I have the opportunity to lead more conversations with stakeholders?
- How can I increase ownership in my projects?
- How can I get more opportunities to present my work?
- How can I interact with senior leadership more frequently?
- How can I dedicate more time to focus on strategy in my projects?
Progressing further: Taking the lead
Moving forward, I sought opportunities to mentor junior designers, lead design for high priority initiatives, and adopt a more strategic, decision-making role in projects.
Mentoring opportunities
Work with and mentor junior designers or interns to learn how to manage other people’s time in addition to your own. Find the balance between providing guidance but not being overly prescriptive. This is a helpful step in building managerial skills. A lot of invisible work comes up when you’re helping other designers refine their craft, and it’s challenging but rewarding.
Dealing with uncertainty
Practice becoming self-reliant in navigating uncomfortable situations and timeline pressures over immediately turning to your manager for support. It’s important to build the resilience to stay calm under pressure and respond with clarity and grace. Embrace discomfort as an opportunity to develop your problem-solving skills.
Take up space
Don’t default to being the person in the room with only questions and no answers. Asking questions is an inherent design skill and a great way to get clarity. However, it’s also important to reassure stakeholders by filling in gaps, focusing on the bigger picture, and providing options to proceed with minimal information. Practice asking strategic questions and earmarking additional questions for follow-ups. Ask yourself: what’s the most crucial information I need to get started? What commitments can I make as a designer based on this information?
Check in with yourself
Some things I’m pondering upon as I navigate this stage:
- How can I advocate for users and design as a function at the initial stages of product development?
- How can I contribute to design strategy more effectively?
- How can I improve my conduct in uncomfortable situations?
- How can I gain more visibility into the impact of my work?
Final thoughts
- Advocate for yourself. Asking for what you want is crucial to career progression, whether that is expectations from a performance review cycle, compensation, or the type of projects you want to work on. A good manager will find ways to incorporate your developmental goals into your work. Your job is to make sure you communicate those goals often and clearly.
- Proactively take ownership whenever possible. Working on your first project? Offer to set up the Figma file or create shared folders. Nervous about leading meetings for larger groups? Volunteer to facilitate a design brainstorming session.
- Have structured 1:1s with your manager. Ask thoughtful questions and make it a collaborative discussion as opposed to a one-way Q&A session. It’s important to take advantage of these conversations instead of treating them as ad hoc how-are-we-doing-todays.
- Seek feedback outside of annual or bi-annual reviews, possibly after an important meeting or design review. You don’t need feedback from everyone, but decide whose opinions you value and occasionally seek input from them.
- Perform above your role. I believe that the best way to advocate for your growth is by performing at the next level and having your title be adjusted to match your work and not vice versa. Evaluate what you’re lacking compared to the highest expectation from a designer at your level or one at the next level, and try to match that.
That’s my brain dump for now. I should note, all career progressions look different. These learnings probably apply more to large companies with established design levels, and I’d love to hear about how other designers have looked at growth over the years!