How to keep growing as a designer — and as a human 🌱
Many times in my career I thought I wasn’t growing. Not necessarily climbing the career ladder (growth means different things to different people) but rather feeling I wasn’t using my potential to the fullest nor continuously evolving.
Has that happened to you too? With time I realised that there are ways to overcome this feeling and turn the tables around. Below are the steps I took 👇
1. Know yourself and set goals
The first place to start is to make sure you know what you want and what you don’t want. This may change (as things in life do) but this is a foundational aspect of your growth that you should set and reassess periodically.
1.2-Set goals for what you want to achieve> short, mid and long term. This can be simply a mental note in your head, a definition of SMART objectives if you are more analytical or a Vision board if you are into “manifestation” techniques. Whatever your style is, make this work for you.
1.2-Assess your current situation, define a baseline and analyse if where you are right now meets your baseline, and how far are you from your ideal.
1.3- This will help you set a direction for your growth and eventually define a strategy to achieve it. Ask yourself some questions like: What in your current setting can help you achieve your goals? What things can you do outside that setting to achieve them? Create habits that will move you forward in that strategy as it will keep you focused and lead you to the execution.
2. Pursue happiness
Don’t overlook this one, it’s my personal belief that your growth in a designer role is exponentially higher when you are happy doing it, same goes for real life outside work. Happiness increases your motivation (and vice versa) > motivation triggers your action > triggering action makes you experiment > experimenting helps you learn > when you learn you grow.
2.1 You’d be surprised to know that one critical aspect of happiness is the people we surround ourselves with. One of my favourite Ted talks on this matter is by Stacey Flowers, a very straightforward but also — to some extent — “backed by science-based talk” that clarifies the 5 roles of people you need in your life to make you happy.
Timestamps :
6:36 The 5 people:
9:37. Cheerleader: Who roots for you and tells you that you can do it
10:56. Mentor: Who shares information and points you on the right path
12:49. Coach: Who maximizes potential and takes you out of your comfort zone
15:15. Friend: Who knows you and will connect you to your heart
15:33. Peer: Same industry contact who will keep your head in the game
You can ask people to take these roles formally or just associate some people in your life with these roles in your mind — for me, this recipe worked.
2.2 Do more of what you love, either at work or outside. If you love all the tasks inherent to your job, congratulations! If not, propose things that may be outside the scope of your work but can help the company and or your peers, anything that will bring you joy.
2.3 Share things you love with others and you will realise that it will not only make you happy as it will move you forward >>. Share your work with a community, or simply your wisdom with someone else. You can do it regularly or on a one-off basis, directly in a one-to-one setting or in a group — however, it works for you and keeps you motivated to share more.
3. Promote continuous learning
If you are a designer, particularly a user experience/product designer/interaction designer/experience architect/ [ fill in the blank ] you know this very well: you will need to continuously learn throughout your career. The next exciting tool is always around the corner and every new problem requires a different technique or methodology you may haven’t used yet. This is the same for many other career paths and for life in general.
Continuous learning is in general great for your brain as prevents future cognitive decline seen in dementia so there is no reason why you shouldn’t do it, it may require a bit of your time but you can easily make it work for you.
3.1 Define how much time you can dedicate to learning, also make sure to include that in the growth goals you defined in point 1 above. You can decide to invest your own time (eg. read x books per year) or agree with your manager and set that as part of your role’s goals (eg.: attend x courses/conferences sponsored by the company).
3.2. Choose how you want to learn based on your learning style. We are all different, make it work for you
3.3. Choose your learning method. The internet is bliss, and Google is your pal giving you (hopefully!) the best tips. Read blogs and books, listen to podcasts, watch videos and documentaries or attend conferences.
4. Encourage experimentation
We have all learned it at school, science disciplines (natural or behavioural sciences) are all defined by experimentation. For some reason, corporate life makes us sometimes believe that as we have earned the experience, we can no longer experiment … One can, and one should as this helps optimise current processes, learn new ones and innovate.
4.1 Try over and over. If the first attempt fails, try again. Maybe one method didn’t work but the next will do the trick. If you don’t give it a shot you will never know. Want to start a big change like a digital transformation? Start with a small experiment, try for example a beacon for change.
4.2 Try together. This is connected with point 5 below, but putting it simply, trying something new with others helps bring advocacy to a given idea, creates shared learnings and makes the attempt more impactful with the synergy of everyone involved.
4.3 Learn from failures. This normalises the fact that we don’t always have to get things right, in fact sometimes is by getting something wrong that great ideas come to life, if it wasn’t for that post it’s would have never been created (and what would be of us designers without post-its?!)
5. Foster collaboration
Co-creation is another of those inherent aspects of being a designer. Very rarely (if ever) you will be the only decision maker. Therefore a really important aspect of one’s growth is perfecting the ability to work with others.
5.1 Ethics is a very important skill when you work with others, especially in larger projects with many people and a lot of moving parts. Do your best to credit others for their work and involve everyone in shared decisions. Your moral compass is important — keep it with you. And in doubt, because literally, everyone makes mistakes, over-communicate and ask others for feedback.
5.2 Co-create. Although this one should feel natural to us by now as UX designers, we should always try to find better ways to create and communicate with others while doing so. Continuously explore different types of methods, techniques and tools to facilitate collaboration.
5.3 Find inspiring peers to look up to and pair up with. Rise not only by raising others but also by looking up to people you relate to. The saying “Tell Me Who You Hang Around With, and I Will Tell You Who You Will Become” is very much true. Find great minds to exchange ideas or just observe them and it will improve your skills.
6. Nurture a resilient mindset
Resilience is a key ingredient in a designer’s role, especially in user experience. Understanding complex business models, technologies and needs of all types of users is not easy, and nor is it to collaboratively find optimal solutions that work for the business, technology and the users most times in a very tight deadline.
Your mind is your gym, work it out by following the below:
6.1 Embrace the unknown: Maintain your drive by being open to the unknown — while fear of what is different can paralyse you, keeping a curious mind will make you excited about what is next and thrilled to deal with novel situations.
6.2. Persevere. A lot of times we just don’t achieve what we want because we either don’t try or give up too early. Jennifer Cohen raises some good points about intelligence, boldness, and has the best advice in her TedEx talk below. She guarantees that if you make 10 attempts at something at least one will be successful and she was able to persuade Keanu Reaves to take part in her audition tape for Much Music when she was still in High School , so she must be on to something…
6.4. Be comfortable with the uncomfortable: We are almost designed to avoid uncomfortable situations, but — unpopular opinion — these are not bad for us. If you want to have the best spent 10.54 min of your life and be inspired to lose all your fears watch Luvvie TedTalk below, I dare you not to smile.
If you are interested in growing by sharing with others check this :
And if you need some encouragement, I have some words for you
