How to make strategic trade-offs that will boost your UX career
When the pandemic mixed with rainy November, after months in isolation I started feeling increasingly insecure about my future. Therefore, I decided to plan it before the coronavirus will plan it for me. Together with Wojciech Zasina, we’ve figured out a framework for getting more strategic about our UX careers.
This article will take you through the 8-steps process for getting more strategic about your UX career.
However, if you feel you don’t need any more explanations, jump straight to the UX Career Strategizer Miro board and get the ball rolling.
UX Career Strategizer helped us understand where we are now, where we want to be in the future and how to get there. The framework was tested and improved based on the feedback from 7 designers. If you think it might be a good idea to get more strategic about your career, it might also work for you.
But why even bother?
Getting strategic about your career
Career Strategy is all decisions about what you will do and what you will not do in order to achieve your goals. In other words, what activities you need to engage in, what efforts you need to make, and what endeavors you need to resign from to be where you want to be in your work life. It’s all about thoughtful trade-offs and acknowledging that in most cases we are not superhero-unicorns who can be the best at everything (if you feel you are one, you’d better drop this article now).
And if you don’t know what your goal even is, no worries, this is exactly where we will start.
Is the UX Career Strategizer the right thing for me?
This tool can work for you if:
- You are a UX Designer of any level
- You want to define your future role and skills it will require
- You want to ideate a set of strategic activities that will lead to reaching your goals
- You’re a design lead looking for a career framework to help your designers grow
This tool is not for you if:
- You need a planning/tracking tool to put tasks on the timeline and monitor progress
- You want to explore the opportunities beyond the UX field
- You only need to plan your career a few months ahead
- What you need are inspiration and coaching
Based on the experience of 7 designers it should take you ~3–5hrs to complete all 8 steps. You might want to break it into two days' effort to be full of energy while working on the most important task: designing yourself.
Step 1/8: Figure Out Your Values
It’s nothing new that when considering your future career, your work values count as one of the most important factors that will guide your choices.
Figuring out what you value is not about what you enjoy or what you think is cool. It’s defining what is meaningful for you even when things become challenging. Values will be your North Star on the way to reaching your career goals.
After this exercise
- You will know a set of work-related values that will drive your goals and choices.
The Task
Think about what is meaningful for you at work. Think of the good times but first and foremost — think of the tough ones, when you are stressed, under pressure, or anxious.
What is important then? What do you value? What helps you thrive and make your work meaningful?
Look at the grid on the right and start crossing out the values one by one to eliminate the less important ones. You’re done when you reach 5 values left — these ones mean the most to you.
Step 2/8: Draft Your Strategic Career Goal
In this exercise, you are about to determine your career appetite in line with the values you’ve just defined. As designers, we often start with lo-fi versions, we want to have a wireframe, a sketch. Similarly, let’s first define your high-level career goal.
After this exercise
- You will achieve some basic clarity about your career goals.
- You will be ready to define your goals in a more specific way in the next step.
The Task
Based on your 5 most important values, define your goal using the template. Take your time and think about each post-it for a while before filling it in.
Do not overthink it!
It’s not set in stone. If you are not sure about some elements, just type what’s on the top of your head.
Step 3/8: Org & Role Mapping
It can be really hard to think of all the aspects of the organization and role that will or won’t change for you while being under pressure of making a decision about a job change.
That’s why it’s good to prepare and realize what are your must-haves and what are the aspects of a company or a role that aren’t crucial for you.
Let’s find out what org & role is in line with your goals. What organization would you like to work at? How is it similar or different from your current workplace? What role would you like to have? What product would you like to work with? Who is there on your team?
We collected some possible answers to those questions (and many more!) so that you don’t have to come up with ideas but simply select and mark your choices on the map.
After this exercise
- You will understand better where you are now and where you want to be in terms of the role and the company.
- You will set your priorities regarding the criteria of the desired role, organization, and product. Those priorities will act as a compass for your further choices.
- Knowing your wants about company & role, you will be ready to think what skills you will need to get there.
The Task
Look at the map with predefined categories, or rather choices you need to make every time you decide to change your job or stay where you are.
Mark where you are now (green dots in the example). Then mark where you want to be (blue dots). You can also mark your ultimate, far-fetched choices using (red dots).
As the last step, mark the categories (1st tier) as very important, somewhat important, and not important. Yes, trade-offs are necessary.
Step 4/8: Current vs. Desired Skills Level
Do you see many overlaps between the current and desired state in your Org&Role map? Or rather most of your choices for the future differ from the current state? No matter what result you arrived at, you now need to map the skills you’ll need to either thrive in your current workplace or to be successful in that role and org you envision yourself at.
After this exercise
- You will get a deeper insight into your current skillset.
- You will define which skills you want to develop and to what extent.
- You will get an idea of the perception of your skills in the eyes of your colleagues. You will be able to make interesting comparisons between your outlook and theirs.
The Task
There are many frameworks allowing you to assess your current and desired level of certain skills and each of them seems to present a different set of designer’s superpowers. We acknowledge that the proposed set might be missing some competencies that are vital for you, so feel free to add or change some of the pre-defined ones.
Use the ❤️ to highlight the 3 skills you enjoy using the most. You certainly don’t have to be a master at your favorite skill.
Mark your current skill level (yellow color in the example below). Make sure you first understood what each level means.
Be realistic. Do not diminish or overestimate your skills.
Then mark your desired skill level (blue color). Note the discrepancies. Make sure the skills you mark really correspond with (1) your goal and (2) Org&Role map choices you made.
Bonus: Ask your trusted colleague, your manager, or someone else you work with to mark your levels. It will be super interesting to see someone else’s perspective on you, right?
Step 5/8: Time & Energy Allocation
It’s time to decide how much energy you want to spend on developing your skills. Life is life and our budgets are limited.
Money, time, energy, attention — all resources we hold are finite. Thus, we need to allocate our budgets thoughtfully.
We need to prioritize and make trade-offs to focus on what’s important in order to achieve our strategic goals even if the resources are scarce.
After this exercise
- You will be sure you are realistic about your goals and the skills you want to develop.
- You will have clear priorities.
- You will be ready to define specific activities you want to undertake to make sure your high-prior skills will be eventually shining gold!
The Task
Copy the skills (black post-its in the example) you want to develop from the Skills Matrix. If you marked that the upgrade is needed in more than 10 skills, please limit them to 10 in this task. If you have less than 10 — that’s okay, leave some boxes empty.
Mark the % of your time and energy you want to spend on developing certain skills.
Consider a limited timeframe — we suggest you go for ‘in this year’. You can invest all your % in one skill or many skills. Just make sure the sum of % equals 100.
Step 6/8: Strategic Activities
You are already being strategic on the skills level as you know which ones are the most important — in which you want to invest your precious time, energy, and presumably money (as nothing’s for free in this world, babe).
Let’s now break down those skills into specific, tangible actions you will take to develop them.
After this exercise
- You will get a set of strategic activities that you will engage in in order to boost your skills and eventually achieve your goals.
- You will know how to address the skills shortcomings you experience now.
- You will also set some metrics that will allow you to monitor your progress.
The Task
Consider the top 3–4 skills you decided to invest in your time and energy in step 5.
Just as in the product design, it might be challenging to start by creating great ideas for strategic activities. Therefore, let’s start with struggles you experience with certain skills or lack of those.
Zoom in to the first skill. Let’s say it’s “Workshop Facilitation”. Think about the issues you experience regarding some shortages in this skill. Those can be real situations from your work life (e.g. ‘I see that people are not engaged in the meeting I lead’) or some more abstract issues (such as ‘I am anxious about explaining what people should do’). Those can be about your current situation or about your perception of the future.
Now think about what you can do to overcome or diminish your struggles. Those remedies can directly address one or several struggles. Moreover, some of them might be just ‘growth ideas’ — to grow this skill, not necessarily directly approaching the struggles. Both are perfectly fine.
Tip: Quantity over quality! Produce as many actions as you can and make them super specific, do your research!
Lastly, work on your personal metrics. Supposing your struggle was linked to the lack of self-confidence in facilitating.
Ask yourself: How will I know, how can I recognize that I am more self-confident? What are the signs?
Maybe it’s “I feel less stressed out before the workshops’. Or ‘I am confident enough to be flexible and change the activities if needed during the workshop itself”.
Step 7/8: Strategic Trade-offs
Now when you know what to do, the question remains: what not to do.
UX career strategy is not only about things we engage in but also about activities we want to reduce or eliminate to make room for what’s important.
You cannot both have the cookie and eat the cookie. You cannot read about UX research for 16h a week and practice UI animation for 16h a week at the same time (or you’re a superhero, then you don’t need those exercises), can you? Therefore, let’s now see where to decrease your time, effort, and energy investments by focusing on ELIMINATE and REDUCE fields in the EERC matrix.
After this exercise
- You will know what to do and what not to do once you finish strategizing.
- You will be able to choose more thoughtfully what to do with your time and energy.
The Task
Place all the activities you listed in the previous exercise in the CREATE or RAISE quarter. Go for ‘CREATE’ if you’re about to do something completely new, start well…create some investments. Choose ‘RAISE’ if you’ve already done some initial investments but you feel that you need to do more / more frequently etc.
Then, focus on what to ELIMINATE or REDUCE to make room for what you want to do. Think of how your days look. What does not bring you closer to your goals? What’s not productive? What are those tasks and actions?
Tip: It can be work-related and it can be very personal. Be honest with yourself. List small things and those big beasts too.
Step 8/8: WOOP Your Career
Who doesn’t want to increase the chances of fulfilling their wishes? Using some science-proved methods? This is what the last step is all about.
WOOP is a mental strategy that you can use to find and fulfill your wishes, set preferences, and change your habits.
It’s backed by 20 years of scientific research.
It turns out that the obstacles that we think most impede us from fulfilling our wishes can actually help us to realize them.
WOOP instructs us to dream our future dreams but then to imagine what obstacles inside ourselves prevent us from achieving these dreams (source of the technique: https://woopmylife.org/)
After this exercise
- You will know what to do when you encounter an obstacle that could block your plans and wishes. Therefore, you will increase your chances of fulfilling your goals despite obstacles.
The Task
In this exercise, consider your goal, strategic activities, and tradeoffs when thinking about your wish and obstacles.
First, think of your wish. What is your most important wish or concern regarding achieving your strategic career goals? Write it down.
Then, think of the best possible outcome. What would be the best thing about fulfilling your wish? Use your imagination, take time and write it down.
Now think what is it within you that holds you back from fulfilling your wish? What’s your biggest obstacle that could jeopardize your goal? Note your main inner obstacle
Then make a plan. What can you do to overcome your obstacle? Name one action you can take or one thought you can think of to overcome your obstacle. Make an If-Then plan and keep it in your head in case the obstacle comes in your way.
Design Yourself
When companies make everyday decisions about the business, their strategy acts as a North Star, guiding towards choices that seem to be most optimal in the long run. The ones that bring them closer to their desired outcomes. As designers, we can do the exact same thing — use strategy to make intentional and conscious decisions to be fulfilled no matter what exactly it means for each of us.
Getting strategic about your career and making more thoughtful choices is a never-ending journey. We hope that the UX Career Strategizer can make it a little less tangled and bumpy for you.
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