Lessons learned in product design
There’s more to being a product designer than simply designing. Leaning into your soft skills and understanding how design fits into the bigger picture can really make a difference in your professional growth and how you approach your work.
Before jumping into each topic, I’d just like to preface this post with a disclaimer:
I, like any other designer, experience good and bad days. On bad days I have crushing imposter syndrome. I feel like a fraud, even a failure, and just plain bad at what I do. I sometimes honestly feel like I can’t design anything good.
But those are the bad days.
On good days, I feel super excited to learn as much as I can about design, to jump into the details, to thumb through innovative work and ask, “How’d they do that!?”, and to share everything I’ve learned along this journey.
This list is by no means exhaustive — but it’s things I’ve observed over time that would have helped me to know earlier, which I hope might help you too.
Communicate clearly and often
Wow, this one is not easy to learn. When I was just starting my career a large amount of uncertainty and lack of confidence came from doing the exact opposite of this — not clearly communicating, not communicating often.
Time and time again I would find myself in situations where I had no idea what I’m supposed to design because I was too afraid to ask what was on my mind. I’d sit in a short meeting with my project manager or maybe they’d tag me in a ticket brief. Then… I’d stare at a blank screen waiting for someone to throw me a bone.
Not a recipe for success, let me tell you.
The trick with designing isn’t in the pixels — it’s in your volunteering to help solve a problem. Anyone can become a designer and I believe everyone is capable of great design solutions. But what being a designer really means is taking up the full-time job of doing something not everyone wants to do — distilling a business need into a solution people will actually use.
And how do you get there? By asking a ton of questions.
Ask early, ask often. Even if it’s the most benign thought, share it with whom you’re talking to. Share it with the client, with a stakeholder, with a developer, with your PM. Share it with your design partner. Asking questions brings clarity to everyone involved.
The more questions you ask, the less guesswork you’ll do. The less guesswork you’ll do, the happier the client and the better the project outcome.
And if you’re still not sure about something? Ask again.
Get good at formulating precise questions and I think you’ll see that designing will get that much easier. Your confidence will grow as you’ll get used to seeing the problem solve itself while you ask away.
Understand context
This is a very powerful tool in your toolbox.
A lot of design talk these days focuses on honing in on a process, and repeating that process in order to see successful results. I think there’s great value in that. Designing with no process in mind definitely will not lead to great results. But practicing navigating each client’s needs, each project’s goals, and what exactly you’re designing in the first place is going to foster something in you that is invaluable:
Flexibility.
We like when others listen to us. We like to work with people who “see it our way”. And although as designers we will have to put a hard stop to things like poor usability or questionable patterns — we need to be aware of our constraints.
Focus on what that individual, team, or company needs.
If all they really need is an update to a problematic flow — work on that. Don’t offer an entire redesign of their product. Do they need a redesign? Yes. But right now, that’s not the discussion. Focus on doing one thing well, and then the next thing, and you’ll see that doors will open up.
Think, “How can I bring value to my client’s problem while guiding them with best practices?”
Choose your battles wisely
Boy, this is another tough one. And as with all my points, I am still learning this every day.
Design is a hard industry because there isn’t just one way to solve something. And “solving” is a relative term when you take into account all parties.
A design team will solve a problem just for the client to say the team they hired doesn’t understand good design. A client will solve a problem only for the design team to be left weeping in front of an empty canvas of yet-to-be-drawn pixels for tomorrow’s deadline.
I’ve seen designers choose too many battles; I’ve seen designers choose too few. It’s a tightrope, and it’s not always clear which battles are worth fighting for.
One thing I have learned is that causing friction at every step ultimately yields a net negative.
Why?
Well because no one likes to be told at every subsequent moment that they are wrong and don’t understand how to design their own product. All that says to the client is “I am right; you are wrong” — which is a terrible start to any relationship.
So what’s a better approach? I’m still figuring that one out… But it seems to me there are a few things you can do to get better at walking this tightrope.
First, listen.
Acknowledge the thoughts, concerns, and expertise of who you’re working with. Even if you know deep down an idea won’t work, take a moment to honestly consider it. You are not a superhero and you need all the help you can get. So be open to accepting ideas from everyone — because you are all on the same team. A good project means having one goal: creating the best possible product.
Once I started to reframe my awkward situations in this light, things started to feel lighter and everyone seemed to simply be happier. Asking questions didn’t feel like a pain, but an opportunity to better inform my designs. Iterating became less of a chore and more of a challenge.
Secondly…
Don’t explain — pitch
My first design mentor introduced me to the principle of pitching.
And in doing so he directed me to the likes of, among others, Chris Do. People like Chris have learned the art of pitching and how much inherent value it has to maximize the work you’ve already done.
Explaining means going through a list of functionalities — pitching means selling why those functionalities make sense.
When presenting a design, instead of saying, “We added a search bar.” try clarifying, “You’ll notice an auto-suggest search bar now replaces the time-consuming dropdown in order to help users more quickly add someone to their shared file, since this seems to be a recurring pain point.”
This tells the client you’ve done your homework.
You’re thinking about the user and you’re thinking about the client’s business goal of creating a better product. (That’s why they hired you, right?) What it also does is it tells them a story. No one wants to listen to a dry activity log — they want to see what new features have been cooked up in the UX lab.
There’s no way around it, however: pitching is selling. But selling doesn’t have to be a dirty word (unless we’re talking MLMs here). It makes you carefully choose your feedback. And in a good client, this is what pitching should evoke.
Change requests are cheap when every design choice has equal weight.
It’s our job to help the client be aware of the amount of work that went into our design choices. If we’ve succeeded in shedding some light on this subject, the client will have a better understanding of what it takes to get it right and hopefully that will inform how they give feedback and what kind of changes they request.
Another thing to note is pitching doesn’t have to always mean presenting.
Is the client more prone to reading? Annotate your design work with strong arguments. Maybe they’re constantly busy and can’t make it to many calls? Film a five minute Loom video and send it over.
Pitch in the language of who you’re working with. They’ll appreciate it!
You can’t do it on your own
Teamwork is everything.
I can’t for the life of me remember if this was from a Dave Grohl documentary or what — but a musician being interviewed once said something like: Yeah you can make your bedroom a studio and record every instrument on your own; you definitely can make music by yourself. But where’s the fun in that?
I think he was onto something.
Of course you can do things alone. For some things, it just might make more sense. But there’s nothing like working with others.
Why?
Because other people will teach you things you never would have learned on your own. Other people will make you realize just how much you have left to go. Other people might even drive you a little crazy, but other people in the end will bring out the best in you — they’ll encourage you and let you know you matter.
Other people are in fact, other people. They aren’t you.
And that’s brilliant, because that means they see things differently, think differently, and have different ideas. And when you work together truly magical things can happen.
In short, don’t under-appreciate your teammates.
Do what you say you will
We like friends who are thoughtful. Friends who show up on time, who pay you back, who consider your obligations before inviting themselves over.
These aren’t conditions to friendship, but a good friendship considers these things, because a good friendship means to care.
With work it’s the same.
We like working with people we can rely on. And if others can rely on you — they’ll like working with you too. You know the phrase, “Underpromise and overdeliver.” It’s a journey to put into practice, but boy does it go a long way.
Doing what you say you will can take you places, because there are just too many people who don’t even do that.
Be mindful of other people’s time
We are all busy and we all have limited bandwidth. Before setting up a call or asking for someone’s time — think about the job they do and what their day looks like. If you have access to their calendar, double check you are taking their schedule into consideration.
People’s time is valuable — so make your meetings count.
I was once on this sales call with a potential client. As usual, a time was scheduled and a meeting agenda was established. Come time for the call — we slowly realized the amounts of condescension and unprofessionalism that began to exude from this client. In fact we probably realized too slowly.
With the meeting going way past when it should have ended, we had no other choice but to kindly ask the call be ended.
These folks clearly did not care about our time.
Which in turn told us exactly what else they wouldn’t value — our work.
It’s a call like that, that solidified in me the principle that people’s time matters.
Be patient
One thing that’s greatly helped me navigate being a designer is patience.
I don’t have a secret recipe to getting better at being patient other than to practice doing it consistently. Practice it in meetings; during 1:1s; while reading a book; while figuring out a UX problem; during a water cooler talk; while being stressed out; or even while listening to a client.
Patience is really the only way to do quality design work, and you can’t hack patience.
The inevitable time will come when you have to sit down with your thoughts and think.
A term in psychology I’m sure you’ve heard before is flow. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s the describing of a state of total immersion in an activity. And in this state of immersion your body and mind are in tune. You can tend to lose a sense of time and space, and in this state you really can achieve a level of clarity and focus you wouldn’t otherwise.
Flow has always been helpful for me in designing because it’s been helpful to me in other areas too — like in writing music.
Learn design principles
Pick up a book that teaches proven design principles like Universal Principles of Design or 100 Things: Every Designer Needs to Know About People.
Try to trust your gut less (at first) and try more to analyze and question why something is or isn’t functioning in a given design. (Don’t worry, over time “feel” will develop on its own.)
Avoid saying “I like x.” and instead practice saying, “X seems to work because it solves problem y.”
Internalize the principles you learn and practice thinking about each problem through the lens of best practices and the psychology behind how people perceive the products they use.
Take a quality design course
There are a ton of excellent and free materials online these days — from YouTube videos to e-books. But if you can, I’d highly encourage you to look into a quality paid course. Taking advantage of your company’s education budget can be a great way to get a hold of one, because in the long run the investment is so worth it.
Free resources are great for learning a new tip or jumping into the basics of an area of design you aren’t familiar with. They are also great just to get other designers’ opinions.
But the difference in a paid resource I believe comes down to structure, focus and quality. A good course can often be created by an individual with years of experience — and that distillation of knowledge is invaluable.
I think you will learn far more in a shorter amount of time from a course like this than you would soaking in bits and pieces from various sources. A course can really boost your skills with comprehensive knowledge and insight.
Read a book on design
Picking up a design book can be highly beneficial. Get your feet wet with something like How Design Makes the World or take a journey through the wonderful overview of UX’s history in User Friendly.
Unfortunately, just reading books won’t make you a better designer — but I do believe it’ll help in better understanding your own area of expertise. At least it’s helped me.
You’ll also learn things you probably wouldn’t have discovered on your own and be able to cross reference information via footnotes and other means in order to get a better understanding of the big picture.
Plus, as a designer I just find it fun so I’m assuming you probably will too!
Learn how businesses are run
Having even a basic grasp of the goals and workings of a business is something I believe every designer should aim for.
When working with a client, learn about their business model — who are their target customers, how will they measure success, and how do they plan to actually make money. Additionally, what are their internal values and what are their established workflows?
Knowing more about what’s in it for the stakeholders will make your approach to solving their problems with your design work that much easier.
If you are a full-time employee, find out how the company you work for is run. How are they finding clients, where does it seem money is being invested, and how does your role fit within that model? How is your company investing in you and what are you doing to bring them value?
Taking note of looking at things from a business perspective will not only help you strategize your work and career — it’ll also up your communication skills twofold to boot!
Stay informed
Principles don’t change. Tools and methods do. So try and stay up to date as best you can with the tools you use.
If a new feature comes out, take some time to learn how to use it. If you use a tool on a daily basis — learn its shortcuts. In general, find other ways to speed up your workflow.
Research new ways of approaching your design process. And don’t be afraid to challenge what everyone says is “the process”.
Remember how context matters? Methods depend on context too! How we approach design can and should change as we discover better ways to solve problems.
Be in the loop of trends — but don’t follow them just because others do.
Use social media as a tool and follow designers smarter than you on Twitter.
Leverage curators like UX Collective or Sidebar to read up on what the community is sharing and writing about.
And finally — don’t forget to enjoy what you’re doing.
Looks like that’s all I have for now. What are some of the most important things you’ve learned as a designer?
