You will never be perfect 😥

Read that again, it’s like I came to this realization for the first time when I had a chat with my friend and mentor from Road Trip. I hope she reads this!

I will tell you why and what you can do instead.

Take this section as an Intro

Many of us, young designers at some point in our learning become confused, and don’t exactly know what next to do, especially when we see fellow young designers doing awesome stuffs, getting jobs and gigs.

We want to be better, we want to become highly skilled, we don’t know whether to continue trainings and joining bootcamps, or simply to start applying for jobs, or taking gigs or keep learning.

We is me, I am we.

The feeling to become perfect is good, sadly, it can never happen. You can never become ‘so good’, there would always be new stuffs and things to learn.

My ability to pay attention to tiny details and always striving for perfection in almost everything has held me back several times.

It’s a curse. It’s a blessing.

And just like Vicky from Road Trip told me, stop holding yourself back. You need to put yourself out there, let the world know who you are and what you do. Even if your work is ugly, let people see it, when it gets better, they’ll see how much and how fast you’ve improved, and see that you can actually ‘improve’ with time. Even Austin Kleon preaches something like this.

Stop holding yourself back!

This is the Body section

This was re-enforced again, when I had an ADP mentoring session with Emilie Rousetty, a Product Designer at MCB Group in Mauritius.

She’s an awesome person with loads of knowledge.

Having a chat with an experienced designer was very valuable and very insightful. As a young designer just starting out, an experienced designer might help help you get a clearer path. Even beyond design!

It was an interview-like session. When Emilie starts talking, it’s like she’d never stop, I enjoyed it, 30 minutes crept into 1 hour.

These are some of the questions I asked:

• How she deals with impostor syndrome, particularly when she started out?
• What exactly does recruiters want to see in an entry level designer?
• As a new designer, we see tons of designers with a myriad of skills, doing awesome stuffs, and achieving great feat, and we are…we are just here. Then she smiled. I smiled too
• How she has come all the way in Design, and what helped her grow.

See her responses below:

Impostor Syndrome

Fortunately, we both had something in common, we are overthinkers 🤭

Though this is not new, don’t compare yourself with others, you are unique. These things play out everyday, and we tend to think others are better than us.

And then she went on to say, I might even know some things she doesn’t know.

Then there goes…

It’s true though.

Don’t compare yourself!

The only person in the design room you wanna compare yourself with is yourself!

You’ll forever be a learner

Where were you 2 months ago?

Look at what you knew then and what you know now.

Be happy about your progress.

What are you missing out on?

Our journeys are different.

Shut out the voice.

Focus on your strengths.

Always be humble.

Don’t do too much!

As someone who is just starting out. Don’t do too much.

You heard right. Too many courses, attending all bootcamps, trying to be the good ol jack of all trades, learning all the design tools at once…Figma,…XD, Protopie…you’ll just become a lunatic 😎.

Don’t do it.

Don’t read too much.

Except you want to lose yourself.

Of course, this is not to say, relax, or be lazy. No, rather, she implied that you should focus on one thing at a time, and be consistent with it. Never forgetting to go back to the basics of UX Design from time to time. It’s all about the principles and the core theme of making Users feel like gods with your product.

I wished someone told me earlier, to focus on one thing.

I used to be all things… Nevermind.

Now watch me contradict myself below 👇🏽

Learn everything!

Then she asked me, you are just starting out, yeah?

Then, learn everything! 😁

Read everything!

In doing this, you will find yourself.

Confused?

Well me too, and I can’t explain 💁🏽‍♂️

Don’t crucify me just yet. You’ll get it, keep reading.

Design is not for you!

You need to be a problem solver to be a great designer. You need to be able to empathize, dig into the roots of a problem and spring up solutions.

This might be the most taunting, but yet the main theme of design. Problem solving.

Design is not for everyone!

On Recruitment, Case studies, and Jobs

Most companies wants to see 3 case studies on your portfolio to know how you think, and your design process and stuff.

• If you want to do UX, don’t do a lot of images in your case studies or portfolio.
• Don’t show all deliverables in one case study. Use each project to tell different stories and to relate different facets of your skill. You could use one case study to emphasize your design process, another could be focused on your Research process, a third could be just your UI skill.
• Tell a story. Your case study should be engaging. Emilie recommends to start with an introduction, reach a climax with it, then conclude (if you want to)

Yea, make your potential clients and employers reach a climax while reading your case study 😉

Lastly,

Don’t do UX because you want to be trendy. It’s a career, it’s a skill, it’s a job.

Create solutions with it!

There you have it.

This is not the end though 😑

There’s no good massage without a happy ending.

The Conclusion

Okay, nothing to see here, I ended already, thanks

This is the end!

The end

Credits

©Emilie Rousetty and Me

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