Throughout my career, I've made plenty of friends and interacted with hundreds of designers. I always try to stay updated with news in the design industry and see what's happening in people's careers. I try to understand what sort of career moves they made and how they made them.
I've seen people who started with nothing and became successful designers. I've also seen people who made the wrong moves in their careers and are now at a dead-end.
It's like a game of chess. You have a lot of time and opportunities to make mistakes at the beginning of the game. But how you play in the beginning defines the type of moves you can make during the rest of the game. And if you don't start making the right moves at the right time, you're not going to be left with enough moves to win the game.
What I'm about to share are patterns I've observed in the careers of many successful designers, and many of them are people I looked up to and took advice from. I've saved the number one skill for the last, along with an exciting story of mine.
Alright, so here we go!
Do you know what the Prime Minister of your country does? Sure you do. But do you actually know what they really do? What are their day-to-day activities? Who do they talk to daily? What sort of decisions do they make?
Wouldn't it be funny to want to become a Prime Minister of your country without really knowing what a Prime Minister does? Well, that's what's happening with people entering this industry.
Everyone is following the herd mentality. Everyone is under this false notion that Product Design is a profession you can easily transition into and make a lot of money. It cracks me up when people tell me they want to design unique and meaningful experiences by solving user problems. Most of them don't even understand what that means.
I know many people who think it's easy to switch from architecture, graphic design, or fashion design to product design because both have something to do with design. The truth is that it probably gives you a 5-10% advantage over others. As I mentioned before in the previous chapter,
Product Designers belong to the world of Product. Not the world of design!
Solving user and business problems and designing experiences requires you to have a combination of technical and non-technical skills, which is ridiculously hard to learn. School, College, Boot camps, and Online courses are not equipped to teach you these skills. Many of these skills can only be learned with actual industry experience. And there again, it depends on where you work and who you work with. Not every job can offer you the learnings you need. In fact, most of them don't.
It's not hard to learn to design screens. It takes you 1 to 2 years to become extremely good at it. Maybe even lesser with more practice. What next? Are you going to design screens for the rest of your career?
Knowing what Product Designers do and why they do what they do is highly critical if you want to become a successful designer. It sets your brain on the right track of thinking. Product Design requires a unique mindset that can only be developed if you know what Product Design is all about. It takes years and years to build that mindset.
Remember, Product Design is not a skill you add to your resume. It's a full-fledged profession!
In the next chapter, we will get into the details of what product design is all about.
Today, every Tom, Dick, and Harry who knows some bit of design is running around the internet calling themselves a mentor. Bootcamps across the world promising mentorships and jobs are making things even worse.
It's not where you learn from that matters. It's who you learn from that matters!
What boggles me is how under-qualified designers find the confidence to call themselves mentors. Maybe it's for attention, maybe it's for something else. I fail to understand.
Those entering the industry and learning design have very high expectations from these so-called 'mentors.' They expect more than just getting a few Figma comments on their file. They expect career advice, inspiration and motivation, critical feedback, and more.
There is a difference between wanting to give feedback on a few screens and wanting to significantly have a positive impact on their life.
So if you're publicly calling yourself a mentor, you need to take credit your mentee's success but most importantly take responsibility for your mentee's failure. Dropping a few Figma comments and answering questions now and then is not called mentorship. Mentors set their mentees up for success. They are there to help them throughout their journey.
It's okay if others want to call you their mentor. You don't have control over that. But before you run around calling yourself a mentor, think 100 times or else you'll give others false hope.
All those who became successful today kept following the advice of people they wanted to be like. There is nothing wrong with taking help and advice from 100 different people. Even I did that when I started my career. But it's essential to filter out the people you feel aren't adding value or else you're wasting each other's time.
One of the biggest problems I see on social media is that most of these designers who call themselves 'mentors' live with fake validation and appreciation because those who appreciate and give validation set a low bar for the craft.
Provide validation and take validation from people who are 100x better than you. Not those who are 10x better than you!
If you wanted to be a fighter pilot, would you take advice from a regular commercial pilot or a fighter pilot? Both are of them pilots, right? Both fly aircrafts, right?
When I encounter designers on social media, I ask myself, what has this person achieved? Where have they worked? Do they have good design skills? Has this person achieved what I want to achieve? Is the person capable of helping me become a 100x better designer than I am today?
I see what they talk about on social media. I see their work. I interact with them and see how they add value when conversing with them. I try to get my peer's opinions on them. There are many ways to validate.
When I was getting started, the stakes were really high for me. I didn't have the luxury of making mistakes in my career. So I wanted to ensure that I would always learn from someone I wanted to be like and whom I could always trust.
I always learnt from people who were 100x better than me. Not 10x better than me.
Because let me tell you what happens if you rely on the wrong people. It might be all summer, and happy when things are going fine. But what will you do when shit hits the fan? Do you think they'll come and help you fix your mess?
So be wise, judge the credibility of others, raise the bar and carefully choose people you want to learn from.
People have never underestimated what it takes to be a doctor, lawyer, or architect. But people highly underestimate what it takes to become a Product Designer. Why is that?
The primary reason is that they don't understand what Product Design really is. We have been exposed to all these other professions and have seen these professionals in action. But rarely does one encounter a product designer.
Every profession requires you to have a certain mindset. A doctor always tries to find a way to diagnose a health problem. A lawyer's knee-jerk reaction would be to gather enough evidence. An astronaut must always be attentive, alert, and calm, whatever the situation. And to think in such a manner, you need to develop a certain mindset which takes a significant amount of time. To build that mindset, you need to forcefully think and train your brain to think a certain way. It's a challenging task.
When you try to rush things, you miss out on the essential things, you don't learn, and the outcome isn't as you'd expect. Why? Because your objective will be to do something without even thinking if it makes any sense. If you're rushing things, you're doing it because you're desperate to get out of the situation you're in and not really to learn the craft.
So when learning product design, you can't expect to be industry ready in 4-6 months unless you give in 10-12 hours a day. I understand that you may need more time to learn the craft. In that case, I would advise you to drastically lower your expectations of the salary and maturity of the company you aim to work at. You'll have a very slow start to your career, which is okay. But if you don't pick up the pace and learn the right things at the right time, you might be in trouble later.
Getting your first job isn't the start of your career unless you're working with a good design team, getting constant design feedback from someone capable enough of teaching and mentoring, solving complex and interesting user and business problems by working with talented product managers, and collaborating with talented engineers.
This is what makes you successful. Not just having design skills.
Take a moment to digest that. Product Design is collaborative in nature, which means the team you work with needs to be talented enough for you to learn and grow. An immature company would likely not offer you the opportunity to learn that.
I've seen many young designers who stop working hard the moment they get their first job.
Your career starts when you work in a company that allows you to learn and grow. Not when you get your first job.
In the first company I worked at, I barely learnt anything in the 4 months I spent there. 4 months later, I decided to move to a mature startup, which changed my entire life, and that's when my career really took off. As I said, making the right moves at the right time is important. Let me explain why.
The more years you work as a designer, the higher the expectation the industry sets for you. So if you are a designer with 4 years of experience, you're pretty much a Senior Designer or at least at a mid-high level. And as a Senior Product Designer, you need to have more than just design skills.
You need to know how to mentor and give excellent design feedback. You need to know how to deal with technical constraints when working with engineers and making design decisions. You need to understand how to use data to make design decisions. You need to know how to handle multiple projects. You need to have a strong product mindset. These are just a few of the skills you need to have learnt.
But if you don't work in a mature company that offers you these opportunities to learn, you won't be on par with the industry standard, and very soon, you may hit a dead-end.
One of the best pieces of advice I can ever give any designer getting started is to give enough time to learn the craft because the industry demands it.
The industry doesn't demand good designers. It demands great designers.
If you started your career in an immature company, that's okay. Even I started my career in an immature company before I moved to a mature startup. But it's essential to do whatever it takes to learn the skills the industry demands. Doesn't matter how you do it. It needs to be done.
Until a few years back, there were barely any design YouTubers and influencers making content, boot camps were not a thing, there were fewer startups and jobs compared to today, and Figma wasn't even a popular tool back then. It was very hard to learn product design back then since there was very limited access to designers and educational content. Help was a luxury back then.
If it was possible to learn design back then, it's definitely 100x easier today.
The problem today is that people who want to learn design have become desperate to find a mentor to teach them everything from scratch. With more and more boot camps coming up every day, tons of online courses, and design content creators, people are under the false notion that the only way to become a Product Designer is to do an online course or attend a boot camp. People have become so lazy and expect answers for everything in minutes. They aren't willing to work hard, put in the extra effort, and figure things out on their own.
Doing an online course or attending a Bootcamp will not bring you anywhere close to what the industry wants. Product Design may look fancy, but it's ridiculously hard.
We all know that some of the best discoveries in the world were made by mistake and experimentation. Scientists are often trying to learn something they don’t understand by experimenting. When explorers like Christopher Columbus travelled the world, they had no idea where they were going. They didn’t have a map to guide them. And so they ended up discovering more than they expected. They became more and more curious as they learnt more and discovered more.
The point I'm trying to make is, the moment you resort to shortcuts, you discover less and learn less. Why? Because you only care about the map that is given to you. You don't see the need to look beyond the map.
So if you want to take a shortcut, go for it. It's absolutely okay as long as you put in the time and effort to look beyond the map.
Most people who enter this profession and apply for jobs follow the wrong approach. What they do is they learn a few skills, work on a problem statement, write a case study, add it to their portfolio and start applying for jobs.
Do you really expect to get a great job based on the first-ever project you worked on? How can you expect to be amazing at something you just started learning?
Designers who became really successful fast were those who were given excessive feedback on their work. They got to learn from the best people. They took it slow and focused on the craft.
Often times it's not just about getting feedback. It's about going back and implementing the feedback repeatedly until it's pretty good. I get requests from many designers who send me their projects and want me to review them. But barely any of them take the feedback and fix their projects.
Why are you even asking for feedback if you're not willing to take the feedback and make changes? Having a poor case study is as good as not having any case study.
Without any accountability they wonder why they aren't getting interviews and/or are getting rejected by every company they interview with.
Another problem I see with many designers today is that they are too scared to get feedback because they fear their work will be torn into pieces. I remember this quote by the CEO of one of the biggest startups in India. He said something along the lines of,
Youngsters are scared to take risks today. They fear they will lose their reputation when they have none.
So, what are you scared of if you're a nobody and are just starting to learn design? How are you going to improve? How are you going to find your mistakes? How are you going to become better?
How do I get that promotion? How do I get into a much better company? How do I start freelancing? How to design a landing page? How to build a design system from scratch? How do I find out why users are not using our app?
You see, figuring out 'how to figure things out' is an underrated skill. The moment you become a pro at this skill, you're unstoppable. Why is that?
Because our job as product designers is to figure things out. That's what we do!
8 months before I got my first formal interview with Apple, someone from Apple had reached out to me. They wanted to know more about me and my career goals and aspirations. By then, I had just 6-7 months of industry experience. I was definitely a beginner. Before reaching out, they had checked out my socials, YouTube channel, and portfolio. They found me to be an interesting candidate, which is why they had reached out.
The call lasted 2 hours, and we spoke at length. They were looking for someone with the skills of a Product Designer and a Design Evangelist. In simple terms, a Design Evangelist provides additional guidance and support to designers and developers outside of Apple.
At the end of the call, the person told me, 'It was nice talking to you. I'm not promising a job at the moment. But, we may have an opening in the future. Just try focusing on the Apple side of things and keep in touch.' The first thing that crossed my mind was,
'How do I figure out the Apple side of things?' What does that even mean?'
What should a designer with just 6 months of industry experience do to be capable enough to work at Apple?
I knew there was a 99% chance that I would never get to work at Apple because there was so much for me to learn. But I still relied on that 1% of hope. All I had to do now was to figure out what to do, what to learn, and how to learn.
Apple is a very secretive company, and so are the designers. There wasn't a single piece of information online that gave me any direction. I realised that I had to figure this out all on my own, and in the end, things may not even work out. But I knew that along the way, I would learn a lot even if I didn't get the opportunity to work at Apple.
I started analysing, what a job of a Design Evangelist actually entails. What are the things Apple looks for in a Product Designer? I mean, it's Apple! They want only the best of the best. They don't want any mediocre talent. So how do I become the best of the best?
• I started to understand everything about the Apple Eco-system.
• I started watching Apple's product launches and WWDC videos to understand more about Apple.
• I made the Human Interface Guidelines my bible and learnt everything about it because I can't be a designer at Apple without knowing the Human Interface Guidelines.
• I designed an Apple watch App to put my skills to the test.
• I started getting invited to design schools to give talks on design so that I could understand how to talk to a large audience.
• I started mentoring people and developed skills to give critical and valuable feedback.
• I, of course, was learning Product Design at my day job.
This took me almost 8 months of non-stop dedication and hard work, and it was that 1% of hope that finally got me what I wanted.
The sad reality today is that most aren't curious to know more. They don't really care. They are constantly looking for excuses.
If you don't figure out how to learn something for yourself, you won't be able to solve real-world problems for others.
Let's say you got your first job, and now you tasked with solving a problem that you have never encountered before. It's very likely that you may not have the skills and experience to solve it. But do you have a process that you will help you find the answer?
It's just like when people become parents. First-time parents don't have previous experience parenting. There are many things they have to figure out when taking care of a baby. But in the end, whatever it is, they will figure it out because they care.
This guide is the biggest, most complex, and most challenging side project I have ever worked on. When I started working on this on day 1, I had no idea how to start. I barely had any clarity on the end result.
Should I make it an e-book? Should I have video content? How do I make the best resource ever? How do I decide what to talk about and teach? How do I build this? Where should I host it? Should it be paid? How much I should I charge people? How do I keep updating it? How do I accept payments? How do I market and promote it? How do I launch this?
There isn't a straight-cut answer to this. I can't go online and find answers to this. But I knew how to figure out things I didn't know. I had a process and approach to analyse and make decisions. It took me almost 6 months of constant planning and execution to bring this guide to life.
Even experienced designers are trying to figure things out every single day. No designer knows everything. Everyone is figuring out something or the other.
But what sets them apart is the solid process they have developed to figure out how to figure something out.
That said, it's time to understand what Product Design is all about.