If you’ve religiously followed and practiced the things I’ve taught in the previous 3 chapters of this module, then congratulations! If not, there might be a lot of work for you to do. Unless you’ve seen a very significant improvement in your skills and have done plenty of practice, there is absolutely no point in solving your trophy problem statement which you will use to get interviews.
Because if you’re not ready to work on your trophy problem statement, you won’t do a good job at solving it, you won’t get interviews and in the end, you’ll realise you have to get back to basics and fill your gaps. Why go through such a negative emotional experience of constant rejection? Why not do things the correct way right from the beginning?
Now I’ve already created very detailed videos on solving problem statements, validating problem statements, using ChatGPT, and a whole lot more on YouTube. There is nothing more that I can add to it honestly. I highly recommend everyone to watch them. But in this article, I am going to talk about the change in mindset that is needed for most of you reading this article.
The industry is at a stage where there are no good jobs for junior designers. Good companies only want experienced and senior designers. It’s not that they don’t want to hire junior designers. It’s just that they don’t have time to search for a needle in the haystack because 90% of the applications they receive are nowhere close to the industry standard. They aren’t even worthy of an interview.
This means you either have to be extremely good or settle for a not-so-great company and start your career there. And that’s absolutely alright. Even I started my career in an immature company.
But if you’re struggling to even get interviews in immature companies and/or getting rejected from those companies, then you must be doing something wrong. And that probably has to do with your mindset.
You see, most people apply for jobs like it's a slot machine. They keep trying until they get an interview and most companies that do give an interview or an assignment reject them at the end.
Without any guidance and without giving enough time to grow your skill set, it’s absolutely foolish to keep applying to jobs hoping someone will take you in. Let me tell you, people don’t have time to sit and train you. People will hire you to do the work.
This profession doesn’t come with a training program. You need to do most of the learning on your own. That's how it is today and that's how it has been in the past too.
It doesn’t matter how many months or years you spent practicing design. It doesn’t matter if you have a design degree. It doesn’t matter if you joined a bootcamp. If you didn’t learn it the right way and saw regular growth, you’re just wasting your time and mental energy. You’d be better off in a different profession. This profession isn't for everyone.
You need to let your work hold the steering wheel. Not luck!
Most people often come to the realisation at the very end after countless rejections that they took help from the wrong people, relied on the wrong resources, and wasted their time learning the wrong things. Coming to this realisation is the first step to getting your career back on track.
But many stop here. They don't take action even after realising this. They continue applying blindly for jobs even though they know that their work isn't good enough. This is irresponsibility. This attitude is very dangerous because it will only take you so far. Even if anything does work out, it will only last for 2-3 years max.
The right course of action is to take a big break from interviewing. It’s important to change your career strategy. It’s important to start filling all the gaps in your skillset. This is your second chance and final chance to fix everything if you're struggling to find a job.
Finding a problem statement is probably the most daunting task people face. Ever wondered why? The answer is pretty simple.
They haven’t trained their brain to understand how to solve problems.
Forget solving a problem. Step 1 is to identify that a problem even exists that needs solving. Solving is probably Step 10. Most junior designers don't even know how to perform Step 1. They start working on the main problem statement even before learning how to perform Step 1.
A newborn baby isn’t going to suddenly start walking one day. It spends a year trying to walk and then one day starts walking. So if you think you can suddenly get up one day and come up with problem statements, it’s not going to happen. You need to train your brain on a daily basis.
So how do you do it? Well, start small!
If you spent a good 3-4 months on the first 3 chapters of this module, then you did a good job. You see, training your brain doesn’t always have to be about business/user goals and thinking about metrics. The goal is to solve any problem. The goal is to figure things out. The goal is to struggle to get an answer. Our brain isn’t like AI which can give answers the moment we ask questions.
Here’s a secret.
If you look at the work of any designer who is great at their craft, there is a very high chance they are great UI designers.
They may not create the most creative and fascinating interfaces. But they are very much capable of designing a rock solid UI that looks realistic, meets the user and business goals and get's the job done effectively.
You see, UI Design is the easiest skill to learn if you compare it with other skills. In fact, it’s the bare minimum you need as a product designer. Without that, you have absolutely no value in the industry. This might explain why you may not be getting interviews or may be getting rejected during the interview rounds.
Just learning how to make an interface that looks good, makes complete sense and doesn’t have too much visual noise itself is a big task. You need to know how to combine colors, typography, spacing and layouts. Even learning and understanding how auto-layout works is an excellent exercise for your brain to figure things out. So spend a very generous amount of time learning UI Design, please!!!!
Almost every case study that I see has plenty of AVOIDABLE UX mistakes. It could be using the wrong patterns, incorrect logic, and justifications, extreme bias, lack of competitive analysis, poor navigation, not considering edge cases, etc.
Creating a good user flow that is effective and efficient is the most important thing for a junior product designer. The industry does not expect you to have exceptional problem-solving skills. But it does expect you to not make avoidable UX mistakes. If you use, test and play around with other apps, you will learn so much and validate your own design decisions. You don't even need a mentor to give you any feedback.
The poorer you are at creating correct user flows, the less are your chances of getting into a good product company.
Learning this is also an exercise for your brain. This is why Chapter 3 of this module is all about taking small flows and creating rock-solid user flows that cover edge cases. You have to start small. Work on at least 5-10 mini flows and problem statements before you take on the mega task of working on a trophy problem statement for your portfolio.
This exercise itself takes a good 3-4 months to develop a decent level of awareness about the common UI/UX patterns that are widely used across products. And also helps you understand what are incorrect patterns.
One of the most common questions I get is if it's important to work on a problem statement that belongs to an industry that one might be interested to work in. It’s a very valid question.
You see, as a product designer, the industry of the company that you work at has absolutely no relevance at all, at least in the early stages of your career.
You can work at a fin-tech company but end up working on growth projects such as onboarding and referrals. You can work at an ed-tech company, but work on an internal tool that helps educators manage their courses. You can work at a food-tech company but work on designing the customer support experience for users.
None of these projects have anything to do with the respective industry. For example, the users who reach out to customer support of a fin-tech app, food-tech app or ed-tech app are the exact same. They have a problem with something and you have to design a solution that will solve the customer’s query. There are plenty of ways to solve it. But that has nothing to do with the industry that company belongs to. You might even end up working on creating a Design System which has nothing to with the industry.
What this means is that it makes absolutely no sense to choose a problem statement based on the industry you want to work in. Sure, it might give you a 5% advantage, but it doesn’t matter at all which industry you start your career in.
Instead pick a problem statement where you can demonstrate ALL your product design skills. UI Design, UX Design, Interaction Design and Problem Solving.
One of the biggest advice I can give is to NOT apply for jobs with the first ever project or problem statement you work on. It makes no sense. Your first project will NOT be good, neither will your second.
Apply to companies only when you're ready with a project that demonstrates your well all-rounded skills.
So make sure you work on a few a few practice problem statements before you work on your trophy problem statement that you will use to get interviews with good companies.