Most of the people who enter this profession have a misconception that they need to find a mentor to teach them everything. This is also the main reason they run to enroll in online courses and boot camps that promise mentorship and are often disappointed with the quality.
Most people's definition of the word 'mentor' is someone who does more than just give design feedback. They expect career guidance, help to prepare for interviews, validation on whether they are on the right path, mistakes being pointed out, help to get them corrected, and more. They put all their faith and trust in this mentor.
When they come across someone who calls themselves a mentor, they are put on a very high pedestal because they believe that this so-called 'mentor' will solve any problem they go to them with.
The word 'mentor' has a large significance because it comes with a lot of responsibility. But today, every Tom, Dick, and Harry is running around social media calling themselves a mentor. And this has led beginners entering this industry to believe that the only way to become a designer is to find a mentor.
This is absolutely untrue!
Just take a moment to think about designers like me who have 4-5 years of experience. Forget me, actually. Think of other designers who are even more experienced than me, leading design teams today, working in FAANG companies today, and working on some of the best products out there.
When they started out, there weren't many resources online, there weren't many well-designed products to take inspiration from, there were very few talented designers that they could reach out to, and boot camps were not a thing back then.
So then, how did these designers end up becoming successful and talented today without having any mentorship at all? How did they do it without joining any boot camp or going to design school? How did they learn design?
You see, those designers, got to work at some of the best startups and companies in the early states of their career. They got to work on some of the best and most complex products with some of the best designers, product managers, and engineers.
But to work at these companies, they had to prove themselves. It wasn't an opportunity that fell on their lap. They learnt everything they could from the resources that were available to them. They practiced vigorously. They focused on making their foundations solid. They showcased potential. They exploited all the resources before they reached out to anyone for help.
They did 90% of the work and then went to senior designers to take them to 100%.
The biggest takeaway from all this is that you don't need hard-core mentorship to start as a product designer. It doesn't mean they didn't take any advice and help from others. It's similar to asking people for directions on the road when you're on a road trip in your car. You're still using Google Maps to navigate, but to ensure you're on the right track, you ask people for a bit of help.
That's how they took help. They figured out 90% of the things on their own and took help from others for the rest 10%.
Trust me, the only thing you need is the little time someone is willing to give you because it's very much possible for you to get most of the answers on your own.
If you want to get mentorship from experienced and talented designers, you need to gain their trust and prove that you're worthy of their time. Designers love to help and care very deeply about the design industry. But today, beginners expect mentors to do 90% of the work for them.
Most of the time, there is absolutely no effort into trying to find the answer to a question before asking a senior designer. And I'm not the only one. Many senior designers have a shared opinion on this.
Senior designers are very careful about who they want to give their time to since they are always worried that there won't be enough reward for their time and effort. And as one grows in their career, complex topics get more interesting to them. For example, product management, design leadership, design systems, etc.
So depending on seniority and experience level, the topics that interest one change. Personally, for me, I enjoy giving career advice, giving feedback on complex flows and documentation, thinking about the big picture, etc.
If you meet a professional chef who owns a restaurant, you're not going to ask them to teach you how to make an omelet, right?
The most important thing you need to do is to be very critical and evaluate the mentor before going to them for help. Just because they have a job, or their job title is Lead Designer or they have 50k followers on Instagram doesn't mean they are necessarily great designers.
I know plenty of designers with many years of experience who are totally incapable of designing the most basic experiences. They barely have any product thinking and can't think beyond an interface. This is mainly because they didn't work in companies where design was valued. They didn't work with talented people. They didn't work on products that required good design.
However, that doesn't mean a designer has nothing to offer. Of course, every designer is knowledgeable about something. It could be the basics of UI design, it could be how to crack interviews, it could be content creation, or solving complex problems. It could be anything.
And your job as a mentee is to identify what a particular mentor is capable of helping you with. Not every mentor is capable of teaching you everything.
If you spend time learning from the wrong person, you may end up learning the wrong things.
But I understand that it might be difficult for a beginner to judge the credibility of a mentor. So what do you do? You try to learn as much as you can about them to get an idea of what they are capable of helping you with.
Have they worked at companies that value design? What do they talk about on social media? How good is their work and design skills? What types of products have they worked on?
You can also try to strike up a conversation with them. This will give you much clarity on their subject matter knowledge.
The biggest advantage of this is that the more designers you interact with, the easier it will be for you to raise your benchmark and judge the credibility of someone.
You see, you don't need help with every single thing. You don't need feedback on everything. There are things that you can learn on your own, and there are things you will need help with. Let's try to understand what these are.
Learning to design realistic and practical UI and knowing many design patterns is something you can easily do on your own. The Human Interface Guidelines and Material Design Guidelines are probably the only textbooks you will ever need to understand those core foundations.
I know plenty of senior designers who have barely studied from these guidelines and most of the boot camps and online courses don't even cover it their syllabus. Even if they do, it's probably just 10%. Which is why most of the designers who graduate from there completely lack the most basic skills.
People underestimate the amount of knowledge you can gain just by reading the guidelines. They are like the alphabets of any language. This is what you use to form words and sentences. It's the core foundation.
Once you are competent at designing realistic interfaces, your next step would be to design user flows and solve simple problem statements. This is where Interaction Design and UX Design come into the picture. To be very honest, you can learn a large part of this yourself.
Just by observing many existing products out there, you can get answers to many questions. But again, observation is a skill that needs to be learnt and you may need additional help from others.
One of the most common things I've seen young designers do is send their entire case study and portfolio for review at the last moment. The problem with this is that it is a monumental task for a senior designer to review and give feedback. The chances you get vague feedback also is very high in such cases.
Instead, make sure you go step by step and get feedback on a regular basis. This doesn't mean you get feedback every day. Get feedback at different stages of your design process.
If you can reach 70% on your own, any designer can help you go from 70% to 90%. But don't expect anyone to take you from 10% to 90%.
It's important to find and rectify mistakes at the right time. The more, the better. The faster, the better.
When you reach out to someone, the most important thing is to get to the point asap, even if they don't reply. Everything needs to be conveyed in the very first message you send them.
If you're sharing a Figma file, please make sure the mentor knows what to look at and has enough context. Either create a new page or a new file. Don't make it hard for them. I can guarantee that just making it easy for the mentor to go through your work will give you brownie points.
When following up, make sure to be smart about how you request them. Here are 2 examples.
Hi there, not sure if you got a chance to see my Figma file. Let me know if there is anything I can do to make it easy for you to review my file. I may have missed something you might be looking for. I promise it's just going to take 10 minutes of your time.
Hi there, not sure if you got a chance to read my question. Let me know if you need me to clarify something or share more context.
Remember that the way you ask for feedback determines how you get your feedback. Good questions will get you good feedback. Just like how a user needs to know what to do when they open an app, a mentor needs to know what to do with your Figma file or question. Ask yourself, do they have enough context? Do they know what they need to do? Do they understand what I'm asking?
When you are in a community-based group, don't just post a link to your Figma file or throw your question and expect someone will come and help you out. It may happen for sure. But the chances are low. If you consistently put out poor work and people don't see your growth, they will eventually stop helping you.
Rather personally message people you come across to be helpful and send them your message. It's fine if it's a template message as long as the mentor has everything they need to help you.
That said, I want to leave you with one of my most powerful pieces of advice.
One of the reasons why the most successful and talented designers are where they are today is because of the mentors they took the advice and help from.
The right mentor can turn your life upside down for the better. They not just took design feedback on their work but also on what career choices to make, what projects to work on, how to choose a company to work at, and how and what to up-skill in.
You see, the more people you take advice from, the more information you have to make an informed decision. Think about why someone gave you that advice? What was their basis for it? Did they follow what they advised? If not, why not? Does it sound realistic?
It's extremely critical as a mentee that you validate the advice and feedback you get because if shit hits the fan, the mentor you took advice from is not going to come and save you! So be wise and choose your mentors wisely.
Raise the bar and benchmark even if they are better than you. Don't settle. Because to be the best, you gotta learn from the best.