The designer I aim to be in the next 2-3 years
As a means to stay focused on my goals 👊
Hello there! It’s nearing the end of my first year with my existing employer, and this one year has been great in terms of learning.
Around my 9th month mark, I started planning for my new goals for the year, in order to keep myself on track and not be complacent towards my own growth. Whatever I pen down below hold credits to the senior designers I spoke to and I thank them for sparking different nuggets of inspirations.
Tangible Skills
I used to feel so puzzled and stressed when design peers ask me “What kind of designer do you want to be?” Inside my head the answer was just “a good designer?” As silly as that sounds, because I was still honing my design skills (which I will always be), I didn’t know what kind of designer I want to be.
Very thankfully, a senior colleague recommended me to the concept of spider diagram! I know it’s a familiar concept to most but it didn’t strike me to use this to orient me towards my design goals.
I used the spider diagram to segment my core and horizontal skills. And from the 4 core skills namely Interaction Design, Product Thinking, Visual Design and Evaluative Research, I aim to grow more in the area of Interaction Design and Product Thinking.
Product Thinking
Product Thinking entails solving the right problems for the target users. As straightforward as that sounds, it’s often not the case. Often times, it’s hard to define the problem, when problems usually come in the form of “feature requests” from stakeholders, “we need X..” “change Y to Z..”.
As a designer, I enjoy working with teams who understand the importance of defining the problem, and allowing the space for clarifying questions. Ultimately we aren’t a feature factory.
Some key skills:
Ask good clarifying questions — I find asking “what’s the problem we are solving here?” helps to re-orientate calls where stakeholders zoooom into discussing user flows and solutions immediately.
Generate divergent options on how to solve the problem (Diverge then Converge)
Link features to product/team goals
Approach problems from first principles and define what matters most for ambiguous problems
Develop a point of view on the product problems to prioritise
I would love to hear more perspectives and skills to hone to grow my Product Thinking skills.
Interaction Design
Interaction Design: the execution to create end-to-end screen deliverables, considering the various edge cases.
Some key skills:
Implement consistent and user-friendly interaction patterns
Define desired user behaviour outcomes and design to meet those ideal outcomes
Define design principles
Visual Design
Visual Design: to deliver polished, well-crafted and aesthetically pleasing designs
Some key skills:
Apply visual design principles
Think about the full system in implementation
Familiarity and execution on Figma (currently my day-to-day design tool)
Evaluative Research
Aka Usability Testing
(I didn’t include Generative Research as I felt like UTs is more of an expected key skill for designers, while generative research seems to lie within the job scope of researchers more. Thus out of prioritisation, I only include Evaluative Research here.)
For the multiple activities under research (ranging from recruitment to interviewing), I hope to gain capabilities in Scoping, Planning, Synthesis and Storytelling.
Intangible Skills
(I feel like there should be a better name for this section but I don’t know what should it be!)
Aside from the hard skills and deliverables, I think growing as a designer also means a better delivery of craft in terms of results and collaborating with people. These will be the “standards” I hope to deliver in the near future.
Quality of Results
To consistently deliver high quality outcomes and designs which are polished, delightful and easy to use.
Reliability of Results
Know how to spot issues ahead of time
Set clear tasks and design principles, and follow up with results
Estimate design time for bigger projects and help juniors with time estimation
Managing Complexity
Exhibit flexibility and course correct as problems arise
Drive the team forward and reduce obstacles for functional counterparts
Independently execute on complicated projects which may require coordination with other teams
Set Direction
Has a strong voice on which problems to prioritise and guide the team towards a comprehensive solution
Understand the product’s long term strategy
Set realistic short term and long term goals
Convey the strategy in simple and tangible terms
This post lists down a detailed breakdown of the tangible and intangible skills I look to gain within the next 2-3 years. I believe this lays a strong foundation towards being a senior designer/design lead, which I look forward to be in the subsequent few years.
TLDR, in the next 2-3 years I aim to be a designer who can work with ambiguous project scopes across large cross functional teams with a level of complexity.
To fellow readers who happened to chance upon this article, let me know your thoughts too :) Would love to find out more what are some goals you set for yourself!